Cannot access photos

Question

Cannot access photos

Hi, I recently switched devices. I had about 4000+ photos and videos in iCloud on my previous device. When I got all my settings and the back up restored on to my new phone, I wiped the previous one.

However, since then I have not been able to access any of my iCloud media on my new phone. It just shows up as blank squares in my photos. I have everything in iCloud settings turned on to download originals and streaming etc. but no matter what I do I can't view any of the photos and videos I had saved in my iCloud. Has anybody had the same problem and know of a fix?

Posted on May 5, 2018 11:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

May 5, 2018 11:27 AM in response to thechadmartin

probably patience is the answer - keep the IO device powered on on WiFi and give it a few days to sync up - and since you are using iCloud Photo Library it is better not to also enable MyPhotoStream. You are downloading the originals, do you have adequate free space on your IOS device to hold them all?

LN

Reply

Answer 2

May 5, 2018 1:36 PM in response to thechadmartin

It isn't possible to have iCloud Photo Library turned on and only have some of the photos on your phone in it. Likewis if you were using iCloud Photo Library on your phone and on your Mac, you would have the same number of photos on both. If not something was wrong and if something was wrong before you moved to your new phone then your chances of moving to a new phone without issue is diminished.

You say you had 10k of photos on your phone and you had iCloud Photo Library enabled, have you looked at iCloud.com➔ Photos , how many photos do you see there?

Reply

Answer 3

May 5, 2018 11:19 AM in response to thechadmartin

You must be using the same Apple ID (iCloud) account as the previous device so your iCloud content can load on the new device.

Reply

Answer 4

May 5, 2018 1:24 PM in response to thechadmartin

If you have completely filled your allocated cloud space you should not expect things to behave rationally. Furthermore, if after filling up the space, you remove items to free up space or subscribe to additional space, you need to be patient as things will not normalise immediately. You may need to wait a few hours or even days.

Reply

Answer 5

May 5, 2018 12:45 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks for your reply. I've had the new device for a month now, I've only been actively trying to restore them for 3-4 days. But when I'm in my photos on my device they're just showing up blank.

All other photos on my phone are there and are showing up, but everything before that, that was in the cloud, is showing up as a grey square. It isn't updating any photos because I've been checking it frequently over the past few days and it's still blank up to the same date.
Yes I have a 128GB 7Plus and i'm only using about 30GB of it.

Reply

Answer 6

May 5, 2018 12:47 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

Thanks for your reply. I'm using the same account i've used for years. The photos in the cloud are from between 2014-2016 and are the only ones in my phone that are showing up blank. I've been at this for a few days now so the trouble is not the time it takes for my internet to download them.

Reply

Answer 7

May 5, 2018 12:53 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Both. The photos in question were the ones in my iCloud, and I imported everything off my old phone.
When I imported all the photos off my old phone, it excluded the 4000 I had in my iCloud for some reason. So let's say my phone had roughly 10,000 photos in total, my Photos on my computer has only 6000.
So on the new device those same 4000 photos are just showing up as blank squares and they seem inaccessible

All iCloud options in the settings are on to retrieve these photos but for some reason I cant even see them, far less share any of them. When I tried to share one just to see if it would pop up, it said "Unable to Share""There was an error while preparing to share. Please try again later"

Reply

Answer 8

May 5, 2018 1:20 PM in response to Winston Churchill

I only recently purchased an upgrade in iCloud storage. So my iCloud was at capacity with those photos. In the switch over, all the photos that weren't stored in iCloud are back on my device and all of those that were only in iCloud are showing up as blank images.

When I clicked that link, everything seems to be there actually. But for some reason on my phone it's just blank

Reply

Answer 9

May 5, 2018 1:35 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Since I signed into the link you sent me on my computer, for some reason it started to load on my phone as well. Thanks for your help

Reply

Answer 10

May 5, 2018 11:22 AM in response to thechadmartin

We’re they in backup or iCloud Photo Library?

Photos are only included in backups in some circumstances.

You can turn the iCloud backup of Photos on and off at Settings ➔ Apple ID(Top) ➔ iCloud ➔ Storage ➔ iCloud ➔ Manage Storage ➔ Backups ➔ This Device ➔ Choose Data To Backup ➔ Photos.

However, that option is only available if your iCloud Photo Library option at Settings ➔ Photos & Camera ➔ iCloud Photo Library is off. If it's turned on your photos aren't included in backups.

If you backup through iTunes, but again, if iCloud Photo Library is turned on photos don't get included in backups, but if it's off photos are automatically included in backups, i.e. there isn't an option to turn their backup off.

I guess the theory goes that your photos are already in the cloud anyway if you use iCloud Photo Library and that there may be some sort of conflict if you restore photos from a backup while they are synced to iCloud Photo Library. But whilst this makes sense, personally, I still like to backup my photos which I do by using Time Machine to Backup the library on my Mac.

Reply

Cannot access photos

Similar questions