Freeing up space on iCloud by deleting photos isn’t working like it should

Question

Freeing up space on iCloud by deleting photos isn’t working like it should

I’m getting messages that iCloud is full. I loaded pictures for 2005-2010 onto thumb drive and deleted from library on MacBook. But even after restarting my iPad, those pictures are still there. On iPad there doesn’t seem to be a way to delete these photos by year and without selecting each photo. And it still says my iCloud storage is almost full. Does this mean I deleted pics only from my Mac and not the cloud? How do I delete from the cloud?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Aug 26, 2024 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

muguy

Level 10

82,477 points

Aug 26, 2024 9:04 AM in response to enuf2bedangerous

If you sync with iCloud, your photos will be deleted everywhere. But, if your storage is full, your sync may not work properly. Go to iCloud and delete some pictures permanently to free some space. You may also not have deleted the images permanently from your Mac.

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Answer 2

Aug 26, 2024 10:08 AM in response to muguy

I do sync photos between devices and my iCloud storage is "almost full". I also deleted only photos through 2010, after making sure they are actually on my thumb drive. When I deleted them it said they would remain in "Recently Deleted" for 30 days. So when I go to iCloud.com and look at recently deleted, most say there are 29 days left. Does this mean the storage won't be freed up until they are permanently deleted from recently deleted?

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Answer 3

muguy

Level 10

82,477 points

Aug 26, 2024 10:47 AM in response to enuf2bedangerous

Correct. The photos are still using space unless permanently deleted

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