Deleting photos on iPhone without deleting them on iCloud

iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See the following Apple article for more information: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.

Another way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photos turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.

If your photos are in the Photos app and Photos are synced in iCloud, then your photos are in both places. In principle, Photos in the app is just a mirror of iCloud. If you delete a picture in the Photo app, it is also deleted from iCloud, and vice versa.

You can also save your photos in iCloud Drive. Simply by moving your photos to a folder in iCloud Drive. That way, your photos are away from your Photo app, but you can always access them in the Files app, share them, edit etc. while the photos are stored safely in iCloud. You can also "Offload" them - so that the images do not take up your iPhone's internal memory, this is one of the great advantages of saving them in iCloud Drive.

iCloud Drive works just like a Dropbox, Google Drive or some of the other cloud storage services.

To move one or more photos to iCloud Drive:

1. Open the Files app, select iCloud Drive

2. Create a new folder, call it ex. Pictures.

3. Open the Photo app

4. Mark the pictures you want to move and press the "Share" button (Square with up arrow)

5. Select Move to Files

6. Find the folder you just created and save them there.

When all the pictures have been moved, you can actually delete them from the Photo app. But remember to check that you have moved everything before you delete Recently Deleted. If you want one or more photos back in the Photo app, you can always download them again from iCloud Drive.

How to offload Pictures, from iPhone Storage:

FoxFifth wrote:

Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.

iCloud Drive in the Files app can also be used for Photos. I myself use that solution for a lot of my old photos that I would like to have access to. But which does not necessarily need to take up space in my iPhone memory.