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Managing Pictures between iPhone/iPad and iCloud

Hi all. How can I retrieve pictures that were deleted from my iPhone, and iPad, which I thought were permanently saved on iCloud, and didn't realize they were, as well, been deleted on iCloud? In other word, how to safely delete from iPhone/iPad, but keeping them saved on iCloud, until, I purposely deleted them from that particular location? Tks

iPhone 6s, iOS 13

Posted on Jun 21, 2020 2:09 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 21, 2020 2:24 PM

For the first question, see Recently Deleted. More information in Get help with missing photos – Apple Support


For the second question:

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 Photos 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.


1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 21, 2020 2:24 PM in response to Zkeee

For the first question, see Recently Deleted. More information in Get help with missing photos – Apple Support


For the second question:

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 Photos 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.


Managing Pictures between iPhone/iPad and iCloud

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