How to get photos from iCloud

I only restored my backup from iCloud and then I spotted the most annoying glitch by the photos not being able to be retrived from iCloud and it was all gray. I went to camera roll, and everything was gray. I decided it to load all night, and woke up to check its status. It was still gray, so then I restarted my celluar device and went to Photos again and I had the same problem again. So I hit one of the grey pictures, and let it hold there for a few minutes and it automatically started to stream my photos back so I continued doing the same thing and it came back. Hope it helps some of you.

Thanks, this is working for me too!! Panic over 🙂

I tried this and did everything that you said, but when I went to my camera album it said that there was a error message and said something in the effect that it couldn't retrieve the files and all these little gray boxes keep poping up where my pcitures should be. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

This worked.

I didn't realise iCloud was so badly implemented. I am never trusting it again. Backing up everything using Dropbox from now on.

Thank you!

This is really so frustrating. I have tried everything you mention above, - kind regards to everybody-, but it doesn't work. Have been providing all the passcodes and everything required but when i come to the point ''open photos app, don't touch'' nothing happens. I can't see any single photo being downloaded. After a while a message appears on the screen: "Restore Incomplete. Some items could not be downloaded from the Store. If they are on your computer, you can restore them by syncing with iTunes." Well, why, thanks a lot apple.

Could it be of any significance that my photos app was inside a folder with several other apps? Or that the device on which the photos where, from which i am trying to retreive my (some thousands) photos was at the time of last backup operating with the last version of iOs6.something (*last backup september 8/2013)? (was it iOs6.7 or so? i don't remember) and by syncing now, it gets iOs7.1 by deafult?

Thank you everyone and good luck to the next ones. Apple, you could be such a brighter star..

a.

I was mugged in Colombia a few weeks ago, they took my bag and 4s which had been backed up to iCloud 1 week previous. The phone contained over a thousand photos and videos of our sons first year + 6 months of travelling around South America with him. I have my replacement 4s which is still sealed because I have changed to Sony Xperia Z1 Compact but I wondered if there is any way at all that I can retrieve these precious photos. I have no other Apple products and I am reluctant to open the new replacement phone as I intend to sell it sealed.

Many thanks

I tried to do this but the icloud backup would not go back far enough. It said that previous backups are not compatible with the current version on my ipad. PLEASE HELP. My brothers first 5 years were deleted including a lot of very important videos.

First, check if their physical footprint still exists. Go to Settings > General > Usage and check the amount of storage available, do you notice that there is a lot of used storage ? You can also check it through iTunes, which might show used memory labeled as Other.

I lost all my pictures and videos after jailbreaking my phone, yet iTunes showed that they are still taking physical memory (labeled as Other - iTunes did not recognise my pics or vids anymore). This means they cannot be viewed via Camera Roll but they are still stored in the phone.

To fix that, download iFunBox ( http://www.i-funbox.com ) and use it to locate and extract the images from the phone (no need for iTunes to access the phone). I managed to extract all my photos from the phone to an external USB, which accumulated to over 20GB of photos and videos.

Use this method and you should recover your photos and videos with no previous backup. If your phone shows that there is a lot of empty storage, then your photos might have actually been completely removed.

Thank you for posting this. I'm in the process of restoring my phone's photos after doing an upgrade. The big issue as I can see it for my circumstance? The idiot at Verizon skipped all of the sign-in authentications. I did the reset and restore from iCloud and everything seems to be transferring now.

Thanks!

DisplacedBedouin wrote:

Thank you for posting this. I'm in the process of restoring my phone's photos after doing an upgrade. The big issue as I can see it for my circumstance? The idiot at Verizon skipped all of the sign-in authentications. I did the reset and restore from iCloud and everything seems to be transferring now.

Thanks!

You sould regularly sync yoru photos form yoru iPhone camera roll to yoru comnptuer adn delete them form teh camera roll.

-> iOS: Import personal photos and videos from iOS devices to your computer

You can then sync back to teh iPhone only the photos you want using iTunes.

-> iTunes: Syncing photos

Thank you so much for your instructions. It worked.

Thank you so much. This is the only way it worked. Its really sad that iCloud integration is that brittle.

I couldn't get this to work! I followed your steps but I only got the past two weeks of photos downloaded! It doesn't even say "downloading" as soon as my restore finished I went to the photos and there were only 24 pictures there.

how do i know when its done restoring?

Go to Settings>iCloud>Storage & Backup and scroll to the bottom. If it says "Stop Restoring ..." it's still restoring the backup.