You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Importing Photos Using iCloud

When I take pictures, it automatically uploads to "Photos" on my Mac because a guy at the Apple Store set it up for me. But when I delete it off my phone, it deletes off my Mac permanently.


Before, I could manually import my photos to my Mac and then delete it off my phone, but now it doesn't show any pictures to import because it already uploads.


How can I bypass this? My phone is holding 7,000 photos and I want to delete some.

MacBook

Posted on May 28, 2019 10:26 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 28, 2019 11:01 PM

You must not use iCloud Photos on your iPhone, if you want to have different photo libraries on the iPhone and the Mac. The purpose of iCloud Photos is to keep your devices in sync and to make the photo libraries on all devices identical.


If you want to be able to sync your photos manually between the Mac and the iPhone, disable iCloud Photos on the iPhone. Then you can delete photos from the device without deleting them from the iPhone. Are already all photos from the iPhone on your Mac? If not, I would wait with turning off iCloud on the iPhone, until you are sure, that all photos have been transferred.


If the AppStore also enabled "Optimize Storage" on the iPhone, you have to switch "Download Originals" before you turn off iCloud Photos and then wait for all photos to come back from iCloud.

Go to Settings  > [your name] > iCloud > Photos

Tap "Keep Originals".





1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 28, 2019 11:01 PM in response to iphone10xuser

You must not use iCloud Photos on your iPhone, if you want to have different photo libraries on the iPhone and the Mac. The purpose of iCloud Photos is to keep your devices in sync and to make the photo libraries on all devices identical.


If you want to be able to sync your photos manually between the Mac and the iPhone, disable iCloud Photos on the iPhone. Then you can delete photos from the device without deleting them from the iPhone. Are already all photos from the iPhone on your Mac? If not, I would wait with turning off iCloud on the iPhone, until you are sure, that all photos have been transferred.


If the AppStore also enabled "Optimize Storage" on the iPhone, you have to switch "Download Originals" before you turn off iCloud Photos and then wait for all photos to come back from iCloud.

Go to Settings  > [your name] > iCloud > Photos

Tap "Keep Originals".





Importing Photos Using iCloud

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.