Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Is there a way to sync photo deletion between Photo apps?

So the new Photos application on computers is highly linked (via iCloud) to the pictures I take on my iPhone. I guess this is a good feature for me in particular since I'm a serial phone breaker, so now I won't lose photos I haven't synced with my laptop in a while, but it's a bit annoying as someone who's trying to maximize on space on my computer. Is there a way to make sure that the photos I take on my phone are linked with my computer in terms of not only uploading, but also deletion? When I take a picture on my phone, I'll take multiple versions and immediately choose only one to keep and delete the rest. When I open my Photos on my computer, they're all there and I have to sort through all the keepers and all the ones I want to trash AGAIN. I'm very lazy and will eventually give up and let it all accumulate on my laptop unless there's some way to not need to go through the deletion process twice, but this might be Apple's intention since they want us to buy more iCloud storage anyway. Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jul 7, 2015 1:36 PM

Reply
1 reply

Jul 7, 2015 1:47 PM in response to isabelleringing21

Are you using "My Photo Stream" to transfer the photos from your iPhone to your Mac? Then delete the photos from your iPhone, before it has a chance to transfer them. For example, if you simply do not close the Camera.app or disable Wi-Fi on the phone, it will not upload the photos to iCloud. You can weed them out and only then swipe the camera.app close and connect to the Wi-Fi.


If you are using iCloud Photo Library on both your Mac and the iPhone, the deletions should sync anyway. With iCloud Photo Library enabled, any photo you delete on you iPhone should be deleted from the Photos Library on the Mac as well.

Is there a way to sync photo deletion between Photo apps?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.