I accidentally deleted photos and videos on iCloud. Read how to retrieve but can't get to login to iCloud. At the web page "set up iCloud on this device" and I get confused what/ how to proceed next. Please advise

You can only log into iCloud.com via a computer. If you want to retrieve photos that you have deleted, check your Recently Deleted album on your device in the Photos app.

And not sure what you mean about retrieving your deleted photos from iCloud? Unless you are running Yosemite on a Mac and have iCloud Photo Library, you cannot access photos in iCloud. If you are not running iCloud Photo Library, then the only photos in iCloud are your Photo Stream photos and your iCloud backups of your Camera Roll, which you cannot directly access in iCloud at any time.

Check your Recently Deleted Album in Photos on your device.

Cheers,

GB

If you sign out of iCloud your photo stream photos would be deleted but not your camera roll photos or videos. When you sign back in, you will receive my photo stream photos from the last 30 days and all shared photo albums you might have. To avoid losing my photo stream photos older than 30 days, save them to your camera roll before signing out.

To be safe, you might also want to import your camera roll photos and videos from your old iPad to your computer as explained here:

Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac or Windows PC - Apple Support.

Well, again, you don't need to sign into iCloud.com for your issue. I think there is some confusion about how iCloud is used for your photos.

Since you don't have a laptop, you are not using iCloud Photo Library, there is nothing on iCloud that you can access anyway.

Open the Photos app on your iPad and click on Albums. Scroll down the list of albums and you should see an album titled "Recently Deleted". Click on that album and you should see the photos/videos you deleted. Click on the Photo/Video and at the bottom of the screen you will see "Recover". Click on that to recover the deleted item.

The only thing that iCloud has in the way of Photos is your Photo Stream and, if you do iCloud backups, it also has a backup of your Camera Roll photos that were on your device when the backup was done. You cannot access either of these items directly via iCloud. Your Photo Stream is on your device and your Camera Roll can only be recovered by restoring your device to that backup. But you do not want to do either of these things in this situation.

Again, find your Recently Deleted album and you will be able to recover any photos/videos that you have deleted in the last 30 days.

And one clarification:

Photo Stream is a streaming mechanism that is housed in iCloud (but not directly accessible through iCloud.com) that is used to share your last 30 days or 1000 photos taken with any of your devices signed onto the same iCloud account with eachother. So, if you had both an iPad and an iPhone and you were taking photos with both of them, your Photo Stream would have the photos you took from both devices in one place. You would be able to see your iPad photos and your iPhone photos on both the iPad and the iPhone in the Photo Stream.

You may see more than this limit of photos in your Photo Stream because they will accumulate on your device until you sign out of iCloud on your device. Once you sign out of iCloud, you will only get the last 30 days or 1000 photos because that is all that iCloud keeps, so that is all it will be able to re-download to that device once it is signed on and reconnects to iCloud.

Camera Roll is just like a real camera roll in a camera. Any photos you have taken on the iPad will be in your Camera Roll and will stay there until you delete them. You can only see the photos taken on that device in the Camera Roll. So, if you took photos with both your iPad and your iPhone, you would only be able to see the iPad's photos in the iPad's Camera Roll, and you would only be able to see the iPhone's photos in the iPhone's Camera Roll.

Cheers,

GB

Sorry - not understanding your question?

And, BTW - your questions and confusion are not stupid. We all are on a constant learning curve.... 🙂

Cheers,

GB

OK, so again - you did not delete anything from iCloud because your photos are not stored on iCloud. They are only stored on your iPad or your iPhone. Where did you delete them from? If you deleted them from your Photo Stream and they are not still in your Camera Roll, then they are gone. Photo Stream is a temporary holding facility that is only there to share photos between your devices.

Can you explain how and where you deleted these photos and videos from?

Cheers,

GB

It is possible that you did turn on iCloud Photo Library. Can you go to Settings on your iPad, then go to Photos & Videos and see if "iCloud Photo Library" is turned on. If it is, then the apologies are mine!!!

If you do have iCloud Photo Library turned on, then you would not have a Camera Roll under your Photos app, but would rather have an All Photos album.

Can you post back and let me know if you have it turned on or not?

Cheers,

GB

Well, it changes the discussion, that's for sure! Very sorry about that.

So, you have a Photos icon and that is where your "All Photos" and your "Photo Stream" live. You don't have a Camera Roll anymore, so sorry for that confusion!

So, when you click on your Photos icon, you should see the Albums option in the bottom right-hand corner. When you click on that option, you should see a list of Albums on your device including:

All Photos

Photo Stream

Recently Deleted

If you click on the Recently Deleted Album, you should see the photos/videos that you have deleted in the last 30 days. If you deleted them prior to that post back and we can try something else to see if they can be recovered.

Cheers,

GB

hi GB

my photos and videos just disappeared from my iPhone and iCloud by itself, it started a few weeks ago, first a few photos were missing, it thought it was an aberration, then the videos folder was entirely gone and most of the photos , no way to retrieve it, any help ?

thank you