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I can’t see my iCloud photos in the iphone photos app

My iPhone is running on ios 14.6 I have around 16000 pics stored on icloud. I turned icloud photos off and my gallery was left with only 600 photos, which was expected. When i turned the icloud photos back on, (optimized iphone storage option) my photos app is stuck at Updating (number of pics) Items. I can see and access the items from icloud.com but not my iphone photos app. I’ve tried turning it off and back on, and restarting my iphone

Posted on Jul 13, 2021 7:54 PM

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Posted on Jul 14, 2021 4:06 AM

It may take several days before the photos from iCloud Photos will appear on the iPhone. How long have you waited?

The Phots.app on the iPhone will first upload and merge the 600 photos already on your iPhone into iCloud, and then start downloading from iCloud, provided you are having plenty of free storage on the iPhone. Is your iPhone connected to Wi-Fi and connected to a charger? Keep it connected to a power source and Wi-Fi until the syncing with iCloud has been completed.




4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 14, 2021 4:06 AM in response to ttami

It may take several days before the photos from iCloud Photos will appear on the iPhone. How long have you waited?

The Phots.app on the iPhone will first upload and merge the 600 photos already on your iPhone into iCloud, and then start downloading from iCloud, provided you are having plenty of free storage on the iPhone. Is your iPhone connected to Wi-Fi and connected to a charger? Keep it connected to a power source and Wi-Fi until the syncing with iCloud has been completed.




Jul 14, 2021 10:11 PM in response to léonie

Hi! I did what you suggested and would like to put more details. I had to restart the process every time I add a new picture to my phone. After realizing that, I just left my phone for hours (unlocked) and came back and realize that once the pictures have finished being uploaded, my iCloud pictures slowly came back to my phone. Thank you!

Jul 14, 2021 10:24 PM in response to ttami

That is great. Yes, Photos will only download photos from iCloud, once it has finished uploading the new photos and all older photos from the phone and merging them into the existing iCloud Photos Library. Only then does it know, which photos need downloading to the iPhone. This is independent of "optimise storage".

Even the optimised versions will need a considerable amount of storage locally on your iPhone. On your iPhone try to keep at least 10% to 20% of the storage needed in iCloud free for the optimised versions, or Photos may become very slow and show you mostly white thumbnails, if each and every of the photos needs optimisation. I am keeping only my favourites and the most recent photos I am working with in iCloud Photos. This way I have plenty of free working storage on my devices and I can always download the originals from iCloud quickly, and there is always enough free storage to install system updates. Even with iCloud Photos and optimize storage less is more.



I can’t see my iCloud photos in the iphone photos app

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