How to recover disappeared Photos on my iPhone?

There seems to be a real problem here in identifying exactly what the problem may be.

My view is that Apple urgently need to address the fact that there seem to be increasing numbers of people losing photos from their iCloud account. However, the water is being muddied because some people do not understand that images deleted from the iCloud will disappear at the same time on all their linked devices.

Also, there are frequent references to Apple having been so helpful in undeleting images. This is only when the deletion occurred a maximum of 30 days before the deletions were noticed. Apart from those who are glued to their devices hour after hour, this is not a long period of time.

Finally, it would be helpful if people reporting losses could confirm whether they have sole use of all their linked devices. If not, anything could have happened and, in most cases, probably has!

After a week of burning time dealing with this issue, the only thing I can recommend is do not assume that Apple Photos is perfect, because it is far from. It will delete photos from time to time for no real reason beyond some issues in programming. So, what should you do?

1. Create regular backups of all your photos and store them in a 3-2-1 format (at least three copies, in two different types of media, and one off site).
2. Do not simply make a backup of Apple Photos from the program. Take the time to export them into a non-Apple Photos file (e.g., a folder with jpegs). Save these in various places and use dates to clarify what the folder contains.
3. If you need to rebuild, find your backups if you have them; if you don't, you're out of luck.
4. Consider a third-party solution to Apple Photos, but they are costly. There is no guarantee that they won't lose photos, too, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
5. Be diligent, period. Don't assume the world is a wonderful place and that turmoil doesn't happen. It does. We lose photos and are left to cry. Be diligent.

If it is beyond 30 days there is nothing Apple can do. This is why people have to have solid backups (again, iCloud is not a backup; it is a transfer function). You have to backup on hard drives. If you use Time Machine, you can get your photos back.

I am currently going through the exact same situation.

10 years of photos, thousands, the last photo of my grandparents, my baby photos, my recent engagement… all gone through no fault of my own.

I contacted Apple support a handful of times, they asked me to:

update my phone

sign out of iCloud and re sign in

factory reset my phone.

and at the end of it.

I was told there was nothing else they can do, I was suggested to backup my photos on a hard drive- to which I replied “why have I been paying for iCloud then for the last 10 years of my life”.

absolutely devastated.

If this is truly the "last few days" have you tried the undelete option? This is only OK within 30 days of the deletion, not of course from the point at which you spotted it!

Had the same problem and found them all in Deleted photos so was able to recover them all.

True. I just had to change the sort.

I have been putting together an album of the last year and there are lots of random photos that are just missing. Not on any of my devices or iCloud, but I remember explicitly taking them and even favoriting a few. It's like they just vanished.

I was asked in April 2024 by the police to provide copies of photographs of evidence of a physical assault on my partner which occurred on 16 October 2023. The required images were taken by my iPhone between 17 October and 24 October 2023, along with some other images of the results of actions taken by the partner between early September and mid-December 2023. I checked that the images were present on the iCloud in early January 2024 and all were present. The point at which I discovered the deletion was beyond the 30-day period on which I could have undeleted the images.

When I attempted to locate the images on my iPhone and my iCloud account the entire group of images for the period 1 September 2023 to 31 December 2023 had disappeared.

I contacted Apple Support to clarify how this situation had occurred. The response was that one of four situations must have occurred:

1: that I had carried out the deletion myself. I am not a fool and we are not talking about the accidental deletion of one or two or even several images but hundereds.

2: that a software application had deleted the images under the control of settings on my computer. I have no such applications. No such instances have ever occurred in ten years of using the iCloud/iPhone image management facilityand none has occurred since the deletion event.

3: a third party with knowledge of my email address could have accessed my iCloud account and deleted the images. This would also require possession of my iPhone in order to authorise the request. Although many third parties know of my email address, including the assailant, my iPhone has not been out of my hands over the relavnt period.

4: an authorised agency (such as the Police) with knowledge of my email address could have accessed my iCloud account and would be able to bypass the iPhone authorisation phase. This is the only logical explanation of the situation but is the most difficult to pursue.

Has anybody else had a similar experience? Apart from the immediate problem of losing the evidence, I am keen to prevent a recurrence of the situation.

KEYSPELL5140

I have the same problem except with THOUSANDS of photos from the last 10 years. I went to go through them and just noticed them all gone. I didn’t delete them and I have no idea how to recover them since they’re not in recently deleted, iCloud storage or in my hidden folder. If someone could offer assistance as to how I recover my photos I’d be extremely grateful. I’m also on an iPhone 14 which I just got a month ago.

Same problem - all pics prior to a date in 2023 (10 years or more of pics) just disappeared. They suggest that if I had acted within 30 days then may have been able to recover. What's purpose of iCloud backup? Mine had updated within last 30 days and thus backup doesn't exist either. I wonder if it is a problem specific to a phone model. I have 14Max.

Does anyone have a solution for this problem if it has been more than 30 days since the photos disappeared? The same thing happened to my wife. We tried all of the solutions proposed. We are going to try Apple support, but we are not sure when this happened. It may have been more than 30 days ago. We did not notice it previously.

Why are the responses on this stream not in chronological order? It makes it very difficult to structure any response to specific comments or requests. This issue should be addressed as a matter of urgency if the serice is to have any real value.

I just got back from vacation and noticed I have nothing from July 3rd to July 6th. I have pictures and videos I took from before that and after that but all is missing from those dates. I definitely didn't delete that range. I back up to Google Photos and not iCloud. I don't even see the photos in Google back up. Not sure how they would complete just disappear and nothing in Recently delete nor Hidden. Hope there is something that can be done.

I have hundreds of photos missing from iCloud! I agree that what’s the point of iCloud??? Luckily, I have them backed up Costco/Shutterfly, but not sure what to do going forward! Went through and deleted almost a thousand of photos/videos (I do have ALOT) to make room but nothing did not seem to restore anything.