Delete photos from iPhone without deleting them from iMac

bimfromtulsa wrote:

How can i delete photos on my iPhone 17 without also deleting them on my iMac?

That will depend on how exactly they got onto the Mac.

If you are using iCloud Photos, then operations are synced, so anything you delete on the iPhone will be deleted from iCloud, and by extension from the Mac. You can turn off iCloud Photos in Settings ➜ Apps ➜ Photos on the iPhone and then you can delete photos from the iPhone without affecitng the icloud or the Mac.

click here ➜ How to turn off iCloud Photos - Apple Support

If the photos were copied over from the iPhone suing a USB cable and the Photos app import, then there is no direct link between the Mac and the iPhone and you can freely delete photos from the iPhone and it won't affect the ones on the Mac.

bimfromtulsa wrote:

I have 32,000 photos on my iphone 17 I also have them on my imac... Can I delete them on my iphone without deleting also on my imac

How can i delete photos on my iPhone 17 without also deleting them on my iMac?

Do you have this set up Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support you may need to disable it first before you start deleting.

On a Mac we can have more than one Photos Library, and only one of them can sync to your iPhone with iCloud, the library you designate as the System Photo Library. I recommend to use more than one Photos Library on your Mac, see: Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

On your Mac ensure, that all photos have been downloaded from iCloud, then duplicate the library. Keep the copy of the library as an archive of all your photos. You may need to move it to an external drive to save storage on the internal drive.

• Now you can weed out photos from your iCloud Photos Library and keep there only the photos you want to have on your iPhone as well. My iCloud Photos Library is holding only my favorite photos, that I want to have on all devices for quick access, also the most recent photos that still beed editing and tagging.
• All other photos will be saved to additional photo libraries. I am keeping a separate library for each major event, like a photo safari, so the archive libraries are small and easy to handle.

As everyone has said, it depends on whether you're using iCloud Photos to synchronize your picture Libraries.

If you are using iCloud Photos, and you want the iPhone Library and the Mac Library to be completely independent, then Phil0124's suggestion to turn off iCloud on either the iPhone or the Mac, or both, is ideal. But then, if you don't want to synchronize your devices at all, you should consider giving up iCloud.

If you would like to empty the iPhone's Library but keep syncing new pictures to your Mac, then léonie's advice is the way to go. Keep your present Mac Library disconnected from iCloud, but make a an empty new one that is connected to iCloud to synchronize with the iPhone and collect the new pictures. See this:

Make a New System Library connected to iConnected to iCloud… - Apple Community

léonie's suggestion of making the new Library a favorites Library is great. I do that, too. So I can keep the synchronized iCloud Photos Library small, but keep all my old pictures.

The most important thing to do is to drag your current Mac Photos Library to an external drive, properly formatted as either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Before you mess around, you want to be sure you have a safe copy of the Library!

bimfromtulsa wrote:

I have 32,000 photos on my iphone 17 I also have them on my imac... Can I delete them on my iphone without deleting also on my imac

How can i delete photos on my iPhone 17 without also deleting them on my iMac?

If you are using iCloud Photos, you can’t delete but you can enable optimized storage:

Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support

If your photos are manually synced onto your iPhone from a Mac (Finder) or PC (Apple Devices app) using a cable, you can re-sync photos selecting a subset of albums to sync.

There are other options available including creating and managing multiple photo libraries, though those tend to add incrementally more work.

WHY do you want to delete the photos?

Is it for the sake of storage space on the phone? If so, you can keep the originals on iCloud at full size and have "optimized" versions on your iPhone. For comparison, I have a very similar number of photos and videos. The storage size on iCloud is 155 GB. The same library, optimized on my iPad, is 7.9 GB.

Just don't miss your iCloud payments.

Better still: have them full-size on other devices like your Mac, plus out on iCloud. Now you have physical control of at least one full-size copy of the library.

Phil0124 wrote:

If the photos were copied over from the iPhone suing a USB cable and the Photos app import, then there is no direct link between the Mac and the iPhone and you can freely delete photos from the iPhone and it won't affect the ones on the Mac.

Photos synced from Mac or PC cannot be deleted locally on iPhone. Only on the Mac or PC, then re-syned.

MrHoffman wrote:

Phil0124 wrote:

If the photos were copied over from the iPhone suing a USB cable and the Photos app import, then there is no direct link between the Mac and the iPhone and you can freely delete photos from the iPhone and it won't affect the ones on the Mac.

Photos synced from Mac or PC cannot be deleted locally on iPhone. Only on the Mac or PC, then re-syned.

Who said they were copied to the iPhone?

I just said if they had alrewayd been copied TO the Mac, they can be deleted from the iPhone. no mention of where the photos came from, I assumed they were taken on the iPhone.

But yes, if they were originally synced from the Mac to the iPhone then they cannot be direclty deleted on the iPhone, but that was not even suggested on the original post.