Turn iCloud Photo Library back on again, storage needed?

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Level 1

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Turn iCloud Photo Library back on again, storage needed?

On my iPhone 6, I disabled iCloud photo library temporary because of a syncing problem I encountered. I choosed to keep the pictures on my iPhone. Now, when I want to turn iCloud Photo Library back on again, iCloud is complaining that I need more storage to do that (the photo library on my device is about 25 GB). I was hoping that it would be smart enough to understand that it's still the same library, but it doesn't.

So: how do I put things back in sync without loosing anything? I use the same account for the Photos app in macOS High Sierra. I'm afraid if I delete the photos from my iPhone, they will be deleted as well from iCloud?

Thanks!

Posted on Mar 1, 2018 4:17 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

194,755 points

Mar 1, 2018 8:08 AM in response to Petman

Sign up temporarily for more cloud storage. iCloud is is estimating the required cloud storage using the worst case assumption, that all photos on your iPhone are different from the photos already stored in iCloud, and it will refuse to turn on iCloud Photo Library again, if the photos will not fit in addition to the photos and videos already in iCloud.

When Photos uploads the photos again to iCloud it will check for duplicates, and not create duplicates in iCloud. Once you got iCloud Photo library working again, you can change your subscription back to the lower amount of iCloud Storage. See: If iCloud Photo Library cannot be turned on again because of lack of Cloud storage after moving or restoring the Photos …

Alternately, you could delete all photos from your iPhone (only the ones that are already in iCloud), before you turn on iCloud Photo Library again on your iPhone. If your iPhone is currently not syncing with iCloud Photo Library, it is safe to delete the photos, because the deletion cannot sync to iCloud. Check, if iCloud Photo Library is enabled, before you start deleting. And do not delete any photos, where you are not sure, if you have them in cloud or on your Mac.

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