How to prevent iPhone photos from syncing to iCloud?

lovelycrimsonred wrote:

What I want is photos I take to be on the device I take them on, and nowhere else.

You can certainly set things up that way – but that is a recipe for losing any photos that matter to you.

If photos that you value exist on your phone, and only on your phone, then it just takes

• Someone stealing your phone
• Your phone falling to the floor and breaking
• You forgetting your passcode and having to erase everything on the phone to get back in

for you to have a really bad day.

When I choose "download and keep originals," the photos appear back on my phone, but if I try to turn off "sync this phone," they disappear!

Have you considered the possibility that

• You turned on iCloud Photos and "Optimize iPhone Storage" some time ago.
• Your photos and videos take up so much space that there is no room to store the full-size versions of all of them on your phone.
• And that therefore there is no way for the phone to fully comply with your demands?

You’ll need to disable iCloud sync in settings. That’s it.

if you already have files in iCloud, turning off sync will not remove the files. It only prevents syncing.

if you optimize, you’ll first want to download originals to your device before syncing to your computer.

How to turn off iCloud Photos - Apple Support