Delete Photos Just Off iPhone, Not iCloud

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.

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

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.

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 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/

At the risk of wasting my time responding to silly answers to threads that are 6 months old, I do so, so that others may avoid losing photos because of this nonsense.

When you save photos to a shared album they are saved at a reduced resolution, so if you decide to delete all the photos from your library and rely on the copy in the shared album you won't have the original copy and you may not be able to use the photo for whatever you wanted to do with it because it is of too low a quality.

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.

It remains the fact that icloud is an incomplete, dumb and brutish syncing service. Mighty Apple should be able to offer some additional features like the possibility to delete photos on one device without touching those in the cloud. They are almost 1 trillion worth, for chrissakes.

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.

Saying something for "so long" doesn't make it true, no matter how long you say it for OR HOW LOUDLY YOU SAY IT.

iCloud Photos is designed for ease of use, to sync your photos across all devices. Just like iCloud Contacts syncs contacts across all devices, iCloud Calendars syncs Calendars across all devices, iCloud Notes syncs Notes across all devices, iCloud Reminders syncs Reminders across all devices, iCloud News syncs News preferences across all devices, iCloud Health syncs your health data across all devices, iCloud Keychain syncs your passwords across all devices, iCloud Safari syncs your Safari preferences across all devices. The model is 100% consistent.

What you want is for iCloud Photos to be the ONE exception to the iCloud syncing model. That would be inconsistent with the model.

You gave your permission when you agreed to iCloud's terms, but you failed to read and understand how iCloud works. Permission is not needed for iCloud to operate as advertised.

You can not delete any photo from the iCloud Photo Library without deleting the locally cached copies.

Not at all, what remains fact is that you are expect something to do something it was never intended to do, it's like going to the supermarket and buying a pound of ground beef to make a key lime pie.

Apple should be able to offer some additional features like the possibility to delete photos on one device without touching those in the cloud.

But it doesn't at this moment.

They are almost 1 trillion worth, for chrissakes.

How is this in any way relevant to the features of their offerings?

Nobody here disputes your point that a feature you want is missing. This is simply not the place to bemoan it. This community is for technical assistance, not an agent for change.

Feedback for Apple goes here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/