Deleted photos not appearing on iCloud

I have been having issues with our iCloud storage with photo backups. I am sharing the iCloud with my family and all photos transferred to my phone from a family member’s album, so I deleted those so only mine appeared. My photos also appeared on her phone, and she subsequently deleted these also. However in doing this, both sets of photos seemed to be deleted from the iCloud and are inaccessible. I have tried restoring an iCloud backup on my iPhone (from before we deleted the photos) but the photos did not appear.


Is there a way we can retrieve these photos at all? They hold a lot of value to us (over 1000 over a 6 year period!) so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

iPhone 7

Posted on May 1, 2018 4:21 PM

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Posted on May 1, 2018 7:33 PM

iCloud is a syncing/sharing service, not a storage/archival service. If you deleted photos from your devices, then they were deleted from everywhere that was signed into the same iCloud account with iCloud Photo Library turned on (including iCloud.com).


The photos should all be in the Recently Deleted album on your individual devices or in iCloud.com, so can be retrieved.


However, can you explain what your set up is? Are two different people using the same iCloud accounts? If so, is there a reason for that?


Best,


GB

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 1, 2018 7:33 PM in response to ryanbraz

iCloud is a syncing/sharing service, not a storage/archival service. If you deleted photos from your devices, then they were deleted from everywhere that was signed into the same iCloud account with iCloud Photo Library turned on (including iCloud.com).


The photos should all be in the Recently Deleted album on your individual devices or in iCloud.com, so can be retrieved.


However, can you explain what your set up is? Are two different people using the same iCloud accounts? If so, is there a reason for that?


Best,


GB

May 1, 2018 7:22 PM in response to ryanbraz

I am sharing the iCloud with my family and all photos transferred to my phone from a family member’s album, so I deleted those so only mine appeared.

If you shared your Apple ID with another person for iCloud purposes, and had the iCloud Photo Library enabled, you were deleting their photos, and they were deleting yours.


When sharing an Apple ID that way, there is no mine and yours.


If using iCloud Photo Library, they are not in an iCloud backup.


If they are not in the album called "recently deleted", they are gone.

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Deleted photos not appearing on iCloud

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