Deleting photos from iCloud.com will not simultaneously delete photos from iPhone camera roll

Submitted by everydayanswers t3_126xim7 in iphone

Okay so I used to go on iCloud.com, download my photos from a trip to my computer, and while they were all still selected in iCloud.com, I would delete them. They would then automatically delete from my phone’s camera roll. They would be stored on my computer’s hard drive and this is how I’d clear up space from my phone.

2 weeks ago my camera roll stopped syncing to iCloud. But in a weird way. Let me say that my wifi works, my cellular connection works, and I even upgraded to 2 TB in iCloud to try and resolve this issue. If I take a photo on my phone, I see it pop up in iCloud.com. HOWEVER if I delete a photo in iCloud.com, it still remains on my phone. I deleted 300 photos on iCloud last night and moved around images in albums but these changes were not applied to my iPhone.

I called iPhone support and she told me what I’ve been doing is NOT possible because my camera roll and iCloud are 2 completely separate entities that do not connect with each other and if you delete on one, if cannot simultaneously delete on the other as a security precaution. I told her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about bc I’ve been doing this for years. I only started having this problem once iCloud stopped syncing with my phone.

I will say that I was running out of storage space so I clicked “stop backing up to iCloud” in my photos app but have since freed up some space and reinstated the backup option. And like i said, i upgraded my storage as well. It seems like my phone is stuck in “do not automatically back up” mode. I want to toggle off the “Sync” option on iCloud photos to try and reset it but since I have all my photos optimized for storage, it will delete them all off my phone and only keep them on iCloud. This may be the solution to reset the whole auto backup process but I’m afraid of losing the photos on my phone and then not knowing how to put them back on. At this point, it seems like I will have to delete 10k photos on iCloud and then the same 10k photos off my camera roll. I don’t have the time or patience.

If you are siding with the Apple support lady, below is a link to what I’m talking about: https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-delete-photos-from-iphone-icloud/

Maybe something changed in the last update but I’m pretty sure it’s just a sync issue and idk how to make everything delete at the same time.

EDIT: the problem fixed itself without me doing anything ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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[deleted] t1_jeboohu wrote

I don‘t get the issue here. For me it works flawless, if i delete one Photo or more via icloud on Computer it automatically delete it on my other Apple devices. You need to activate the Sync with iCloud. Otherwise it won‘t work.

If your Gallery is Stuck somehow try to reset settings or the entire iPhone its safed in the Cloud anyway (except banking apps).

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everydayanswers OP t1_jebu27j wrote

Well the issue is that it doesn’t work lol. It used to and now it doesn’t. The sync is activated but it seems to be stuck somewhere in the digital process. Gonna have to reset it and hope for the best

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ZivH08ioBbXQ2PGI t1_jec29qp wrote

That's not how you're supposed to do it, and as long as you have iCloud space (or don't mind paying for enough space) you should let them all in iCloud.

If you have iCloud Photos enabled, your photos should all upload in full quality to iCloud, and then your phone is able to get rid of the full versions and just keep thumbnails in your Photos (if your phone needs the space) so that if you go to look at older photos, you'll have a momentary pause while it downloads the full version seamlessly.

There's no reason to mess around with getting them off your phone onto a computer and manually do any of that -- unless you don't have space in iCloud.

Your phone will basically keep as many photos in full quality as it can based on available free space, but they can be purged at any time because it will just download the full version again if you open it.

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based_trad3r t1_jecr2ne wrote

iCloud photos syncs and uploads photos to the cloud while storing a smaller version of the photo on your phone. No need to interface with computers. Click on photos that are stored in the cloud and full-size downloads.

Less rambling, more to point.

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everydayanswers OP t1_jecojk6 wrote

Right I get what you’re saying, but that’s not how I want to do it. I use another cloud service to store my images, as well as on an external hard drive as backup. The only reason I use iCloud is to see my photos on my desktop, as a mirror of my phone. I don’t want to use iCloud as the actual storage service because I’m using other services for that. Whether or not that’s efficient or not is irrelevant

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SailTravis t1_jecsofb wrote

I would try restarting your iPhone if you haven’t tried doing that. Maybe the setting change will take hold when it restarts.

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everydayanswers OP t1_jecxnip wrote

I restarted iPhone, turned cellular on/off, connected to other WiFi’s, nothing fixed it :/

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