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All of my photos moved to Recently Deleted folder.

About a half hour ago I opened up my photos app to see that in my recent photos there are 55 photos, rather than the thousands there typically is. I open the folder, and sure enough, all of my photos are gone except the ones from the past 24 hours. I checked on icloud.com because I thought it might be a sync issue, but they were not there. I checked my recently deleted folder, and they all were there, showing 29 days left until they were permanently gone.


They're now all being restored, but I'm a bit freaked out about this. All of the devices in my account list are my devices, and no one else has access to my account. I don't understand what could have happened, and it worries me that there may be a new security risk with iCloud.

iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 17

Posted on Apr 24, 2024 12:18 PM

Reply
2 replies

Apr 24, 2024 2:04 PM in response to RayWonder

Sometimes it can happen, that we accidentally select more photos than intended. It helps to check the status line at the bottom to see how many photos have been selected, before hitting the Trash button to delete photos.

Some users are misunderstanding how iCloud is working and are not aware that any photo we delete on our devices will be deleted from iCloud as well, if the device is syncing with iCloud Photos. We cannot remove photos from our iPhone and keep them in iCloud. The only way to save storage on our devices by using iCloud Photos is the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option.



Apr 24, 2024 2:43 PM in response to léonie

I'm fully aware of how to select photos / batch select / delete. That's not what happened, unless in my sleep I unlocked my phone, selected all of my photos, and deleted them.


I'm more so bringing this up to make anyone aware just in case it happens to someone else and they want to chime in. I don't want any iCloud security risks to be overlooked if there are any, and if it happens to numerous people it would be something Apple might want to look into.


I can't explain it. It was as simple as 'I opened my photos, and they were all deleted.' XD



All of my photos moved to Recently Deleted folder.

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