How to recover unbacked-up photos from a cracked iPhone?

If the iPhone still turns on, your photos are still on the device. They will not appear on another phone unless iCloud Photos was already ON. If iCloud Photos was OFF, the only way to recover them is to unlock the original phone.

1) What you need to know

• Cracked screen does not erase photos

• Photos stay on the device until it is erased or restored

• Signing into another phone only shows photos already in iCloud

2) How to recover the photos

• Replace the screen so you can enter your passcode

• Once unlocked, your photos will still be there

• Then you can turn on iCloud Photos or transfer them to a computer

Axel F.

Regarding your data…

1. If you have an iCloud or iTunes latest backup, then there is nothing to worry about. Just restore from it, else...
2. If You have synced your data to iCloud, then what you will get back is what you have synced to iCloud and uploaded to iCloud Drive;
   1. The information that is synced and stored in iCloud, like Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Mail*, Notes, Voice Memos, Messages*, shared photos, iCloud Photos*, Health data*, call history*, and files* you store in iCloud Drive.
   2. *-If you had turned on Messages in iCloud, iCloud Photos, Mail, Health data, call history under iCloud, and files you store in iCloud Drive your content is automatically stored in iCloud and is available on all devices that use the same Apple ID
3. You have imported your Photos & Videos to Mac/PC then they are safely residing there on Mac/PC
4. You have uploaded some of it to Cloud Drives using the Files app (iCloud Drive, Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, Flickr, box, AmazonDrive, Adobe Creative Cloud etc). The data remains there.
5. If you have not backed up or do not have the latest backup, nor imported nor you have synced or uploaded your data to cloud drives prior to the situation that you are in, then I am sorry, all your data is lost.

The photos will appear on another device signed into your Apple Account only if you were using iCloud to sync your photos. That has to have been done before the device was broken.

This article basically tells you how to sign into iCloud --> Set up iCloud on all your devices --> https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/set-up-icloud-on-your-devices-mmfc0f1e2a/icloud

Change your iCloud feature settings [iOS and Mac] - https://support.apple.com/HT207689 -

"When you turn on iCloud for an app, its information is safely stored in iCloud and automatically kept in sync across your devices. " That's basically telling you to make sure you have the Photos app activated for syncing.

If you were not using iCloud to sync photos then you will have to hope you regularly synced photos with a computer, or shared them with friends and family.

If you have access to a computer and wish to try to transfer the photos now, and if you can get any response from the iPhone's display, you could try syncing now. This support article tells you how to transfer photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC:

https://support.apple.com/HT201302

Axel Foley wrote:

2) How to recover the photos

• Replace the screen so you can enter your passcode

That only works if they actually replace the screen. Sometimes they opt for simply replacing the entire device with a refurbished one since it is faster and the customer has a functioning device almost immediately. They will assume you have done the things in this support article https://support.apple.com/HT201557

which includes a person having an up to date backup of their account's contents. It is then up to the user to restore their content from a backup.

Note that if you do take the phone to be repaired, you need to let the repair shop know that you do not want them to erase the device, replace the motherboard, or replace the device with another one.

By default, it is your responsibility to back up your data before taking a phone in for repair – and the repair shop can do any of these things. In which case you would get a working phone back, but any data which had existed only on the broken phone would be gone.

Bob Timmons wrote:

If you don't know if you had Photos set to sync to iCloud, it likely that you did not, but you won't know for sure until you set up your new phone.

Actually you will know for sure if you sign into iCloud.com and use the Photos app there to check which photos are in iCloud.

If you had iCloud sync turned on (note, this not back up) yes, the photos will be available on the new device when you set up iCloud on it.

Question........do you pay Apple each month for iCloud storage.....something in the range of $2-4 dollars every month?

If no.....sorry, but the photos are gone.

If yes......and.....you had Photos set to sync with iCloud......then your photos are stored on iCloud and you can restore them to a new phone. If you don't know if you had Photos set to sync to iCloud, it likely that you did not, but you won't know for sure until you set up your new phone.