Photos from my Mac showing up on my iPhone 7 and I don't want them taking up phone storage

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Photos from my Mac showing up on my iPhone 7 and I don't want them taking up phone storage

How do I get the photos from my Mac (taken from a camera stored on an SD card imported into Photos) to NOT be automatically synced via Wifi onto my phone???? I do not want the thousands of pictures I have taken with my camera that I want stored on a computer, getting onto my phone and take up all of my storage. How do I stop this?? I tried going to iTunes and looking at Photos on my device but all it says is "iCloud Photos is on. iPhone can access photos in iCloud. Photos can be downloaded to your device via wifi or cellular data." No check box to say sync or unsync or whatever... HELP! I am not very tech savvy.

iPhone 7 Plus, Mac computer

Posted on Dec 5, 2017 11:30 AM

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Answer 1

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francie12345 Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 5, 2017 3:10 PM in response to léonie

Thank you for responding -- however, does this mean my photos will no longer be stored in my iCloud? I also love how my monthly photos from my phone appear on my computer in a photo stream for the month. Will this be disabled if I disable iCloud photo library? I just don't want my Mac pictures on my phone, but I want my iPhone pictures backed up to my Mac. Does this make sense?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,519 points

Dec 5, 2017 12:26 PM in response to francie12345

"iCloud Photos is on. iPhone can access photos in iCloud.

This message means, that you enabled iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone. If you upgraded the iPhone to iOS 11, this option will have been enabled by default.

If iCloud Photo Library is also enabled on your Mac, all photos you import to your Mac will be synced to the iPhone via iCloud. If you do not want this, disable iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone again. But do not use "disable and delete" and erase all photos from iCloud. This would delete them from your Mac as well.

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Dec 5, 2017 4:00 PM in response to francie12345

Yes - but that does not happen with iCloud Photo Library - if you use ICPL then all photos are and any change you make on any device (addition, deletion or edit) is made on all device on all devices and you use optimized photos on devices with limited storage

TO manually control where they are you must manually improt them and manually upload them to the desired location

LN

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

194,519 points

Dec 5, 2017 11:23 PM in response to francie12345

I also love how my monthly photos from my phone appear on my computer in a photo stream for the month.

iPhoto had the monthly photo stream albums, but Photos is behaving differently.

In iPhoto and Aperture you could set the preferences to download photos from My Photo Stream, and disable to upload to your other devices. In Photos for Mac it is all-or-nothing. If you enable "my Photo Stream", you can automatically import the photos from devices that upload to my Photo Stream, but all new photos from your Mac will upload to My Photo Stream as well. And Photos does not create the monthly My Photo Stream albums automatically, that iPhoto created.

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