Photos before 2026 missing from iPhone and iCloud

Hello guys, i desperately need your help. An hour ago i wanted to find a picture from my gallery and when i scrolled back, all my pictures prior to 2026 were gone. I havent deleted any of them. The only thing i thought might have been an issue is that i havent updated to the latest IOS update until a few minutes before writing this. It didnt change anything. I also checked my iCloud on my PC and it also only has the same photos from 2026. my iphone was last backed up in September 2025 which would explain the loss of the pictures in that timeframe but not the loss of everything prior to that. I had phtos from 2022-2025 backed up and i cant see them. Please, i am completely clueless as to what to do.

iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 26

Posted on Feb 25, 2026 5:17 PM

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8 replies

Feb 26, 2026 8:57 AM in response to Orangejuicy

Orangejuicy wrote: … I have my icloud synced with my PC aswell and a while ago i deleted all of the pictures in th icloud folder in the file explorer, …From what i‘ve read i basically deleted them from icloud in general not just the PC.

On a Mac or an iPhone we get a message like this:

If the PC doesn't warn you-- well, wow!


As muguy and the warning say, it can't be undone. For pictures that are important we try to keep a backup copy on an external drive. On an iPhone 16, you can just plug in a drive to the USBc port, select pictures, and choose "Share>Save to Files" to make safe copies of your pictures.


Feb 25, 2026 7:04 PM in response to Orangejuicy

If photos were included in your device backup (from September 2025), you can factory reset your device and restore it using the backup (you'll lose anything created on the device since September.


If you use icloud photos, the images are not included in your device backup as they sync to iCloud. Deleted photos can be recovered from the Recently Deleted album in photos. If the folder does not exist, there are no recoverable images.


You may need to recover from your backups that you keep elsewhere of your most important data.

Feb 25, 2026 9:11 PM in response to muguy

Hey, thanks for the response. I did some further digging and i am pretty sure i know what the issue is. I guess you could call it user error. I have my icloud synced with my PC aswell and a while ago i deleted all of the pictures in th icloud folder in the file explorer, thinking it would only remove them from my PC. From what i‘ve read i basically deleted them from icloud in general not just the PC. It just confused me because it didnt remove the pictures from my phone up until today. I checked the recently deleted folder and nothing there. I assume i ran out of time to restore them. I don’t know if i can get them back again but i fear i will probably not.

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Photos before 2026 missing from iPhone and iCloud

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