If I delete my iPhone photos they get deleted on iCloud?

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If I delete my iPhone photos they get deleted on iCloud?

I'm told that when you delete photos from your iPhone that they'll also get deleted from iCloud. This may be a stupid question, but what is the point of iCloud if it only stores what's currently on your device? And even worse, why pay for additional storage in iCloud if it will only store the same amount of memory that your phone holds? As an example - If my iPhone will hold 256GB of data, and I delete 100GB, and that 100GB of data is also deleted from iCloud - what would be the point in paying for additional storage?? What am I missing?? If I'm going to pay for storage I want every photo I take to stay on the cloud whether I delete it from my device or not. Only when I delete it directly from the cloud should the data be gone.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Dec 2, 2021 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

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FoxFifth

Level 10

472,095 points

Dec 2, 2021 3:41 PM in response to Snakeboots

iCloud Photos is designed as a syncing service. It will sync Photos with all of your devices where you have iCloud Photos turned on.

Part of the "what is the point" is that if your device is lost, stolen or damaged, even if the space on your iCloud is the same as on your device, you will still have your photos.

Second, you can turn on the Optimize Storage option for Photos on your device and that will allow full size originals to be stored on iCloud while some or all of the photos on your device may be smaller space-saving versions if your device is low on space. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264

This is primarily a user-to-user support forum; other Apple users like you. You may want to also post to https://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html to let Apple know how you would prefer it to work.

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