I lost my phone and am not able to get my photos from that phone that I lost

I am pretty sure I updated my iCloud in my other phone and am not allowed to download those photos

iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 16

Posted on Jul 27, 2023 4:49 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 27, 2023 4:57 PM

There are many ways of preserving photos and videos. Did you do any of these?


  • emailed, texted or messaged the photos to friends or family
  • iCloud photo sync
  • Manual iCloud backup
  • Automatic nightly iCloud backup
  • iTunes backup
  • Transfer your photos to your computer via USB cable
  • Sync to Google Photos
  • Sync to some other photo archiving service such as Shutterfly
  • Sync to Dropbox
  • Sync to box.com
  • Sync to Microsoft OneDrive
  • Sync to Amazon Photos
  • back up to Livedrive
  • Backup to any other backup or archiving service
  • Transfer them to a Flash drive through the lightning port on your iPhone, using a product such as SanDisk 64 GB iXpand Flash Drive Go - Apple


A final option is if you synced your photos to iCloud, you have a Mac, and you use Time Machine to back up your Mac automatically, you can open Time Machine and restore the photo library to an earlier date. To do this on your Mac open Finder, then click on Pictures in the sidebar and launch Time Machine. Go to a time before the photos were deleted and restore

Photos Library.photoslibrary. (If you had ever changed the name of the photo library restore that file instead).


If the answer is no to all of the above your photos are gone forever.

11 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 27, 2023 4:57 PM in response to Pedmiraz

There are many ways of preserving photos and videos. Did you do any of these?


  • emailed, texted or messaged the photos to friends or family
  • iCloud photo sync
  • Manual iCloud backup
  • Automatic nightly iCloud backup
  • iTunes backup
  • Transfer your photos to your computer via USB cable
  • Sync to Google Photos
  • Sync to some other photo archiving service such as Shutterfly
  • Sync to Dropbox
  • Sync to box.com
  • Sync to Microsoft OneDrive
  • Sync to Amazon Photos
  • back up to Livedrive
  • Backup to any other backup or archiving service
  • Transfer them to a Flash drive through the lightning port on your iPhone, using a product such as SanDisk 64 GB iXpand Flash Drive Go - Apple


A final option is if you synced your photos to iCloud, you have a Mac, and you use Time Machine to back up your Mac automatically, you can open Time Machine and restore the photo library to an earlier date. To do this on your Mac open Finder, then click on Pictures in the sidebar and launch Time Machine. Go to a time before the photos were deleted and restore

Photos Library.photoslibrary. (If you had ever changed the name of the photo library restore that file instead).


If the answer is no to all of the above your photos are gone forever.

Jul 27, 2023 5:08 PM in response to Pedmiraz

If you were using iCloud Photos, you can download the photos from iCloud using

  • Other Macs, iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touches that are using iCloud Photos and connected to the same Apple ID
  • Windows PCs that are using iCloud for Windows and connected to the same Apple ID
  • The iCloud Web interface ( https://www.icloud.com/ )


If you were not using iCloud Photos, or any other similar cloud service (e.g., Google Photos), and you did not make any copies of your photos on your other devices, your chances of getting the photos back are slim. (Basically, you would have to hope that someone found the phone and was honest enough to return it to a lost+found department that you had reason to check.)


Jul 27, 2023 5:18 PM in response to Pedmiraz

Your photos are saved to iCloud if you backed up your phone to iCloud, or if you synced your photos to iCloud by going to Settings/[your name]/iCloud and turning on the switch for iCloud Photos. If you didn’t do either they are not in iCloud.


You can easily check if you turned on the switcht by logging in to https://icloud.com/photos.

Jul 27, 2023 5:29 PM in response to Pedmiraz

Your iCloud account is associated with your Apple ID.


If your old phone had an Apple ID of *@bedrock.com, and your new phone had an Apple ID of *@bedrock.com, then both phones could have iCloud Photos turned on, but the new phone would not see the photos uploaded to iCloud by the old phone.


In the absence of any sort of "shared photo album" or "family photo album" type configuration, each iCloud account (and its associated iCloud Photos library) would be private to the holder of its Apple ID. Fred would not have access to Barney's pictures, or vice versa.


[Edited by Moderator] 


Jul 27, 2023 5:56 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Lawrence Finch wrote:

That’s a little misleading. If both the old and new phones had the same Apple ID (myemail@bedrock.com on the old phone and myemail@bedrock.com on the new phone) the photos would sync between the phones.


What I described was a case where they had different Apple IDs.


The OP said "does it really make a difference if I was using my Apple ID on my last iPhone"

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I lost my phone and am not able to get my photos from that phone that I lost

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