I am unable to recover missing Photos from iPhone's gallery

Question

Level 1

4 points

I am unable to recover missing Photos from iPhone's gallery

Hello,

I have a question regarding the pictures and gallery on my phone. A few days ago, on some older pictures and videos (the phone is two years old), an exclamation mark appeared in the lower right corner. The videos couldn't be played. Following the instructions I found on the Apple support page, I changed the setting:

Settings > Photos > iCloud Photos (turned off). Since then, the pictures are not on the phone. Not in any of the folders, such as recently deleted or hidden. I reverted the mentioned setting back, but nothing changed. I had over 13k pictures and videos, now I have just over 1000...

The phone is updated to the latest version, and I have backups.

Is there any way to retrieve them?

Thank you and best regards

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 8, iOS 15

Posted on Apr 28, 2024 9:11 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

195,141 points

Apr 28, 2024 11:57 PM in response to Nynna_P

If you have been using iCloud Photos all along and your photos and videos have been stored in iCloud, you need to keep the Settings > Photos > iCloud Photos turned on, so Photos can access the photos in iCloud.

You may want to check, if your video are still in iCloud or have become erased from iCloud.

Open your iCloud webpage in a web browser on a computer at www.icloud.com
On this page open the Photos.app. Are all your videos and photos still in iCloud? Can you play the videos there?

If your videos are still in iCloud, try to find out, why your iPhone can no longer access them.

Do you still have plenty of free storage on your iPhone, so Photos can download a video, when you want to play it? If not, try to free more storage on your iPhone.
Do you still have free iCloud storage, or is there a problem with your iCloud subscription or your AppleID. If you are running out of Cloud storage, try to free storage in iCloud.
Are you connected to a fast and relible Wi-Fi? If not, try a different Wi-Fi connection.

If your photos and videos are no longer in iCloud, check your backups on your computer, if you can recover your missing items from your backups.

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Answer 2

Nynna_P Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 29, 2024 12:12 AM in response to Nynna_P

Thank you for your response. I checked, and there are no photos and videos in iCloud. How could this happen? Could you provide instructions for the process of retrieving the images through the backup - I have a Windows system on my computer. Furthermore, I'm also curious if I make a backup and retrieve the pictures, will the ones taken after the backup be deleted, or will I definitely have all of them?

Best,

Nina

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