I was trying to free up space on my iPad and accidentally deleted some videos from my photo stream. Now they are gone from all my devices and can't find them... This was the only place some of these videos were located and I can't find where to recover them. I checked file recovery on iCloud and there was nothing there. Kind of freaking out bc it was videos of our daughter...
iPad Mini, iOS 9.2
The same thing happened to me last night. I got a hard lesson when I played with (turned on and off) the Photo Stream for the first and lost hundreds of photos. That is why I replied to this message.
Photo Stream does not automatically erase camera roll. However, it will erase the photos and you can not recover them from "Recently Deleted" if you turn off My Photo Stream in the iphone settings and say "yes" to "..will delete all photo stream photos from your iphone".
The bottom line: be careful when turning off the Photo Stream. Make sure your photos are backed up on other devices before you turn off the Photo Stream on the device you are using.
In my opinion, Apple engineers should improve the Photo Stream: instead of permanently and instantly deleting all photos in the Photo Stream, all deleted photos should be put in "Recently Deleted" just in case people do not pay attention to the warning message "..will delete all photo stream photos from your iphone"
On your iPad tap the Camera app then tap All Photos then tap Albums then swipe down and tap: Recently Deleted
Tap the video then tap Recover. You have to do this one video at a time.
Photo stream photos are actually in the camera roll and what's in the photo stream folder is just a link to those in the camera roll. If you deleted them, you also deleted the original in Camera Roll.
If you backed up the phone to iCloud or iTunes (computer) when those photos/videos were on the phone, restoring the backup will restore the videos. Likewise, if you imported the photos to your computer before deleting, sync the phone to restore them/
Otherwise, there're gone.
what's in the photo stream folder is just a link to those in the camera roll
I'm not sure that's right.
Be sure. All folders containing photos taken on the phone, including photo stream, are links to the original in Camera Roll. There are no actual duplicates of the same photo, otherwise storage space would be bloated.
So please explain what happens to the photo in your camera roll when the photo is no longer one of the last 1,000 photos and it is automatically removed from the photo stream album.
The photos in the photo stream album are not duplicates, they are reduced resolution versions, but yes there are 2 photos on your phone.
Winston Churchill wrote:
So please explain what happens to the photo in your camera roll when the photo is no longer one of the last 1,000 photos and it is automatically removed from the photo stream album.
The photos in the photo stream album are not duplicates, they are reduced resolution versions, but yes there are 2 photos on your phone.
Photos automatically deleted from photostream remain in camera roll. They are removed from the other devices connected to photostream.
You are confusing the "Optimize iPhone Storage" feature of iCloud Photo Library, where the photos on the phone are replaced with lower resolution versions to save space on the phone. This has nothing to do with photostream. There are no duplicate photos of any resolution wasting storage space on the phone.
Photos automatically deleted from photostream remain in camera roll. They are removed from the other devices connected to photostream.
No, they aren't removed from other devices.
You are confusing the "Optimize iPhone Storage" feature of iCloud Photo Library, where the photos on the phone are replaced with lower resolution versions to save space on the phone. This has nothing to do with photostream. There are no duplicate photos of any resolution wasting storage space on the phone.
It's you that are confused.
No, they aren't removed from other devices.
They most certainly are:
"When you delete a photo from My Photo Stream on an iOS device, Mac, or PC, that photo will be deleted from the My Photo Stream view on all your devices after you connect each device to Wi-Fi or Ethernet"
Delete photos from My Photo Stream - Apple Support
My_Photo_Stream_FAQ_-_Apple_Support.jpg
I'm not confused, nor do I have reading comprehension issues. Note the word "delivered" which refers to photo received from another device, not those originating from the device. There are no low resolution duplicates of photos in your camera roll present in your photo stream folder. What you see there is a link to the original.
Photo stream photos are low resolution versions of the original on an iOS device, they are not simply links to the original. If they were merely links they simply wouldn't work if the original was taken on another device.
Please stop and ...
a) read Apple's support articles
b) do as the terms of use suggest and test your theories before posting here.
Your advice here is quite dangerous. If others take notice of your suggestion and assume that photo stream photos are merely links to an original then they may believe they can safely turn photo stream off and on again. This isn't the case and if they don't have the original in the camera roll and the photo is over 30 days old, they will lose their photos. This is why we advice people to import photos they don't have in their camera roll from photo stream before turning photo stream off.
Photo stream photos are low resolution versions of the original on an iOS device, they are not simply links to the original. If they were merely links they simply wouldn't work if the original was taken on another device.
Incomplete and misleading. As I said multiple times already (did you not read?), the photos appearing in the photo stream folder on the originating OS device (where the photo is in camera roll) show the camera roll version, not the a copy of the low resolution version that's pushed into photo stream and viewed on other devices. This is the same for all camera roll photos seen in other folders. Your phone does not download another copy of the photo from iCloud.
Likewise, I never made the preposterous claim that uploaded photo stream pics were actually links to the original on another device. Nor did I even hint that it is safe to disable photo stream. Those irrational inferences originate only with you.
Regardless of all the wriggling you are trying to do about what is implied and what isn't, you said 2 things that are not correct.
Firstly.
Photo stream photos are actually in the camera roll and what's in the photo stream folder is just a link to those in the camera roll. If you deleted them, you also deleted the original in Camera Roll.
Never mind whatever it is you find preposterous, what evidence do you have for what you did say word for word.
Based on what Apple actually say themselves (as per the screenshot I posted) and my own experimentation, it seems to me that it is not the case that photos in the photo stream album are just links. This is what I have done to bring me to this conclusion. Exactly what have you done to support your position.
Prior to testing, all my devices used iCloud Photo library, my 2 phones and my iPad were set to upload to photo stream, which was for the benefit of my Apple TV's not my Mac which had photo stream turned off. This was of no use for testing since the photo stream album is hidden and there is no camera roll when iCloud photo library is turned off. So in order to test my responses here in the communities as Apple suggest I do before posting, I take the step of turning iCloud photo library of on my second phone and making it my test phone.
After a while it removes the 20 thousand plus photos I had on there from iCloud photo library in "Photos" (at the bottom of the screen) and also removes the "All Photos" album from "Albums" (at the bottom of the screen) and creates a "Camera Roll" album and a "My Photo Stream" album in it's place. The my "Photo Stream" album has a whole bunch of photos in it which take up 711 MB. This makes sense at this time since these are photos that my other phone has put into "my photo stream" over the last 30 days and since the originals are not on the test phone they can't be just links to the originals and in fact are the low resolution images from the cloud. I assume you don't disagree with this assumption at this stage.
OK, but we need to see what happens when I take a photo on the phone and we are then in the position where the original is on the phone, so I start by taking a screenshot. The first thing I notice is that it immediately appears in the "Camera Roll" Album but takes about 30 seconds to appear in the "My Photo Stream" Album. Now that kind of looks to me like I'm waiting for the photo in the "My Photo Stream" album to download from the cloud after being uploaded from the "Camera Roll" rather than it just creating a link.
OK, to rule out the possibility that it just takes a long time (30 seconds) to create a link, I turn off wifi and take another screenshot and wait and wait and wait. After about 5 minutes, I still don't have the new screenshot in the "My Photo Stream" album, so I turn wifi back on again. 30 seconds later I have the screenshot in the "My Photo Stream" album.
OK, this is rather looking pretty much done and dusted in favour of low resolution downloads rather than links to me, but to rule out the possibility it might be because it's screenshots and not camera photos, I repeat the tests with photos from the camera. I take 4 photos in rapid succession, the 4 photos appear immediately in the "Camera Roll" Album but it takes almost a minute this time before the first photo appears in the "My Photo Stream" album (makes sense if it has to up/download since photos are larger than screenshots) and the rest of the photos appear in the "My Photo Stream" album in similar intervals. Oh and the same thing occurs if I turn wifi off as it did when I turned it off for screenshots.
I'm now pretty convinced these aren't links, but hey perhaps creating a link takes ages and for some reason gets paused if there is no wifi (not likely I think, but hey, lets be exhaustive about this). So then I think to myself, I've taken about 30 photos since I started testing, some are screenshots and some are photos, if they are links they won't take up all that much space will they, so I take a look to see how much space is now taken up with "My Photo Stream". It's now 733 MB.
OK, so that's 22 MB for around 30 or so photos. I see no other explanation for this other than "My Photo Stream" album has it's own photos. It would be quite ridiculous to use links that use as much space as an actual photo.
Secondly, you also said.
Photo stream photos are actually in the camera roll and what's in the photo stream folder is just a link to those in the camera roll. If you deleted them, you also deleted the original in Camera Roll.
Well now, this is kind of important since this was the crux of your advice to the OP, since the bit about links was merely supporting this advice. But hey, that's kind of easy to test now I have my phone set up this way, let's just delete a "My Photo Stream" photo and see if it also deletes the original in the "Camera Roll" album. No it doesn't, no surprise there then (at least for me).
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I've seen incorrect answers recommended by Apple before, I will be raising this matter of Apple recommending your advice in the lounge should you wish to add comment. The fact that you have boilerplated incorrect advice is also of concern.
Rather than keep this up, why don't you just try it yourself. If you delete a photo from photo stream it does not delete the original from the camera roll.
After a little more thought, I think you may be confusing the “camera roll” and the “photo library”. You access the “camera roll” from 'Albums' at the bottom of the screen, this is not the same as the “photo library” which you access from 'Photos' at the bottom of the screen. Your “camera roll” comprises full resolution images taken on that device, the “photo stream” (on an iOS device) comprises low resolution images from all devices with “photo stream” enabled, the “photo library” aggregates the “camera roll” and “photo stream”.
If you take a picture on a device that doesn't have “iCloud Photo Library” enabled but does have “photo stream” enabled, the photo is added to both the “camera roll” and “photo stream” and therefore appears in the “photo library”. If you delete the photo from “photo stream” it does not delete the original in the “camera roll” and therefore the photo also remains in the “photo library”. If however you delete the photo from the “camera roll” it does delete it from “photo stream” and therefore no longer appears in the “photo library”, likewise if you delete the photo from the “photo library” it gets deleted from both the “camera roll” and the “photo stream” and no longer appears in the “photo library”.
If on the other hand you have an image in “photo stream” that is there by virtue of being taken on another device, it also appears in the “photo library”, if you delete it from “photo stream” however it will also be removed from the “photo library” because there is no original in the “camera roll” to continue to be displayed in the “photo library”, likewise if you delete the photo from the “photo library” it removes the photo from “photo stream”
How to recover items deleted from my photo stream
