Backing up cellphone pics in Icloud. When I enable the icloud photo library, my pics auto upload to the cloud. When I delete them from my phone, they auto delete from the cloud. Is there a way to protect pics in the cloud?

iCloud Photo Library is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photo Library is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to that iCloud Photo Library. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.

The other way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photo Library turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.

markb32 wrote:

Please can you indulge my novice questions on this topic. If I have only 32g space but want to keep my videos I took on my phone (which upload always to my photos album in iCloud), is the only solution to remove them from my mac to a separate folder and I can then delete from my phone? What I am really saying is that I don't want to lose the videos/photos I took, or perhaps upload the to another cloud service like google drive. Another alternative is to increase icloud storage significantly then there will be no problem except for costs?

Many thanks.

I'm not sure I completely understand your objectives but the following may help. It does not cover all possibilities.

Before you do anything else, I would strongly advise that you be sure to have all of your photos on your Mac and that you have a complete backup of your Mac including your photos. iCloud Photo Library is not a backup.

If you want all of your photos automatically synced to and kept on iCloud, your iPhone and your Mac, then you would use iCloud Photo Library. If your iPhone is short on space, turning on Optimize iPhone Storage would help. If your iCloud storage is low on space, buying more storage there would solve that (but would do nothing about the space on your phone). There is more information on iCloud Photo Library at iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

If you do not want all of your photos on both your iPhone and your Mac as well as iCloud, then iCloud Photo Library would not be the appropriate solution for you.

If you decide that you want to discontinue using iCloud Photo Library on one or both devices, see Get help with your iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

If you aren't using iCloud Photo Library on any device, and your objective is only to transfer photos from your phone to your Mac and to then be able to delete them on the phone, some options include:

1. Manually transfer photos periodically from the iPhone to the Mac via USB cable. See the "Import to your Mac" section of Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

2. Use a 3rd party cloud service such as Google Photos. You can use that on both your phone and your computer.

3. Use a 3rd party app to transfer photos. One example https://photosync-app.com/

4. Use My Photo Stream to transfer photos to your Mac. See: iCloud: My Photo Stream overview

and My Photo Stream FAQ - Apple Support

Note that My Photo Stream transfers new photos taken after you have turned it on.

Please can you indulge my novice questions on this topic. If I have only 32g space but want to keep my videos I took on my phone (which upload always to my photos album in iCloud), is the only solution to remove them from my mac to a separate folder and I can then delete from my phone? What I am really saying is that I don't want to lose the videos/photos I took, or perhaps upload the to another cloud service like google drive. Another alternative is to increase icloud storage significantly then there will be no problem except for costs?

Many thanks.

Thank you for your help and useful links. I think I will go for photo sync app or similar, then I can choose where to keep the videos on my Mac but outside of iCloud.

Best regards

Mark

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