Can I delete photos off my iPhone To free up capacity but keep the on iCloud and my iPad ?

I am now running into the same issue and like the previous poster am curious if there are new instructions for deleting photos from phone but keeping in iCloud. Ideally want to use iCloud versus Google or Amazon.

I'm with you on the "sadly" part -- not only for photos, but also for music, and basic computing. Apple has become a dinosaur in the very areas that used to make it great: user interface and leading edge tech. Google, Amazon, and even Microsoft are leaving it in the dust.

There is no photostream or cameral roll thumbnail on my macbook photos list....

I need to delete photos but want to save them somewhere (ideally automatically and not have to select specific photos).

Thank you.

That post was written 5 years ago and was responding to the way that photos and iCloud worked back then. There is nothing in that post that would make sense to a question you might have about it today. And, we are not responsible for "customer experience" here. This is a user to user technical support forum.

So, if you have a question about photos and iCloud, then please clearly state what it is, and we can provide you with current information.

GB

Ar you using Photos on the Mac? What type of Mac? What OS?

There are a lot of photo experts that may be able to help you here, but you are going to have to clearly state what Mac, what OS, what version of Photos, and what, exactly, you want to do. Also, do you have iCloud Photo Library turned on or not?

How are your photos getting to your Mac? Do you import them? From an iOS device or from a camera?

We simply have no idea what your configuration looks like, and your question provides absolutely no information that can help us to provide any guidance.

Cheers,

GB

Thank you Gail. I realize you are not Apple so very much appreciate those of you who are trying to help.

While the original post might be 5 years ago, the question is still relevant and I agree with those who said Apple has made this ridiculously difficult.

As for me, I have a 2015 MacBook Air (and one of the first iPhone 6 phones). I import to my Mac photos, but I do not want to keep my back-up photos on my Mac. It, too, is running out of space (beautiful design so I bought it-- but far behind the times in storage capacity). I would like to find a solution to keeping my photos on the cloud. So I followed the advice of someone who said use Amazon Photos-- the app appears to have seamlessly moved all my photos there.

Now I need to delete photos from my phone. Will that end up deleting them from iCloud? I want to save the ones that are on iCloud and then go through and prune them back as time permits.

Thank you,

chrisneska wrote:

I would like to find a solution to keeping my photos on the cloud. So I followed the advice of someone who said use Amazon Photos-- the app appears to have seamlessly moved all my photos there.

Now I need to delete photos from my phone. Will that end up deleting them from iCloud? I want to save the ones that are on iCloud and then go through and prune them back as time permits.

Thank you,

OK, I'm confused by your post.

You stated that you are using Amazon Photos to store your photos. So, where does iCloud come into the picture here? I

Again, iCloud Photo Library is a sharing library. It's sole intent is to provide a common place for all photos and videos to automatically upload to so that they can be automatically seen and edited using any device or computer that is also using iCloud Photo Library.

So, I'm not sure what your requirements are.

You have a phone that has photos on it.

You have a computer with some photos on it.

You use Amazon Photos to store your complete photo library.

So, you need to decide which photos in that complete photo library you want on your computer and which you want on your phone.

I don't know how Amazon Photos works, so not sure how you get photos into that library, or how you selectively put photos that are in that library back on your phone or computer, but from what I can see in their literature, you can upload photos automatically to their cloud, then safely delete them off of your device.

Cheers,

GB

Yes, Amazon Prime is now my extra backup. Still wanted to keep some on icloud. Do not want to keep on phone and computer.

So, I think when you say icloud is simply for sharing across devices, you are answering the original question-- I believe you are telling us: if you delete photos on phone, they delete on icloud too. If that's not what you are saying, then my question is: how do I delete all photos from phone and computer, without deleting them from icloud?

Thank you!

chrisneska wrote:

So, I think when you say icloud is simply for sharing across devices, you are answering the original question-- I believe you are telling us: if you delete photos on phone, they delete on icloud too. If that's not what you are saying, then my question is: how do I delete all photos from phone and computer, without deleting them from icloud?

Thank you!

Yes - that is what I'm saying. iCloud is not a storage service, it is a sharing service.

chrisneska wrote:

Yes, Amazon Prime is now my extra backup. Still wanted to keep some on icloud. Do not want to keep on phone and computer.

Thank you!

I'm not understanding what your objective is for keeping any photos in iCloud if you are using Amazon Photos?

Can you identify what you are wanting to accomplish by having photos in iCloud?

Cheers,

GB

Hi ,

I have an iPhone 6s and a brand new 2017 macbook pro - both on the latest operating systems. I have an Icloud account with 2 TB of storage.

How do I upload photos from my Iphone to my icloud account and then delete them from my Iphone, but keep on Icloud?

Obviously, I want to do this so I can free up space on my phone, but still keep the pictures forever.

Thanks.

Does this issue have a new fix? I notice these solutions are outdated.

You can save images to iCloud Drive, but they are not catalogued or kept in any particular order, and moving them can be time consuming. Like anything in iCloud, iCloud Drive is a sharing service, not an archival service, so that means that the photos on iCloud Drive would also be on your Mac. If you delete them from the Mac, they are deleted from iCloud Drive.

So, if your objective is to put the photos somewhere safe where there is only one access point that can modify or change the contents, then iCloud is not going to fill those requirements.

Does that help?

Cheers,

GB

It does help. Thank you! I understand that archiving in iCloud or Dropbox would be a 'dumb' storage location which defeats the purpose of all the great metadata that allows one to sort/organize one's images. I don't want to have to move my photos AT ALL. But here's a perfect example of why Apple needs to overcome some of these issues shared in this thread: I have a new 32GB iPad Pro and already it has 13GB occupied with the Photos from the iCloud Photo Sharing. Its just a shame that the device is almost obsolete before I even add additional apps/data to the device. And I don't even intend to take photos with it, but I really only wish to view images on the iPad.

Since I can only presume Apple monitors this forum, I hope that the confusion and challenges that many customers are having can help shape the next generation of image management. Personally, I'd like a way to segregate images by time. Similar to setting how much of your browser history you wish to keep, it would be helpful for Apple to allow the user to set a parameter where, once images reach a certain age (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc.) they go into a "deep" iCloud Photo Management/Storage condition to limit the memory on peripheral devices. I would think that the programming could identify highly mobile devices (iPad and iphone) and keep their storage lean where on laptops or desktops, you could continue to readily see and manage your full history of images. Just my two cents...thrown into the vaccuum of this forum. ;-).

Thanks for your help GB. //jz

jnzllwgr wrote:

I have a new 32GB iPad Pro and already it has 13GB occupied with the Photos from the iCloud Photo Sharing. Its just a shame that the device is almost obsolete before I even add additional apps/data to the device. And I don't even intend to take photos with it, but I really only wish to view images on the iPad.

Since I can only presume Apple monitors this forum, I hope that the confusion and challenges that many customers are having can help shape the next generation of image management. Personally, I'd like a way to segregate images by time. Similar to setting how much of your browser history you wish to keep, it would be helpful for Apple to allow the user to set a parameter where, once images reach a certain age (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc.) they go into a "deep" iCloud Photo Management/Storage condition to limit the memory on peripheral devices. I would think that the programming could identify highly mobile devices (iPad and iphone) and keep their storage lean where on laptops or desktops, you could continue to readily see and manage your full history of images. Just my two cents...thrown into the vaccuum of this forum. ;-).

Thanks for your help GB. //jz

OK, so your device isn't "obsolete". If you are using iCloud Photo Library, and you have "Optimize" turned on under Settings>Photos & Camera, then iCloud Photo Library manages your photos as you have described above. iCloud Photo Library determines how much room is available on your device, and only downloads as many full resolution photos as your device has room for. The remaining photos are represented as thumbnails that you can manually download if you wish.

iCloud Photo Library with Optimize turned on is a dynamic management system, that determines the number of full res photos based on your iOS device's memory constraints. If you had a user option that overrode the dynamic nature of the iCloud Photo Library management system, then it simply wouldn't be able to work. The management system may only download full res photos for the last month or may download them for the last 6 months, based on the number of photos in your library and the amount of room on your device. Overriding this with a user parameter would prevent the dynamic management system from working efficiently.

Here are a couple of support articles that may clear up some of your questions:

iCloud Photo Library FAQ - Apple Support

iCloud Photo Library Help - Apple Support

And, I can assure you that Apple does not "monitor these forums" to ferret out issues and problems. We have Hosts who monitor the forums to ensure that people conduct themselves within the TOU, but there is no monitoring by "Apple" in general. Apple does read Feedback (Apple - Feedback), so the most effective way for you to communicate with them, is to use that link.

Cheers,

GB

If you want Mac support, why are you on the iPhone forum? Click "Support Communities" at the top of this page, and find the community that best fits your needs

Also, you may be frustrated, but this is a user to user forum, and we simply want to know what specific problem you are having? If you purchase a billion TB of space on iCloud to store your photos, and you turn on iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device (which has limited storage), it is highly possible that you will bet to a point where even storing all of the photos as thumbnails on your device will simply not be enough room to store them all.

iCloud Photo Library is a sharing service, not an archival one like Dropbox or Flikr.

You have a few options for using iCloud Photo Library that takes advantage of having all of your photos in iCloud without overwhelming your devices, and that would be to use your Mac as the "device" iCloud Photo Library repository. By turning on Photo Stream on your iOS devices, your photos will be regularly uploaded to your Mac, and subsequently, to the iCloud Photo Library.

You can use Photo Sharing from your Mac to share albums back to your iOS device, or you can go the old fashioned way and sync albums back to your iOS device if you wish. The one thing you would still have to connect your device to upload to the Mac, and subsequently iCloud Photo Library would be videos as they are not included in the Photo Stream.

If you would like to specify what issues you are having, and how you would like things to work, then that would go a long way to helping to find some solutions. But I do recommend that you find the proper forum for your query.

Cheers,

GB