If the computer from which photos were synced is not available, is there any way of deleting photos or albums which were synced from an iPad (short of something drastic like resetting the iPad to factory settings)?
Would switching to iCloud Photos help?
Thanks,
doug
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), i5, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM
No, you need to sync to a computer's iTunes to delete synced photos (or reset the iPad back to factory defaults) - it doesn't necessarily have to be the same computer, if you've changed computers that it's synced to then you can use the new computer to replace those photos with new ones, or if you want to remove them select and sync an empty folder (that should delete them and not put anything on in their place).
A bit confusing, as many Apple things are these days.
I haven't tried iCloud Photos yet, mostly because I don't want to pay $4/month (I have over 100 GB of photos). So I'm not sure how it works. But I thought part of it was no longer needing the syncing between the iOS device and Photos on the Mac (do I have that wrong?) so you should be able to delete albums or individual photos on any device after the initial syncing is done.
It's all rather confusing to me, even though my work is programming and I've been a Mac user going back to the LC.
In this particular case, I was trying to help an elderly woman who loves new things, and has an iPad Mini. But her son set up her albums and he did it during a visit and isn't around and she doesn't have a computer herself.
This is at a class I do volunteer teaching at on Sundays. I suppose I could create a new user for her on my Mac and help her sort it out, then delete the new user. Really all she wants to do is remove some photos from some albums because there are duplicates. It's not a big deal. She has 64 GB of storage on her iPad and 42 GB free, so she isn't at risk of running out of space. But I thought if iCloud Photos would be helpful in this case it would be worth the 100 yen/month fee for 20 GB of space for her.
But it doesn't sound like it would help. She has an iPad and an iPhone. But it doesn't sound, from what you are saying, that iCloud Photos would free her from the need for also having a computer to sync with, right?
Thanks,
doug
Doug Lerner2 wrote:
But it doesn't sound, from what you are saying, that iCloud Photos would free her from the need for also having a computer to sync with, right?
Using iCloud Photo Library will not help her get rid of the previously synced photos on their iPad. They can only be removed by unsyncing the photos by deselecting the album on the computer that the photos were stored in and following that with a sync - or by syncing an empty photos folder on the computer which will erase ALL of the synced photos.
IF some of these duplicate photos exist in the photos app because she created her own albums in the Photos app on the iPad, those photos are not really duplicates nor do they actually exist on the iPad. When you place photos into an album that you create in the photos app, you are merely placing a pointer to that photo in that album. If you delete the photo in the camera roll or remove the photo via the sync process, it will disappear from the album that you created as well, because it is not actually in that album to begin with.
Hi Demo,
Yes I understand about the duplicates not really being duplicates. She just doesn't want to seem them in multiple places. It was a "not ideal" creation of the photo albums to begin with.
But from what you describe, there really is no way of adjusting them anymore if the original computer is not available other than some solution to move all the current photos to some 3rd party cloud solution and then downloading them to a new computer and re-arranging everything Photos with new albums and then selecting the desired albums and syncing again.
Can it really be as complicated as that?
There's no way to move all the photos from the iOS device directly to a computer, via USB cable hookup or something?
Thanks,
doug
There are third-party photo management apps such as Photo Manager Pro which are more powerful than the built-in Photos app, that app allows you to copy photos to/from your computer and/or the Photos app, and to move photos between albums within the app (and you can delete photos synced to it from a computer directly in it).
But with the Photos app you are more limited. You can't delete photos synced from a computer directly in the app, and you can't move photos between albums (you are only creating pointers to the photos in the new albums). If you want to rearrange those synced photos then there are third-party apps such as Photo Transfer Pro which can copy them back to a computer via your wifi network (you can copy photos taken with the iPad without the need of a third-party app, your computer will see the iPad and treat it as a if it was a digital camera ; but that won't work for synced photos, or albums that you create directly on the iPad) so that you can rearrange them into folders/albums on your computer and then sync them back in that new arrangement.
Any way to delete synced photos from an iPad without syncing again??
