Q: iphone 5s - photos not uploading to icloud

Please start by telling us your “iCloud Photo Library” and “My Photo Stream” settings on all of your devices. (Settings > Photos & Camera on your iOS device and Photos > Preferences > iCloud on your Mac)

Please also advise if there is any ongoing sync activity on any of your devices (Activity includes uploading, updating, downloading or preparing).

If you have activity in any of these places, how long has it been like this.

Also...

With iCloud Photo Library enabled, you cannot delete a photo on one device (or at iCloud.com) without deleting it from every device that uses iCloud photo library (and iCloud.com). In order to save space on your mobile devices (and indeed your Mac if you wish to do so) turn on optimisation for photos on these devices (settings > photos & camera > optimise storage on your mobile device and Photo preferences > optimise storage on your Mac)

Optimisation is dynamic, it reduces the resolution of your photos as and when needed, so you may not notice it occurring at first. However when it is needed, it is very effective and users have reported libraries being optimised to much less than 10% of their original size in some cases. My own library is about 9% of its original size on my phone.

For starters, I am only trying to move photos from my iPhone 5s to iCloud.  Not my Mac, or iPad.  So long as the original file is saved in iCloud, I don't mind that a photo would be deleted from all devices.  Can you please confirm that?

No, as I said, if you delete it in one place it is deleted everywhere including the cloud.

Also are you able to check how much free space you have in the cloud and how much you have on your phone.

I think you should put your photo query to one side until you have created some space on your phone, you are in danger of corrupting data on the phone.

To all in thread with icloud saying its yet to update x number of photos despite there being enough space

i followed advice in this thread as follows

1. Connected iphone to computer and backed up all photos to memory usb stick as confidence in icloud low

2. On iphone deleting photos on phone to free up space to about 600 mb and restarting phone and wifi connection, closibg all apps and relogin to icloud appears somehow to have help and resolved the issue, however i am not getting a feeling of confidence from iCloud backup and encourage others to take a second backup offline to mem cards/ sticks where critical and maintain multiple copies of important data as i did -

notes

1. Icloud seems tempremental with uploading photos

2. On trying to access images on phone iphone 5s it says there is a problem downloading / opening and So i can see a thumbnail only

3. I recommend taking hard disk and usb double backups after a windows hang has corrupted master boot record of one of my backup mediums

4. If you find a rock solid solution online great but theres no substitute to having computer and offline mem card copies of key inages / videos

lots of luck im now going to try to fix the mbr record on external drive by using diagnostic software from a bootable usb

i am creating - seems to be some weird problem when usb drives/ sticks are not disconnected safely it can screw up the mbr.

thx to all who posted icloud now is 2.2 gb and phone has 2.2 hb free. Now i can redownload all the apps i deleted to get free space and fix this issue.

last advice. Take a long tea break and delete all your 'duplicate photos' And get rid of the poor shots from lazy photography frees up a heap pf space too but boy it is time consuming

hope that helps im using iphone 5s ios 9.3.3 i believe