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iCloud Photos

I had an iPhone with 128 gb memory so never had an issue with memory and didn't use iCloud for backing up my pictures. I also have a 128gb iPad so always backed up my pictures to both my iPad and my PC. I upgraded my phone and my new one only had 64 gb or memory so decided I should backup to iCloud as it said it would free up about 25.5 gb of memory on the phone so upgraded iCloud to the 50 gb which was more than enough to back up my pictures and messages, contacts etc. Everything backed up fine and I still had about 15-20 gb free in my iCloud account. Sometime later I get a message that my iCloud is full and it can no longer back up anything. It turns out it also tried to backup my iPad as well which had all of what was on my iPhone as well as other pictures that I didn't really care about. When iOS14 was released I wanted to upgrade my iPhone but there was not enough storage available as it was not backing up to iCloud so called Apple to find out how to download the pictures back onto my iPad and delete them from iCloud so I could backup only my iPhone. The Apple rep helped me get things downloading to my iPad and instructed me on how to delete the pictures from iCloud once they had downloaded to my iPad. After everything was downloaded back to my iPad I followed his directions to delete everything from iCloud and I did check iCloud and it showed there was only about 4gb of the 50gb used and there were no photos so assumed everything went as planned. I had also received a message saying that my photos had been deleted from iCloud but would still be available for download for 30 days.

 

I thought I could now have it backup my iPhone photos. It showed that 25.54 gb would be freed up on my iPhone if I turned on iCloud photos so turned it on expecting it to start uploading. I checked an hour or two later and it showed 1% so just left it overnight and in the morning it still showed 1%. I did check iCloud and it still showed there was only about 4gb of the 50gb used and there were no photos. I then called Apple and the rep said it could take a while to upload and we did check a few things and everything was as it should be. She said it did show the pictures I had deleted were still available to download but also that my iCloud account no longer contained the photos and I had approximately 45 gb free so there should be no reason that I could not upload the 25.5gb of photos from my iPhone. She created a ticket and said that they would see if they could find the issue and someone would get back to me. She also mentioned perhaps it had something to do with the phone wanting to upgrade to iOS14. I decided to just delete some apps to create some room for the upgrade and everything went fine as far as the upgrade but still was not uploading photos to iCloud and them a short time later it showed my phone memory was full once again. Before doing any of this I had connected my iPhone to my PC and backed up all of my photos. I decided to connect my phone to my PC again and now in addition to the 6 10xApple folders I had numerous iCloud folders as well so it became apparent that the phone was downloading the deleted pictures from iCloud rather than uploading my pictures. I turned off iCloud pictures on my phone hoping it would remove the iCloud photos but it did not and now shows I could free up 38.41gb on my phone my enabling iCloud photos. I am not sure where it found the extra memory on my phone as when it showed I could save 25.5gb by enabling iCloud photos my phones memory was full so now it shows I could free up an additional almost 13 gb than it showed before and my phone memory used is the same as before. I did delete about 5gb of apps to install iOS14 but that still leaves about 8gb difference. I tried deleting the iCloud folders from my iPhone with my PC but it would not delete them.

 

So after this really long winded explanation what I would like to know is first off how do I get rid of the iCloud folders that contain pictures on my iPhone as I do not want to reupload them to iCloud and use up storage when I don't want them on iCloud and then secondly once I get rid of those pictures how do I prevent the deleted pictures from iCloud from redownloading  to my phone once I enable iCloud photos again? If I knew which of the photos on my phone was from iCloud I could delete them that way but there is several hundred photos and have no idea how to tell which ones were originally on my phone and which were downloaded from iCloud.

 

Thank you

Posted on Sep 25, 2020 10:57 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 25, 2020 12:26 PM

jackdup777 wrote:

So after this really long winded explanation what I would like to know is first off how do I get rid of the iCloud folders that contain pictures on my iPhone as I do not want to reupload them to iCloud and use up storage when I don't want them on iCloud and then secondly once I get rid of those pictures how do I prevent the deleted pictures from iCloud from redownloading  to my phone once I enable iCloud photos again? If I knew which of the photos on my phone was from iCloud I could delete them that way but there is several hundred photos and have no idea how to tell which ones were originally on my phone and which were downloaded from iCloud.

If you do not wish for the photos to re-upload to iCloud after permanently deleting them, you can turn off iCloud Photos and for other apps (Notes, Reminders, Mail, etc.) you do not wish to use for iCloud. As for permanently deleting the photos, you can try going to iCloud.com from a computer and removing them from the Recently Deleted folder, assuming that's where they currently are.

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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 25, 2020 12:26 PM in response to jackdup777

jackdup777 wrote:

So after this really long winded explanation what I would like to know is first off how do I get rid of the iCloud folders that contain pictures on my iPhone as I do not want to reupload them to iCloud and use up storage when I don't want them on iCloud and then secondly once I get rid of those pictures how do I prevent the deleted pictures from iCloud from redownloading  to my phone once I enable iCloud photos again? If I knew which of the photos on my phone was from iCloud I could delete them that way but there is several hundred photos and have no idea how to tell which ones were originally on my phone and which were downloaded from iCloud.

If you do not wish for the photos to re-upload to iCloud after permanently deleting them, you can turn off iCloud Photos and for other apps (Notes, Reminders, Mail, etc.) you do not wish to use for iCloud. As for permanently deleting the photos, you can try going to iCloud.com from a computer and removing them from the Recently Deleted folder, assuming that's where they currently are.

Sep 25, 2020 12:51 PM in response to zinacef

I want the photos that were originally on my phone to upload again but not all the iCloud photos that were supposed to be deleted that downloaded to my phone after turning on iCloud photos. There were originally 25.5 gb of photos on my phone that I wanted to upload but since it downloaded a bunch of the deleted ones from iCloud it is now 38 gb and don’t want to upload all of those only the 25 gb that were originally on my phone. I just don’t know how to delete only the photos that downloaded from iCloud.

iCloud Photos

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