What is the difference between giving the Photos app on my iPad permission to use iCloud and turning on iCloud Photos as a setting in the Photos app? Is that why even though I moved a number of items off my iPad the iCloud usage didn't change?
iPad, iPadOS 16
Oops-- didn't see your recent post. First-- those numbers don't update immediately, and they can be trusted only so far. "They're more like guidelines, really." You may need to reboot and wait awhile to see anything. I don't think that you have told us if you have "Optimize Storage" checked.
iCloud can synchronize a bunch of things other than just Photos, so that's why there's more than one choice. You can have iCloud synchronize your Documents folder, for instance. Pictures may be a small part.
On my iPad and iPhone I have "Optimize Storage" turned on in Photos Settings, since they have smaller screens. Optimize can keep only smaller versions of pictures on the iPad. If you Optimize Storage and need to zoom or edit a picture, the full sized image is quickly pulled from iCloud. This works really well, and Optimize drops the storage use to maybe 10% or 20% of what it would be, otherwise. One thing: if you turn off iCloud syncing, then all these pictures disappear from the iPad, because they're not fully there. The originals remain at iCloud.com.
On my Mac I have "Download Originals" checked, because, mostly, I want to be able to back up my Photos Library to an external drive, and "Optimize" would store only smaller images.
As muguy says, iCloud keeps the Photos Libraries exactly the same. You can turn off iCloud syncing, but if you turn it on again, it will upload any new pictures it finds to iCloud, and download any new pictures to the iPad. But if you delete pictures while it is still connected to iCloud, those pictures will be deleted everywhere. Because of this, when I delete pictures, I let them live in Recently Deleted for their appointed 30days of purgatory in case I find that I've screwed up.
Oops-- didn't see your recent post. First-- those numbers don't update immediately, and they can be trusted only so far. "They're more like guidelines, really." You may need to reboot and wait awhile to see anything. I don't think that you have told us if you have "Optimize Storage" checked.
iCloud can synchronize a bunch of things other than just Photos, so that's why there's more than one choice. You can have iCloud synchronize your Documents folder, for instance. Pictures may be a small part.
On my iPad and iPhone I have "Optimize Storage" turned on in Photos Settings, since they have smaller screens. Optimize can keep only smaller versions of pictures on the iPad. If you Optimize Storage and need to zoom or edit a picture, the full sized image is quickly pulled from iCloud. This works really well, and Optimize drops the storage use to maybe 10% or 20% of what it would be, otherwise. One thing: if you turn off iCloud syncing, then all these pictures disappear from the iPad, because they're not fully there. The originals remain at iCloud.com.
On my Mac I have "Download Originals" checked, because, mostly, I want to be able to back up my Photos Library to an external drive, and "Optimize" would store only smaller images.
As muguy says, iCloud keeps the Photos Libraries exactly the same. You can turn off iCloud syncing, but if you turn it on again, it will upload any new pictures it finds to iCloud, and download any new pictures to the iPad. But if you delete pictures while it is still connected to iCloud, those pictures will be deleted everywhere. Because of this, when I delete pictures, I let them live in Recently Deleted for their appointed 30days of purgatory in case I find that I've screwed up.
iCloud Photos is a synchronization service. If enabled, it sync all of your devices to have the same photo library. Any photo remains on device (you can elect to optimize photos is settings to keep originals in iCloud and optimized versions on your device to save space on device).
If you wish only to have your iPad photos sync you would turn off icloud sync on the Mac, delete the pictures in iCloud, then turn on iCloud sync on the iPad so that the library on your iPad syncs instead. However, it sounds as if you have already enabled iCloud Photos on your iPad so deleting items in iCloud will also delete those items from the iPad.
So if I want to reduce the amount of storage I'm using in iCloud do I need to turn off Photos so they all get deleted then turn it back on so only the ones still on the iPad are uploaded?
I only have the iPad synching photos to iCloud. Removing pictures from the iPad has not reduced the space occupied in iCloud so I'm confused.
iCloud Photos vs Photos app using iCloud
