15000 photo loss, done with Apple…

Your reaction to the loss of such memories would upset anyone. I can't blame you for that.

A "tad snippy" was a good description for your initial post. I don't mean that as cynical in any way. Just agreeing.

We've seen far worse reactions here. Including a user who wasn't using iCloud, or any other type of backup. Their phone had been stolen and was the only source of thousands of precious family photos. But somehow, it was Apple's fault.

I do hope you can get as many similar photos as possible from friends and family.

Another possible solution is file recovery software. Supposedly, Dr.Fone, Disk Drill, Tenorshare UltData, iMobie PhoneRescue, iMyFone D-Back, and EaseUS MobiSaver are all titles that can search for and recover deleted items on an iPhone.

I have Disk Drill. I'll test it tomorrow by taking a photo on my iPhone 14 Pro, delete it, and then see if I can recover it. Disk Drill can be used in a limited fashion to see if it works before purchasing. I don't know about the others, though I have heard of the EaseUS company.

Good luck!

I asked as you could have been referring to a Mac or iPad. Either can also sync images to your iCloud account. But yes, since you referenced Android, an iPhone was the most likely device.

Per muguy (and Apple does not explain this well at all) iCloud is not a backup service. It's a syncing service. You can see all of the photos you've taken with your phone on all of your Apple devices that are logged into the same user account, which makes it look like a backup.

But!, again it's NOT a backup. If the user deletes anything on their device, or on iCloud from a logged in device, it is synced back in either direction and to all other devices, where the photo(s) are deleted there, too. It's what syncing does and is supposed to do.

So, I'm strictly guessing here, but you probably needed room on your phone in order to take more pictures, so deleted what you had on the phone. Unfortunately, iCloud did what it's designed to do and synced that action to the copies in your iCloud account. This removed them from iCloud to match/sync the phone. They are now nowhere.

You could try logging into your Apple account from any other device via a web browser (and it can be a PC), just to see if maybe the photos will still be available. It can't hurt to try, but I wouldn't count on it.

iCloud Photos is not a backup. Were you using iCloud Photos? If not, your photos would be included in a device backup and may still be accessible provided that you have not made a new device backup after erasing your images.

I think that someone should say that we should all be backing up our pictures to an external device. As others say, iCloud is only a partial backup-- we still have our pictures if our phone is run over by a truck, for instance-- but iCloud not only saves pictures, it instantly records mistakes and glitches made by us or maybe by our machines. iCloud's automatic synchronization is outstanding at keeping are Macs and iPhones and iPads together, but we can't depend on that as a backup.

Backing up pictures has become really easy now that our phones have USB-c ports. We can just plug in an external drive, select our newest pictures, and choose Share>Save to Files. It's especially important to do this before big changes like OS updates. And, because pictures are memories, it's really worthwhile to do this with two different hard drives. We may only find out that our hard drive went belly up just when we really need it!

Gone from where? An iPhone?

Regardless, it's up to the user to BACK UP their personal files to at least one other separate device. And getting an Android phone won't fix a poor, or non-existent backup strategy. One mistake, and they'll all be gone from that device, too.

Your fellow users here can try to help, but we'd need more details to make an attempt (no personal information such as email or phone number).

Sorry to hear that friend. I too just lost 42,000. past 10 years of my life even paying 2tb. Even file recovery software doesn't work. Its like you can see the images and videos but it's impossible to recover them or download. Absolutely devastated. Honestly i think something is wrong with their SYNC update that happened last year. I recall apple being based on backup and backups only.

[Edited by Moderator]

I tried all of them this morning. And all, unfortunately, are pretty well useless. They all "recover" files that are live. You certainly can't call that any kind of recovery.

The only exception was Disk Drill, which found about a dozen images (some not even in the Photos gallery) the others didn't. It failed to even see the three random images I had shot in my living room and then deleted.

Wish I could have given you better news.