my iPad and phone were synced up and I didn’t think twice when I deleted all of my phones from my iPad. I was able to restore them a while later, but I recently noticed that all of those photos are gone again! I don’t see them on my iCloud either… any help?
iPhone 17, iOS 26
sunshinehue wrote: … They should exist in a back up!
The iCloud Backup, set at Settings>[name]>iCloud>iCloud Backup does not do a double backup of pictures. If your pictures were synchronized using iCloud Photos, then they can't be on iCloud Backup.
You're right, we should keep a separate backup on an external drive. That's pretty much the only safeguard against deleting pictures, deleting from Recently Deleted, and then later changing our minds.
They may still be recoverable if:
✔ If Recently Deleted is empty everywhere, you need a backup from before deletion to recover them
I have had confusing issues similar to this aswell but they weren't of important photo's thankfully, it does concern me though to be frank, hopefully it's not because of a delayed sync/removal from online stuff. There really should be a grace window to keep the backup copies preserved temporarily afterwards so we can 'undo' where needed
Adpocalyptic wrote:
There really should be a grace window to keep the backup copies preserved temporarily afterwards so we can 'undo' where needed
That is what the "Recently Deleted" album is for. It keeps deleted items for 30 days unless you manually circumvent the safety net.
They should exist in a back up! I just restored my iPad and it wouldn’t let me choose the backup that I believe my photos are stored in! Just picked one for me!
Photos disappeared even after restoring them
