Can I delete a thumbnail picture off my phone and it stay in the icloud?

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Level 1

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Can I delete a thumbnail picture off my phone and it stay in the icloud?

I recently got the warning that my phone could not take any more pictures because there was not room. I have my phone set up so that my pictures will automatically upload and store to my icloud. If I delete a picture from my all photos album does it delete the picture from my icloud? I do not have an album that says photo stream and I understand that if I delete from the photostream it is deleted from all devices. I just want to know if I delete a picture from my photos under the only album that I have does it delete from icloud? Also, is the only way to access these photos to log into icloud to see them?

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4.1

Posted on Sep 19, 2015 11:16 AM

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Answer 1

FoxFifth

Level 10

475,407 points

Sep 19, 2015 11:24 AM in response to cbaggett672

If you have Settings > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photo Library turned on then any photo you delete from the phone will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photo Library. The most you can do to reduce the storage space required on the phone is to turn on Settings > iCloud > Photos > Optimize iPhone Storage.

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Answer 2

cbaggett672 Author

Level 1

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Sep 19, 2015 11:56 AM in response to FoxFifth

But isn't one purpose to have an iCloud account to back up my photos and if it's backing up my photos on iCloud then it shouldn't matter if I delete the picture from my phone storage. I just don't understand the cloud storage be there are photos on the cloud that aren't on my phone so how can that be?

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Answer 3

FoxFifth

Level 10

475,407 points

Sep 19, 2015 12:45 PM in response to cbaggett672

Apple does not currently offer a way to store your photos only on iCloud. If you are using iCloud Photo Library you cannot delete the photos from your phone without them being deleted from iCloud.

If you are not using iCloud Photo Library and are just backing up to iCloud, then photos are included in your backup but they are not viewable from anywhere and the only thing you can do with the backup is use it to do a full restore in the event of a problem with the device or when moving to a new iOS device.

There are 3rd party services that do offer cloud-only storage. Two that have that as an option are Dropbox and Flickr.

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Answer 4

Bre100

Level 1

8 points

Dec 17, 2015 10:19 PM in response to cbaggett672

What I did was to put pictures in albums with iCloud Photo Sharing. Cuz when I got over 10K pics I ran out of room on my iPhone. So I started making albums with a Photo Sharing, but not necessarily inviting anyone else to view them. once they are there I could delete them from my iPhone. I also got rid of the many albums I had on my iPhone in the Aphotos app cuz that just doubles the count cuz it's still in All Photos. And I keep an eye on the Recently Deleted pics and dump them before their 30 days is up. I haven't had a full message since. And I am able to keep taking pics. Now I'm up to 11K pics I gotta quit taking so many screenshots. Those pics are in All Photos as well as Screenshots album that came with one of the updates. So they're in the Photos app twice too! Unless I'm mistaken about that. But it seems like doubling up to me.

Good luck. Ive also found I'd reached the limit of number of albums in Photo Sharing. But not the picture limit. So I'll see how long this can go on.

IPits so hard to find certain pics amongst the 10-11K pictures. Wish we could organize them w/o them also being in the All Photos!

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