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I would like to delete photos from my iPhone but keep them in my cloud storage. Is there no way to do that?

I take LOTS of photos. I have an iPhone 6, 2 Macbook Air's, an iPad, and an old "all in one" and each one has a complete library of about 4000 photos. I have the same library in my cloud storage. I'd like to delete the library from my iPhone and use that storage as staging for new photos, and let my cloud storage remain my permanent, complete storage library. Is there no way to do this?

iPhone 5s, iOS 10.2.1

Posted on Mar 8, 2017 4:24 PM

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5 replies

Mar 8, 2017 5:52 PM in response to sinchonies

iCloud is for syncing, not for offline storage. So whatever you enable in Settings/iCloud will sync to iCloud, be it contacts, calendar, bookmarks - or photos. If you delete a photo from your phone it is deleted from iCloud. What you need is a cloud service that offers offline storage. Google Photos is an excellent solution, as is upthere.com. You can also use Dropbox, box.com, shutterfly and several others. These all will store your photos in their cloud, and let you view them online without them taking up space on your phone.

Mar 8, 2017 6:04 PM in response to sinchonies

I know, it's not obvious. The two that I use, and am very happy with, are upthere.com and Google Photos. Each has its advantages. Upthere.com just stores your content, including photos, video and music. It has a camera app that uploads photos directly to your cloud storage, where you can organize it, as well as uploading content from your phone. Google Photos uploads your content in near real time, lets you edit and organize it, and, in addition it does its own organization based on location and time/date, creating new albums. It also will automatically create panoramas from images that are adjacent. It has facial recognition and organization features, and has a "This day in the past" where it will show you photos and albums that you have take from past photo sessions. With both you can create shared and private albums.


As I have a 256 GB iPhone 7+ I also use iCloud Photos, but its just for convenience. The other two do an excellent job.

I would like to delete photos from my iPhone but keep them in my cloud storage. Is there no way to do that?

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