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Photos won't let me delete a bunch of pics and keeps syncing them back to my iphone

I have about 80 pictures - some a year old, some are 3 years old. I deleted them from my iPhone 6.

When I connect said iPhone to my MacBook (with El Capitan) these pics appear in Photos as un-imported and then get synced back to my phone.

I have tried importing them then deleting them.. same results.


Also - how the heck to I delete photos from my phone and not lose them in Photos as well? I have 20 GB worth of photos and want to get rid of 10 of those but when I delete a photos it also disappears from Photos.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), mid 2012

Posted on Jan 27, 2016 11:55 AM

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3 replies

Jan 27, 2016 12:16 PM in response to discordian.ksc

Do you have iCloud Photo Library enabled in Photos on your Mac and Photos on your iPhone?


Then all photos and all edits will transfer over the air from iCloud Photo LIbrary. The main purpose of iCloud Photo Library is to keep all your photos libraries in sync.

  • If you import a photo on one device, it will automatically appear on all other devices.
  • If you delete a photo from one device, it will be delted from all devices.
  • If you edit a photo on one device, the edits will update across all devices.

So don't use iCloud Photo Library, if you do not want to have the same photos on all your devices. WIth iCloud Photo Library enabed it is pointless to import from your iPhone via USB. The iPhone cannot have new photos, unless it has been offline while you were takng pictures. Any photos showing as new will be originals downloaded from iCloud to the iPhone, that are already on your Mac. And if you import them to the Mac as new, the photos will sync back to the iPhone via iCloud.

Jan 27, 2016 12:24 PM in response to léonie

Thank you. I do have iCloud Photo Library enabled.

That's making sense of the functionality.

I suppose I'll disable it and just import when plugged in like I used to do in the pre-icloud days.


But it seems to kill the functionality of Photos as a permanent storage and organizer since if I have 10,000 photos in there I also must have those 10,000 photos in any device that shares... just thinking out loud here for anyone who wants to chime in on what Apple's intent is.

Jan 27, 2016 12:40 PM in response to discordian.ksc

But it seems to kill the functionality of Photos as a permanent storage and organizer since if I have 10,000 photos in there I also must have those 10,000 photos in any device that shares.

On your mobile devices you are supposed to enable "Optimize storage". Then you will see only smaller, optimized versions on your iPhone or iPad, and if you want to edit the photos they will download from iCloud. This way you will only need roughly 10% of the regular storage for your photos.

Photos will be deleting the original versions from your iPhone automatically, if it needs to free storage. it wll only keep the most recently viewed photos in a full version and thumbnails for the others. The downloaded full versions are what you are seeing as new, when you connect the iPhone to USB.


It is a bit disconcerting when using iCloud. Photos will fill your device with photos as long as there is enough storage, and automatically delete photos if storage is required for other things. But to you it will always look like you were running out of space.

But iCloud is managing the storage for you.

Photos won't let me delete a bunch of pics and keeps syncing them back to my iphone

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