How to recover disappeared Photos on my iPhone?

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 just noticed I’ve lost everything from June 30- August 8, 2024. I have documented SO much this summer and it’s all gone without a trace. Nothing in recently deleted. Wtf. Thank god I had one weekend uploaded to whatsapp but I made so many memories in July, and they are all gone. So very upset. This might be the thing that finally makes me leave Apple. Been an iphoner since iphone 4.

I can seen to find about 12 years of photos from my phone and cloud it’s like someone got into my cloud and erase most of my most important moment and best photos, plus apple also eliminated my apple Id and did not returned my movies that where very expensive and I purchased through that account, now all my family history is gone so much money to pay for cloud storage for them to erase what I paid for!

The same thing happened to me. I resolved by going to photos in Settings. There I saw that my syncing to my phone had been toggled off. There were only 2,000 photos on my phone but 11,000 on iCloud, so now it has begun the syncing back to my phone. Hope that works for you too

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.

I know this sounds simplistic and maybe everyone else's situation is different, but I just got the 20,000+ photos from 2-5 years ago that went missing returned back on my phone (they were still stored online in the cloud but not accessible on my phone until a few days ago)... I just went to profile settings and realized my device backups was toggled OFF (for whatever reason), so I toggled it ON: then it started Syncing again until I had all 20,000+ missing pics back on my phone again.

I pay $9.99 for 2 Terabytes of storage monthly as well.

I sincerely hope its this easy for the rest if you to fix. Just check all your icloud settings. Also see if its on "storage optimization" versus "keep originals" setting too. I toggled it back to "keep originals" which may have helped jumpstart it back to life - probably after trying to fidget with settings to try bringing my photos back onto my phone ...

Additionally I do have Google photos app that are all intact from 2009. Cheers for the rest of you!

I lost 90% of my thousands of photos, but was able to recover them. I realized my iCloud Photos toggle had gone to off. Go to Settings then Photos and toggle on. It took about a week for the photos to all load.

If it's happened to you, it is likely too late. You 30 days once they have disappeared, and they probably disappeared a long time ago. If not, go online and in the Photos trash and bring them back from the dead.

If they are gone for good, hopefully you have a backup somewhere and you can begin the arduous process of bringing in your photos and then de-duping them. It took me several days to do this and, hopefully, I had backups from years ago on a drive.

Could not of spoken more trust my perception and understanding on the matter is that Apple customers they do not delve into thoughts of care they cannot see past the matter they sell phones plus providing benefits when a problem rises they do not and cannot fix after all they say no to take the time to attempt the amend

Afraid for the upset with this reply mate. Apple are a multi millionaire company they can’t attempt to address customer issues. Ate a massive portion of salt for months I have finally laid down efforts of continuing. Distraught. Valuable possessions are more meaningful than a necessity however give apple poor results in this category. Customer care. Below 1 for rating.

I'm glad that worked for you, but it isn't a solution. iCloud is not a recovery service; it is a transfer portal so you can retrieve files and information to your iPhone, iPad, and PC. That's all it does. If you are moving photos and you do not see them on your device, you have 30 days to get them out of the trash can on iCloud. After 30 days, they are gone forever. That's the ONLY way it works. They do not stay up on iCloud and not show up on your devices. The only choice you have is to either have the full files downloaded or simply the thumbnail with full version on iCloud. But once they go missing, you have 30 days to retrieve. The problem for most people is once they realize they are missing photos the 30 days has long passed.

This is a significant fault on Apple developers and every time I've inquired with Apple they do say it isn't an issue from their end. Well, it is.

Always follow the 3 2 1 rule. Keep copies of important files, including Photos, on three different storage devices; on two different types of media (e.g., online backup and hard drive); and at least one offsite. BUT REMEMBER: iCloud is not a backup service; it is only a transfer service. Time Machine is a backup service where your info is backed up on a separate hard drive.

This is going to sound weird but I used Amazon Photos and they found the bulk of my pictures. I have extra storage from iPhone that I pay for monthly but I can’t find them there. I have extra Google storage and I can’t find them there. I get Amazon photo as I have an Alexa Show 21 and there they are. Most of them I can’t find see online but even more show up on my Alexa device.

I would like to cancel the extra storage but I’m not sure how Amazon found them.

Pictures related to crime have disappeared and 3 years ago, something very incriminating failed to record even though I am sure I was recording. It was erased instantly therefore.

Phones do not want to make any federal case happen. Federal courts are only for the very wealthy, not me. Phone dictate you use drugs to be normally "American" social, or they watch you constantly.

yes I did all that. They weren’t on my iCloud backup either. Nor my recently deleted or hidden folders. I checked everywhere for them and couldn’t find them.