Delete Photos on iPad while leaving in iCloud

sberman has offered useful advice concerning how to ensure that photos stored on your iPad are uploaded in full resolution to your iCloud Photo Library - and, potentially, how you might subsequently delete photos from your iPad.

However, there are some additional considerations that would benefit from a some basic understanding of iCloud and your Photo Library works with it...

The default location for Videos and Photos to be saved on your iPad is within the iPad's Photo Library.

While you can enable iCloud Photos to (a) synchronise your Library between Apple devices and (b) access your Photo Library from any computer using a web browser - using iCloud Photos does not provide the ability to keep your photos/videos just in iCloud. You must understand that deleting items from your Photo Library will cause the corresponding copy to also be deleted from iCloud Photos. As such, iCloud Photos is not suitable for use as a independent repository for your photos and videos.

While iCloud Photos is not, of itself, suitable for maintaining a device-independent location to store your photos/videos, you can still use your available iCloud storage to save your media. To do so, you will need to export your photos/videos from your Photo Library to a folder that you create in your iCloud file storage...

Using the native Files App, create a folder in iCloud - within which you will initially save a copy of your selected photos and videos.

Next, open your Photos App - and from your Library, tap to select the items that you wish to copy to iCloud file storage. When you have selected the items that you wish to copy, tap the Share button (a square with an upward-pointing arrow) at bottom-left of the Library window.

Tapping the Share button will expose an action menu; from the menu select Save to Files - and navigate to the iCloud folder that you have created - then tap Save. Your selected photos/videos will be copied to the folder that you have selected.

Don't try to copy all your photos/videos in one go - as this will be very slow and may fail due to insufficient system resources. Instead, copy across small batches.

When you have finished, check that all your photos are visible using the FilesApp. You should note that photos and videos that are not stored within the Photo Library cannot be accessed or viewed using the Photos App.

When you are happy that you have copied your photos/videos to the intended folder, only then is it safe to delete the original image files from your Photo Library - without risk of accidentally deleting them from iCloud storage.

Hello Shadowbouno125,

I understand how important it is to free up space on your iPad while ensuring all your cherished memories are safely stored in iCloud. Let's walk through this together step-by-step.

1. Verify Your Photos are Uploaded to iCloud:

- First, make sure all your photos are indeed uploaded to iCloud. Go to Settings on your iPad, tap on your Apple ID at the top, then choose iCloud > Photos. If iCloud Photos is turned on, your photos should be syncing.

- Ensure your iPad is connected to Wi-Fi and plugged into power so it can finish uploading any remaining photos.

2. Optimize iPad Storage:

- In the same Photos section in iCloud settings, select Optimize iPad Storage instead of Download and Keep Originals. This will replace full-resolution photos and videos with smaller, device-sized versions on your iPad, while the originals will remain in iCloud. This should free up a considerable amount of space on your device if you have a large library of original photos and video.

3. Clearing Space for Updates:

- Besides replacing full-resolution versions of your photos and videos with optimized versions, you might want to look into deleting unused apps, clearing cache, or offloading apps to create additional space for updates.

Best of luck to you.

shadowbouno125 wrote:

I want to make sure my original iPad photos are now stored in iCloud as originals.

I don’t really understand this, so I will ignore it. However:

Then I want to delete all my photos on iPad without deleting them from iCloud.

This can be accomplished by setting Settings > Photos > iCloud Photos = “off” then performing the deletion.