Confirming iCloud Photos deletion on MacBook Pro without losing data

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jeffpodraza Author

Level 1

19 points

Confirming iCloud Photos deletion on MacBook Pro without losing data

I'm hoping for a confirmation..

My main machine is an iMac M1 with 1TB Internal Storage.

My work machine is a MacBook Pro with 512GB Internal Storage.

I sync everything to iCloud and pay for 2TB Cloud Storage

I have ~135GB of Photos. I want to free up space on the MBA and have turned off photo syncing on the MBA. The photos are still there.

I'm assuming that I need to go and delete the photos from the MBA; however, I would like confirmation that I won't lose the files in the cloud or locally on my iMac.

Thank you in advance to the community.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: iCloud Syncing and Photos

Posted on Sep 14, 2025 1:39 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

FoxFifth

Community+ 2025

Level 10

475,383 points

Sep 14, 2025 1:45 PM in response to jeffpodraza

If you have iCloud Photos turned off on the MBA they should only delete from the MBA. Also, if they were going to delete for other devices (i.e., if iCloud Photos was still on), you would receive the following warning when deleting from the MBA:

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Answer 2

Sep 15, 2025 7:28 AM in response to jeffpodraza

If you turn iCloud back on, then you'll get all those pictures back.

You might need to move some stuff to an external hard drive. You can get a small SSD that weighs 1 ounce and is easy to use with a MBA (MacBookAir) or MacBook Pro or whatever it is you have. But don't depend on Flash Drives!

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Answer 3

jeffpodraza Author

Level 1

19 points

Sep 14, 2025 2:03 PM in response to FoxFifth

Excellent, and yes, it's synced on the others so that they move to the iMac and iCloud from the iPhone

Thank you for the quick reply.

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