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Hi Apple Community,
My photos and videos are taking up almost 3/4 of my HDD space with everything syncing between my multiple devices. How do I remove photos from my phone and local drive but still keep everything stored (and uploading) into iCloud?
TIA :)
iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Another way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photo Library turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.
iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Another way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photo Library turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.
As Foxfifth points out, you don't, as that's not what the iCloud Library does.
If you want that kind of archiving feature check out Google Photos.
Remove photos from my phone/mac while keeping in iCloud
