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Storing and safekeeping photos from phone

How do you keep your photos in i-cloud safe and 'untouchable' so that you can delete your phone's photos to make room and free up storage. Right now every action on the phone in managing photos is mirrored in the cloud so erasing the phone's photos erases them in the cloud. What does everyone do? Use a non icloud service for this purpose?

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Feb 28, 2023 11:15 AM

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Posted on Feb 28, 2023 11:17 AM

I use the Optimize Storage option of iCloud Photos to reduce the storage needed on my iPhone.


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.



1 reply
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 28, 2023 11:17 AM in response to siena22

I use the Optimize Storage option of iCloud Photos to reduce the storage needed on my iPhone.


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.



Storing and safekeeping photos from phone

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