Delete Photos Just Off iPhone, Not iCloud

colleenjc44 wrote:

Agreed!

You can agree all day long, but that is not how iCloud Photo Library works. If you want to store your photos someplace where they are not on your device, then you can import them to your computer, or you can use a service like Dropbox or Flikr which are designed to store and archive photos.

iCloud is designed to share all photos across all devices that are using iCloud Photo Library. So, new photos get added to the Library immediately, edited photos can be seen in their edited format on all devices once the editing is complete, and deleting photos results in those photos getting deleted from the Library and reflected across all devices. That is how it works, and what it is intended to do. If you are not interested in sharing and automatically syncing all of your photos across all devices, and having access to the entire Library from anywhere, then iCloud Photo Library is not for you.

Find another solution that meets your specific needs.

GB

It is very well thought out. And documented. iCloud is a syncing service. All devices logged in to the account can sync contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Wi-Fi passwords, app passwords, phone history, notes, reminders, news preferences, Apple Home access, Health data, Wallet, Game Center, Siri options - and photos. If photos worked any other way they would be the sole exception to the sync model. If you delete a contact, it is deleted from all devices. Likewise for calendars, notes, reminders...and photos. Perfectly logical.

There are plenty of cloud storage services that don't sync: Google, Amazon, upthere.com, dropbox, box.com, shutterfly. So if you don't want to sync use one of them. There are no full syncing services like iCloud. Why do you think Apple should simply duplicate what is already available?

techgeekguru wrote:

I totally agree with you. What is the point of having an icloud storage if I cannot delete the pics from my phone to save space and still have to keep them??? it defeats the whole purpose of icloud. Apple needs to find a feasible solution to this problem.

The purpose of iCloud is to keep all your photos in sync across all of your devices. It is not designed to be simple storage. You might wish that Apple had made a different choice but they didn't. If you want cloud storage that will allow you to delete the photos from your device but keep the store on the cloud servers, consider Google Photo.

You can also submit your feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

kaolynfromboulder wrote:

Right, and you would rather buy a storage device and NEVER be able to remove data from it as long as it is stored in iCloud. This makes total sense, lol.

iCloud is NOT a storage service. It's a syncing service. If you want a cloud-based storage service, that's what you should get. I use DropBox but there are others.

I don't use a hammer to chop wood. Both are very useful tools. However, they are not, in the vast majority of cases, interchangeable.

Given that iCloud photo sync simply does not work the way that Apple says it does, the best option is to:

1. Turn it off on your phone
2. Take photos on your phone
3. Plug your phone into your mac
4. Copy all the photos to your mac using the Photos app
5. Disconnect your phone
6. Delete the photos on your phone to free up storage.
7. Hope that one day Apple will fix iCloud so that files actually transfer, or their absurd "optimise storage" begins working in a sensible way.

anndorie wrote:

The only reason I bought extra icloud storage was precisely for this reason. I now have loads of EMPTY icloud storage but I am unable to send my photos to the cloud and delete them from the phone. If there is a way to do this, it is not very obvious as I have wasted hours trying to figure out how to keep photos in icloud storage as well as DELETE them to free up space o n my iPhone. Apple makes life simple in so many other ways. Why is this so complicated?

It’s only complicated if you try to make it do something it wasn’t designed to do. You want cloud storage. Apple‘s system is not that. It’s designed to keep everushing in sync across all of your devices. It does that very simply and easily.

Google Photos will do what you want.

By using a 3rd party cloud service such as Onedrive, Dropbox or Box, you can activate an automatic upload (or upload everything manually), then delete all contents from your phone.

I use Onedrive as a part of Office 365 that grants 1TB of space in the cloud (that can be synced with multiple devices) then I don't worry about space.

Turn off iCloud photos on the phone. You can then delete them from the phone without affecting other devices.

Well....that's partially true. But....

When you go to your iPhone Settings>iCloud>Photos you'll have three options:

iCloud Library: super lazy mode

New photos: lazy mode

Shared Albums: diligent mode

So... the response you got above is true for Super Lazy mode (and I assume for lazy mode too, since I haven't used it). But if you use the Shared Albums mode you can actually create albums in your iCloud and fill them with photos/videos that will remain in the cloud even if you delete them from your device. You don't even have to share the albums, just create and fill them.

In the spirit of not being lazy, you can use ANY of the three modes and then go to your Mac and DOWNLOAD your content locally. It will also remain on your local hard drive even if you delete it from your iPhone.

If you're desperate and feed up with the cloud, you can plug your iPhone into your computer open Photos, iPhoto, Image Capture (or whatever they have now on those Windows thingys these days... if you use that) and import your content as if it was a digital camera. Then you can delete it from your iPhone and guess what... It will remain in your computer.

But the clue is stop being lazy.... and I speak for all of us.

I naively assumed iCloud was that way: keep everything in the cloud and call from any device.

True dat.

But iCloud forces you to keep photos on the phone to keep them in the cloud.

It's not really forced on you if that's the way it's designed. Using iCloud is a choice you made. How on earth were you forced in to that choice ?

It's disappointing that Apple hasn't solved this obvious problem forcing users to depend on third party solutions.

There is no problem to solve. iCloud is NOT off device storage and has never claimed to be. It is a syncing service. Multiple copies of your content in multiple places, all synced in near real time.

You can use a 3rd party option by choice.

Google Photos and (Amazon) Prime Photos are excellent choices, even Snapfish works light years better than the crappy iCloud. Those companies DO listen to customers. Google photos actually asks me if I want to delete photos from my iPhone and free up space, they know better than Apple that this is a real-world need. It shouldn't be the whim of a nerd developer living in his/her bubble.

Google photos actually asks me if I want to delete photos from my iPhone and free up space,

What they don't ask however is "Can we use your photos for any other purpose we wish without compensation to you or your knowledge?" Nothing is free. If you feel their feature set is best for you by all means use it.

https://www.google.com/policies/terms/

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.

Its 2017. I need an easy way make space on my iPhone without having to connect to the laptop, where space is also at a premium. I naively assumed iCloud was that way: keep everything in the cloud and call from any device. But iCloud forces you to keep photos on the phone to keep them in the cloud. This defeats the whole purpose of having infinite storage on the cloud. It's disappointing that Apple hasn't solved this obvious problem forcing users to depend on third party solutions.

Here is the best way that I've found:

1. Connect iPhone to mac
2. Use iTunes to make a local backup of the iPhone.
3. Import all pictures and video from the phone into the Photos application
4. Launch the Image Capture application and use it to delete photos and videos from the iPhone.

After that, the pictures will appear in your photo stream and remain on your mac, but will not be taking up space on your phone. I have found that I have to do this process on both my phone and my wife's phone every month or so to ensure the size of the iPhone backup are small enough to fit on our iCloud accounts.