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.

If I delete pictures in my iPhone, do they get deleted in iCloud also?

If I delete pictures off my phone do they also get deleted on iCloud?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]


iPhone 14

Posted on Jun 14, 2023 11:56 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 14, 2023 2:43 PM

If you are using iCloud Photos which you really haven’t made clear, whatever you do on one device is reflected across all devices and in iCloud as well. iCloud Photos is a syncing service and not off device storage, so if you delete a photo on your phone, you delete it in iCloud as well as all of your other devices that are singed into your Apple ID and using iCloud Photos.


This is copied from the support article that razmee209 posted in their reply.


How iCloud Photos works

iCloud Photos automatically keeps every photo and video you take in iCloud, so you can access your library from any device, anytime you want. Any changes you make to your collection on one device change on your other devices too. Your photos and videos are organized into Years, Months, Days, and All Photos.And all of your Memories and People are updated everywhere. That way you can quickly find the moment, family member, or friend you're looking for.


Further down in the article….


What happens when you edit or delete photos

When you edit or delete photos or videos, the changes are reflected across all of your devices.


7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 14, 2023 2:43 PM in response to Trop2953

If you are using iCloud Photos which you really haven’t made clear, whatever you do on one device is reflected across all devices and in iCloud as well. iCloud Photos is a syncing service and not off device storage, so if you delete a photo on your phone, you delete it in iCloud as well as all of your other devices that are singed into your Apple ID and using iCloud Photos.


This is copied from the support article that razmee209 posted in their reply.


How iCloud Photos works

iCloud Photos automatically keeps every photo and video you take in iCloud, so you can access your library from any device, anytime you want. Any changes you make to your collection on one device change on your other devices too. Your photos and videos are organized into Years, Months, Days, and All Photos.And all of your Memories and People are updated everywhere. That way you can quickly find the moment, family member, or friend you're looking for.


Further down in the article….


What happens when you edit or delete photos

When you edit or delete photos or videos, the changes are reflected across all of your devices.


Jun 15, 2023 3:45 AM in response to Trop2953

Trop2953 wrote:

But if my phone is not syncing then nothing is backed up on iCloud Right?


What is it you what to achieve? Do you want a backup of your photos, or do you want to move selected photos of your iPhone to save storage on your iPhone to store them elsewhere?

iCloud Photos has not been intended for either of these purposes. If that is what you want, use a different service. See: Three Good Reasons for Using iCloud Photos Library and when not to use it - Apple Community

  • iCloud Photos is not a backup. A backup has to be an independent safety copy, where we never touch of modify the saved data. But iCloud Photos is holding the photos we are continually working with. It is the main storage of our photos. If you want a backup of your photos, do not use iCloud Photos. We can only recover the current state of our devices from iCloud. And a further problem - as soon as iCloud Photos is enabled, the regular iCloud backups of your iPhone you are (hopefully) making regularly will no longer include your photos at all. You will have to backup the photos to a computer or another backup service.
  • iCloud Photos is neither a separate external storage of your Photos, where we can archive photos to get them off our devices. We can save storage on our iPhone with iCloud Photos with optimize storage, but but we cannot control which photos will get optimized. To save storage with iCloud Photos enable optimize iPhone Storage in the iCloud settings for Photos, but do not delete any photo from your iPhone that you want to keep.


Demo has explained how iCloud is working. It is perfect for users who want keep the photos libraries on several devices identical and in sync, even if the system versions are different. And if our device is lost or stolen or stopps working, we can recover our data from iCloud, but not if we are blundering and accidentally delete our data.


Jun 14, 2023 2:39 PM in response to Trop2953

That will depend on whether your iPhone is syncing with iCloud Photos or not. If you have enabled iCloud Photos on your iPhone, iCloud will keep the photos in iCloud identical to the photos on your iPhone. When you are working with the photos on the iPhone you are working at the same time with the photos in iCloud and on all other synced devices.

If you want have different photos on your iPhone then iCloud, you have to disable iCLoud Photos on your iPhone before you delete any photos from the iPhone.


If I delete pictures in my iPhone, do they get deleted in iCloud also?

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