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Delete multiple photos from iCloud

I use icloud photos with multiple devices, including an iPhone 4, an iPad, a Macbook pro and two PCs.

My icloud library is too large, containing many duplicates (same photo taken several times) and many photos I don't want to keep.

Deleting photos from the library using the icloud library is a slow, cumbersome process. I can only delete one at a time, each time taking 20 seconds or more, even with a high speed internet connection.

How can I select & delete several photos at once?


[Re-Titled by Host]

iPhone 5s, iOS 9.3.5

Posted on Aug 27, 2016 9:56 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 6, 2017 12:33 PM

I just spent some time on the phone with Apple. They confirmed it: There is no way to select a lot of photos in the icloud on a Mac and delete them. You have to do it one by one. Grr. But there is one shorter workaround.


My trouble was I kept on getting notifications to upgrade my iphoto (i.e., pay more) because my icloud was full. All I wanted was "My Photo Stream" option on (in photos preferences on a Mac), so only the latest would appear on my devices. I wanted the remainder of the older photos just on my hard drive. But since they were already up there on icloud, I kept on getting the full message.


I found one workaround to save a little time getting older photos off the icloud.

1. Set your preferences in photos on your Mac, ipad, etc., to "My Photo Stream."

2. Then get on your iphone, and open photos. (This would not even work on my ipad either, so iphone's it). Try "albums" first. You should be able to "select," "select" again, then hit the trash sign. If not, look at "Collections," and try it again. It gets rid of groups of photos.

3. Check in Albums whether you have one called "Trash." Delete it too.

4. Complain to Apple.

99 replies

Apr 15, 2017 6:13 PM in response to rhwolfson

Try: Right click on the photo (the one you'd like to start with) so that it is highlighted. Then, press and hold control, press and hold command, move your pointer to the second photo (the one you'd like to end with), and right click twice (click slowly). I happened to stumble on this purely by accident, after a whole lot of frustration. It worked.

Jun 29, 2017 4:09 PM in response to rhwolfson

I managed to find a way as well. Someone in the thread gave a way they had accidentaly discovered and I decided to experiment with other key combinations that usually work together.


SOLUTION: Hold down Command and Shift keys and individually click all the pictures.


TIPS: Make sure to press the pictures and not the area around it or everything you would have selected would be deselected. On that note, I suggest deleted like at least 10 - 20 pictures at a time so that way if you were to accidentally deselect, you would have still gotten a lot of pictures deleted and you won't have to go over a lot.

Jul 3, 2017 1:37 PM in response to rose_10

This is such ********. Apple has made it cumbersome to remove photos from iCloud as a manipulative way to get people to upgrade their storage. I became so frustrated with trying to delete, that I just said to **** with it and upgraded my storage amount. Now that I see you really do have to delete one photos at a time, I will be cancelling my iCloud storage altogether as I find it pernicious to deviously force people to pay more money.

Aug 1, 2017 1:26 PM in response to rhwolfson

There is a way to delete all photos day by day.


Is better than photo by photo...


Steps do delete all photos by day

1 - Open photos via icloud.com

2 - Make sure you are viewing "Photos" not "Albums"

3 - Click on the Share icon on the right side. If you don´t see just move your mouse over the date.

4 - After clicking on the Share icon, you will notice that all photos from this day were selected however you sill not able to delete them. just clic in one of them then press delete/back on your keyboard


Voilá

Sep 27, 2017 6:34 PM in response to rhwolfson

Hello! I realize this is an older thread, but I'm having the same problem as the rest of you.


My iCloud is full and keeps asking me to buy more storage. I can select only one photo at a time, to delete. I tried deleting all the iCloud photos from the iPad, before I turned off iCloud Photo Library. The photos are now gone from the iPad, but they're still on iCloud--which is the problem in the first place! Does anyone have additional suggestions for how I can remove the photos from iCloud?


(Full story: my original intention was to use iCloud to put my wedding photos on my husband's iPad Air 2, after erasing its memory and setting it up as my own. [Don't worry--he's okay with me taking over his iPad.] However, iCloud has less storage than the iPad, so I couldn't get all the photos on. Meanwhile, I updated iTunes, and now I'm able to use iTunes to copy photos to the iPad. I just want to remove the photos from iCloud!)

Oct 3, 2017 3:24 PM in response to msmsys

Hi msmsys,


My iCloud looks slightly different than yours, and at first I thought your solution didn't work on mine. Then I realized you're talking about a smaller "share" button that sometimes appears in a row underneath the larger "share" button! I had to scroll just right to get it to appear. It worked! Thank you for your solution.


I'll note that this works day-by-day, not with all the photos I've ever taken, but it still solved my problem!

Dec 7, 2017 11:09 AM in response to MadElaineM

Dec 2017 update ** . YES this works, (Thank . you msmsys and MadElain) open your browser as big on screen as you can make it.


BUT...HUGE BUT.. you can only select ONE DAY.. So if you have a gallery of 4 years... all separated by date... this doesn't help much... But it is better than anything else.


My issue, is that the freaking photos app "Can't upload your photos to icloud" with absolutely ZERO reason why... so I wanted to nuke it, and start over.


Apple... You have totally lost your way.


"It just doesn't work"

Dec 10, 2017 10:07 AM in response to rhwolfson

If you're willing to do some programming, then you can do it fairly easily with a few lines:



api = PyiCloudService(YOURUSERNAME)


photos_iter = iter(api.photos.all)

for i, photo in enumerate(photos_iter):

print(f"Deleting file {photo.filename}")

photo.delete()


You just need to install this code from here:

git clone http://www.github.com/picklepete/pyicloud

cd pyicloud


and then add this patch in:

git remote add r3ticuli

git fetch r3ticuli

git checkout r3ticuli/feature/adding-delete

python setup.py develop

then run some loop like up here.

Migrating out of icloud and anything apple related to a google Pixel 2, it's a wonderful experience :-)

Delete multiple photos from iCloud

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