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Photos App: How Does it All Work?

Someone please call Stephen Hawking. We're dealing with some high level, complicated quantum physics using Apple's Photos App. Does my picture exist on my phone AND in the cloud AND on my computer simultaneously? If I delete it on my phone, does it get deleted on my computer? How about in the iCloud? See what I mean? It's not simple.


I know I'm not the only one completely frustrated by Apple's Photos app because I went to the TekServe Support desk in Manhattan and even the experts there couldn't make sense of it. They're all having the same problems and questions. I'm seriously considering switching to Android because of this mess. It's incredibly frustrating. I finally took the time to carefully outline exactly where my questions are while also attempting to define Apple's terminology as I understand it. It really should not be this difficult. Isn't it supposed to "just work", Mr. Cook?


My Question (and apparently everyone else's):

I have thousands of photos on my phone that I need to delete because I have no more storage on my physical device (16Gb). But it's not clear how I should go about deleting the photos and if they will be deleted on my other devices and in the iCloud.

How do I delete photos from my phone without deleting them from my other devices?


My Hardware/Software Status and Settings:

  • I have 26GB of iCloud storage.
  • I have a 16Gb iPhone 5S running iOS 8.4.
  • I have iCloud Photo Library "on" in Settings.
  • I have Upload to My Photo Stream "off" in Settings.


My Terminology Understanding (just so we're all on the same page here):

I think this is where I'm getting lost. There are so many components that all sound so similar, yet apparently do very different things and have very different functions that it's easy to make assumptions about how they all work and are interconnected. I'm probably incorrectly defining these terms, so if I am, please correct me and I'll update them.


  • Pictures: I'm going to call anything that's an actual image a "picture" so it's not to be confused with the "Photos" app or the "Photos" tab in the "Photos" app.
  • iCloud Photo Library (the setting): This allows me to automatically upload and store my library in iCloud to access photos and videos from all my devices. So, if I have this turned on, does that mean that when I take a picture it gets uploaded to my iPad and computer also via WiFi? When and how does it know how to do this?
  • My Photo Stream (the setting): What does this do? Apple's definition is "Automatically upload new photos and send them to all of your iCloud devices when connected to Wi-Fi." but this sounds pretty much exactly like the iCloud Photo Library. What's the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream? When should I use them?
  • Photos App: this is the actual app that stores my pictures. I can access the app on my phone, iPad, computer, and at www.icloud.com.
  • Photos: this is the first tab in the app on my iPhone. This houses all of my photos. The pictures that exist in this tab are actually stored on my iPhone. Since I have iCloud Photo Library turned "on", all of my pictures in Photos get placed on all of my devices. Do the pictures take up storage on my other devices?If I delete a picture on my iPhone, does it get deleted from my other devices?
    • Years: photos organized by years
    • Collection: photos organized by location and time
    • Moments: photos further broken down by even more specific location, but basically the same thing as a Collection.
  • iCloud Photos: You access this via www.icloud.com. Since I have iCloud Photo Library "on", all of my photos automatically get uploaded here. If I delete a photo from here, does it get deleted across all of my devices?
  • Shared: this is middle tab in the photos app. Also known as "iCloud Photo Sharing". This is the icloud where I can share pictures across devices and with other people by inviting them via Email. Images contained in this tab exist independently. They are not stored on my iPhone.

    Activity: recent additions, comments, and likes within the Shared iCloud. This is basically like Facebook's Timeline.

  • Albums: this is the right tab in the photos app. Do the pictures that exist in this tab take up storage on my iPhone?
    • All Photos: These are all of my photos. These are the same photos that exist in the Photos tab. Does this take up storage on my iPhone? If so, does that mean that I have two sets of pictures, one in Albums > All Photos and another identical set in Photos? If I delete pictures from here, will they also be deleted from my other devices?
    • iPhoto Events: these are automatically created folders based on dates. Why do these exist? What is their purpose? Does this take up storage on my iPhone? If I delete a picture from here, does it get deleted on all of my devices?
    • Recently Deleted: these are pictures that I deleted within the last 30 days. This is basically like the trash can on your computer, except these get automatically deleted after 30 days. Does this take up storage on my iPhone?

OH MY GOD. I'M SO CONFUSED ABOUT APPLE'S PHOTOS APP. WHY IS IT THIS COMPLICATED? PLEASE HELP ME OR I'M GOING TO RUN TO GOOGLE'S ARMS.

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1, Photos App

Posted on Jul 26, 2015 2:18 PM

Reply
15 replies

Aug 3, 2017 9:10 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Dear Lawrence, the way you've proposed seems logical. 2 questions, please. So to do "import" to the MAC using Photo app and after performing "export" should I delete photos from the Photo Library on my MAC? This way it will be possible to move some of the finder folders with pictures to the external location, which I haven't succeed to do using Photo App. I am talking about the space on my Mac not only iPhone. And I don't wish to have an extended iCloud plan.

The second question is re. photo stream. I have this box checked to use the stream as a temporary solution while being on a vacation. But I've noticed that Photo app did saved the pictures in it's library, so it takes the space on a mac. And I couldn't delete them from there.

Thank you.

Aug 3, 2017 11:28 AM in response to MarinaAlex

Here we are 2 years later, and it hasn't gotten any clearer.


I don't use PhotoStream, so I can't comment on that. If you have Photos turned on in iCloud, whenever you take a picture on your phone it is uploaded to iCloud as soon as you have an Internet connection. So in one sense PhotoStream is redundant, which is why I don't use it. It came out several years before iCloud Photos.


iCloud Photos always keeps all devices logged in to it in sync. So any photo in iCloud Photos on your phone will also be visible when you log in to https://icloud.com, and also in the Mac Photos app. As it only costs 99¢ a month for 50 GB of iCloud Storage it's a really cheap solution to keep all of your photos on one place.


But if you don't want to do this I would suggest not using iCloud Photos at all, and instead use Google Photos or upthere.com as the most convenient, or Dropbox or box.com, which also work, but take a little more effort. All of these save your photos only in their respective clouds, and show thumbnails on you phone or Mac. None of these are free, although each offers a minimal amount of free storage. Google offers storage for all kinds of things - documents, email, photos, etc, and it's all included in whatever plan you have. I have the 100 GB plan for $20 a year, for example. I would rank Google a 5, upthere.com a 4 (it also stores your music), the others a 3. Google also has some amazing organizational tools, including automatic panoramas when you take adjacent landscape photos, and grouping by face recognition. It's almost scary.


Coming back to your question, once iCloud Photos are on your Mac you can export one or all of your photos to a folder or folders in Finder. Just use the Select function (click on the first photo, then hold the Shift key and click on the last you want to export), then go to Export on the File menu, select the options you want, and choose a location.


After exporting them you can delete them from the Photos app. This will remove them from iCloud itself and from your phone.

Aug 3, 2017 2:44 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thank you so much for the response and a so detailed answer.

I don't think that 99$ per month is cheap, anyway it isn't cheap for me, unfortunately.

It is OK for me to import the pictures taken to my Mac and then to delete. I wouldn't mind to create albums and to choose what to sync to make it visible on my iPhone also, and I like how Photos app works, and I use to iTunes. The only thing I don't like is the inability to choose the storage location, and then move items from there to an external one. Essentially I don't like that the Photos app doesn't work cooperatively with the Finder, both are Apple platforms.

Stream allows to have the pictures on a cloud for 30 days, so if you on the go, you could use them on the MAC before dealing with the import. But it is annoying that it it arbitrary saves the pictures in Photos app library physically and doesn't allow to delete from there. At least I didn't succeed.

But thank you anyway.

Sep 1, 2017 12:49 PM in response to stevenmatt

Wow! Two years and we are still discussing the same questions, at least some if not most. Just to make it clear we are not the only ones, for example: try reversing the chronological order of photos on an iPad from top to bottom. Go to the Photos app on a Mac and try again. That shouldn't be difficult... at all! What happened to iPhoto?

Now let me be clear about one thing: If you want more space on your phone, turn off iCloud and up/download regularly and directly to a Mac (computer/laptop) by USB cable. You can move your Photos Library to an external drive in Preferences. Also, you can back up to iCloud directly from the Mac.

Photo Stream, it seems, is just another way to observe the same pictures from other devices without using iCloud Photo Library. Why use one and not the other, or both? In my situation, there is a warning message that pops up w-h-i-l-e iCloud is optimizing this and/or that photo, as it does automatically. We turned it off for more space and to shut it up.

Somehow, Photo Stream seemed to be an option which came and went with iCloud Library being turn on or off. At least that's that's what I recall the last time. Seems things change regarding Apple photo applications. Now we are having a hiccup with the iPad. It seems Photo Stream was turned off, at least on the iPad, and actually on the Mac too but not on the iPhone. The iPad doesn't have more recent photos. Only it seems that after uploading to the Mac, and iCloud Library is on both the Mac and iPad, those photos would then appear on the iPad. So far hasn't happened.

That presents another problem which started this whole process (again) for me. Photo Stream was turned on the iPhone. It is my lady's phone so how may be another story. Again, it was not on the Mac or iPad. Why? When I first began to upload directly via USB, the check box for delesting after upload didn't appear. It won't if using the iCloud Library, so I assumed it was related to the Photo Stream (see past unknown). I didn't want to turn off Photo Stream because it warned of dleting photos and I wasn't sure they were all properly backed up (see all of above). The whole purpose was to free memory on the iPhone. Strangely, after some beguiling research and by chance, I shut down the Photos app and restarted it. The box appeared! Are you serious? At least all or some of those picture in Photo Stream were not lost.

Come on, Apple! Your objective of making people dependent on iCloud may be working. Only a few of your users even wrangle with these problems. Just buy a bigger and better phone, right? Or switch to Android.

Sep 2, 2017 7:48 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

I agree that there are good answers in the thread to most of the questions. The last two were made two years later, so I'm not that far off. Considering how much material one must trudge through, and still have trouble, is ridiculous. I have been trying for longer than you realize. Sorry if I seem stupid to you.

Even since this thread has began, I think Apple has updated Photo Stream. My first reason to understand was certain access to full resolution photos from the iPhone without jamming it beyond capacity. I achieved that (months ago) through some rearranging of storage, as recommended above. One difference is that I have two users on my Mac, and moved both Photo apps' storage to an external hard drive, one being the System Photo Library. Now when I manually back up from at least one iPhone, my Mac will upload and backup to iCloud and share optimized versions with our iPad. Don't recall if they said so but edits made to Photo Stream don't appear on other devices, so we can use the iPad to make changes in the cloud with Photo Library.

How we managed to download originals to the iPhone and save to the computer via USB while the phone randomly threw up messages saying that it was out of memory (and prevented using the camera until it decided which photos to optimize from the cloud), I don't remember. We do pay for iCloud storage as well, by the way. The messages seem to be a minor bug.

Finally, it did take some time for photos to go from Mac to iPad in the cloud. That is advised by Apple. Again, by no explanation and perhaps a similar bug, while the iPad suggested it was near full of storage, I watched some time (hours) later after USB-ing, "adding 525 items" went to 524 after about 10 minutes. Then, out of the blue it changed to 10, 6, and blink, all downloaded. Of course it still had space. I would have just turned off iCloud Photo Library thinking there would be no space for 525 more photos even optimized if it already was full. Great! Yet quite mysterious, as in a King novel, but you won't find proprietary info in a book or manual.

Adding further to the discussion and similar bugs, the message on the iPhone that storage was almost full and try using iCloud Photo Library to optimize photos was still there after dumping 525 full size photos. Of course, restarting the phone blipped that message away. Another bug, I guess.

Finally, while not suggested above, Fickr offers 1 terabyte of free storage and auto upload from an iPhone.

Jul 26, 2015 2:48 PM in response to stevenmatt

My Question (and apparently everyone else's):

I have thousands of photos on my phone that I need to delete because I have no more storage on my physical device (16Gb). But it's not clear how I should go about deleting the photos and if they will be deleted on my other devices and in the iCloud.

How do I delete photos from my phone without deleting them from my other devices?

If you have iCloud Photo Library turned on then if you delete a photo, it will be deleted from the device, from iCloud, and from any other device that is using the same Apple ID and has iCloud Photo Library turned on. The most you can do to reduce the storage required on the phone, without deleting the photo, is to go to Settings > iCloud > Photos and turn Optimize Storage on.


iCloud Photo Library (the setting): This allows me to automatically upload and store my library in iCloud to access photos and videos from all my devices. So, if I have this turned on, does that mean that when I take a picture it gets uploaded to my iPad and computer also via WiFi? When and how does it know how to do this?

Yes -- if iCloud Photo Library is on then every photo taken is automatically uploaded to iCloud and then downloaded to all other devices which have iCloud Photo Library on. The upload should take place immediately or as soon as WiFi is available.


Photos: this is the first tab in the app on my iPhone. This houses all of my photos. The pictures that exist in this tab are actually stored on my iPhone. Since I have iCloud Photo Library turned "on", all of my pictures in Photos get placed on all of my devices. Do the pictures take up storage on my other devices?If I delete a picture on my iPhone, does it get deleted from my other devices?

Yes, the Photos take up space on all of your devices. You can reduce the space required on a specific device by using the Optimize Storage setting on that device. Yes, deleting from anywhere deletes from everywhere.


iCloud Photos: You access this via www.icloud.com. Since I have iCloud Photo Library "on", all of my photos automatically get uploaded here. If I delete a photo from here, does it get deleted across all of my devices?

Deleting from anywhere deletes from everywhere.

Jul 26, 2015 3:38 PM in response to stevenmatt

Sorry -- got interrupted before I finished replying. Here is some more:


My Photo Stream (the setting): What does this do? Apple's definition is "Automatically upload new photos and send them to all of your iCloud devices when connected to Wi-Fi." but this sounds pretty much exactly like the iCloud Photo Library. What's the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream? When should I use them?

Photo Stream has been around longer than iCloud Photo Library. It differs in 2 aspects that I can think of (or at least it did the last time I used it before iCloud Photo Library became available). 1: the photos in Photo Stream aren't visible at iCloud.com and 2: only new photos taken after you have turned on Photo Stream will be added to Photo Stream. It is primarily a method of sending photos to another device and doesn't keep the photos on the 2 devices completely in sync like iCloud Photo Library does. The only reason to use it -- that I can think of -- if you are using iCloud Photo Library might be if you had one device where you didn't want to turn on iCloud Photo Library and sync all photos but did want to automatically receive new photos taken on another device.

Albums: this is the right tab in the photos app. Do the pictures that exist in this tab take up storage on my iPhone?

A photo being in a album does not take up additional storage. In fact the same photo can be placed into multiple albums without adding to the storage required.


All Photos: These are all of my photos. These are the same photos that exist in the Photos tab. Does this take up storage on my iPhone? If so, does that mean that I have two sets of pictures, one in Albums > All Photos and another identical set in Photos? If I delete pictures from here, will they also be deleted from my other devices?

You don't have two sets of pictures and it doesn't take up additional space by showing in both places. If you delete from there it will be deleted from your other devices (and it displays a message saying so, as it does in other places before you delete). However, if you delete from an individual album that you have created, it will only remove the photo from the album (on all of your devices) but it does not delete the photo itself -- and again, it displays a message to that effect before it removes it from an album, although the message doesn't specifically state that it will be removed from the same album on other devices.


iPhoto Events: these are automatically created folders based on dates. Why do these exist? What is their purpose? Does this take up storage on my iPhone? If I delete a picture from here, does it get deleted on all of my devices?

iPhoto is not involved with iCloud Photo Library. It is the predecessor of Photos. In Photos there are Moments/Collections which are somewhat similar to what iPhoto had for Events. They give you a view by date and I think of them as the primary photo itself (as opposed to one in an Album) as this is where you delete (again from everywhere). If you delete from an Album, the photo is removed from that album everywhere but will remain in other Albums (if it was in multiple albums) but if you delete from Moments/Collections in Photos, the photo is deleted from the phone and everywhere else.

  • Recently Deleted: these are pictures that I deleted within the last 30 days. This is basically like the trash can on your computer, except these get automatically deleted after 30 days. Does this take up storage on my iPhone?
  • Yes. As long as you can see the photo on your phone it is taking up some storage there.


    Jul 29, 2015 9:58 AM in response to FoxFifth

    @FoxFifth, thanks for the quick response and thorough answers. This helped clarify the terminology questions I have but I'm still not clear on how to resolve my problem of clearing up space on my iPhone without deleting my pictures. What do you recommend I do?


    How and where do I transfer all of my photos so i can then delete them from my iPhone? This seems to be more at the heart of my original question.


    By the way, how do you know all of this? I can't image an average person (let alone my parents!) figuring all of this out. This just seems so complicated for an Apple product. I don't understand how something like this could have happened from Apple. Am I the only one feeling betrayed here? What happened to the intuition that was supposed to be a part of Apple's DNA? Ok, these last couple of questions were rhetorical...

    Jul 29, 2015 10:06 AM in response to stevenmatt

    He probably looked at the crib sheet 😉 :Photos for OS X: Access your photos and videos everywhere with iCloud Photo Library


    But it's also covered in the iPhone manual. If you want to remove photos from your phone, but keep them elsewhere, you must copy them out of the Photos app on your computer to another folder on your computer before deleting them. You do this in the Photos app on your Mac; select the photos, then choose File/Export.

    Jul 29, 2015 6:58 PM in response to stevenmatt

    stevenmatt wrote:


    @FoxFifth, thanks for the quick response and thorough answers. This helped clarify the terminology questions I have but I'm still not clear on how to resolve my problem of clearing up space on my iPhone without deleting my pictures. What do you recommend I do?


    How and where do I transfer all of my photos so i can then delete them from my iPhone? This seems to be more at the heart of my original question.


    By the way, how do you know all of this? I can't image an average person (let alone my parents!) figuring all of this out. This just seems so complicated for an Apple product. I don't understand how something like this could have happened from Apple. Am I the only one feeling betrayed here? What happened to the intuition that was supposed to be a part of Apple's DNA? Ok, these last couple of questions were rhetorical...


    There are probably a number of approaches, but for me, I think I would say that if you don't want the iCloud Photo Library approach of all of your photos on all of your devices, then I would turn off iCloud Photo Library (first see the information near the end the link Lawrence Finch provided above about downloading originals if you were Optimizing Storage on your Mac setting). Then you could use another method of transferring and deleting photos such as by a USB cable or via a 3rd party app such as PhotoSync. If you want to continue to use a cloud-storage approach but want something that allows you delete from the phone you may want to investigate 3rd party options such as dropbox or Flickr. I haven't used them but am pretty sure they do offer that choice.


    I agree that it is confusing. I thought it was confusing when the options included importing by USB cable but using iTunes to send the other direction via USB cable, and then Photo Stream confused a lot of people, and now along comes another approach. In some ways, iCloud Photo Library may be the clearest for people to understand with Apple's slogan of "All of your photos, on all of your devices." Of course, if you haven't seen the slogan or that isn't what you want ...

    Photos App: How Does it All Work?

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