Help me with this iCloud/iPhoto problem?
November 3, 2018 9:45 AM   Subscribe

Oh gosh, why does Apple make iCloud so confusing? Help, please. Many, many details under the fold.

So we've got 3 iPhones: me, husband, kid.

On all three phones, we do not choose to back up photos to iCloud. Me because I'm diligent about removing keeper photos from my phones and backing them up in a safer way. Kid because he takes a jillion photos of nothing with his friends.. Husband, because he has almost 5000 photos on his phone that he refuses to edit or trim down. 90% of them are irrelevent, un-pretty, non-keeper things -- like, he photographs a school flyer so he remembers the date of the bake sale, then never deletes the photo.

A couple of days ago I get a message that iCloud storage is almost full, and I'm about to be charged $3/month to increase the size. It turns out that somewhere along the way Husband's photos started backing up to iCloud.

I go to his phone and turn off "photos" in iCloud Backup. I go to iCloud (on my desktop) and turn off Photos. I think we're done.

Then I get this email:

iCloud Photos has been disabled on all your devices and new photos and videos are no longer uploading to iCloud.
There are currently 3770 photos and 624 videos in your iCloud Photos
Original format, full resolution versions of your photos and videos are not stored on your devices. You must download your full resolution photos and videos to at least one device before they are deleted from iCloud Photos in 30 days.
To download your photos and videos to an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 8 or later:
1. Connect to a power source and Wi-Fi.
2. Go to settings, tap on your account, tap iCloud, and then select Photos.
3. Tap Download and Keep Originals.
If your library exceeds the storage space available on your device, you can download your photos and videos to your Mac or PC from iCloud.com.
If you do not want iCloud Photos turned off, you can turn it right back on your iOS device:
1. Go to Settings and tap iCloud.
2. Select Storage and tap Manage Storage.
3. Select iCloud Photos and Undo Delete.
The iCloud Team

Can you help me understand this? I don't care if every photo that's on iCloud right now is deleted in iCloud. But does this mean they'll be deleted on Husband's phone? I do not want that. I want them to stay on his phone.

Help?
posted by BlahLaLa to Technology (4 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think you'd better download those photos and videos to your Mac or PC. If any if them are worth keeping, he needs a backup, and I would not trust iCloud not to delete them, even if you go reenable iCloud on his phone and pay what they are demanding,

On your Mac or PC, use a web browser to log in to iCloud.com. See if it's not too hard to download them from there.
posted by chromium at 3:12 PM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Go to the iphone, settings, photos, look to see if it is set as "optimize iphone storage" or "downloand and keep originals", you have to choose one setting or the other. I imagine, with 5000 photos, the setting must be at optimize, otherwise the phone would probably be out of space. If that's the case, you have to go to his photos account and download them, that's the only place that has full-resolution copies of the photos. Another option would just be to delete all the inessential photos and then switch to "download and keep originals". Depending on how much space is free on the iphone, that may be an easy or ridiculous task.
posted by skewed at 4:48 PM on November 3, 2018


Best answer: To be a little more clear about what's going on:

Since people often take so many photos and base iphones only used to have 16gb of storage, apple designed a system that would allow you to keep all the full-resolution photos offline in 'the cloud' so that your phone wouldn't be full and make you angry when it can't take a photo at an important moment. This is what happens when the phone setting is on "optimize iphone storage". The full-resolution copies of the photos are no longer on the iphone, just smaller versions that take up dramatically less space, but still look okay on an iphone screen. This lets you take huge numbers of photos without going over capacity, even with a 16gb phone. But eventually, you go over the "free" amount of space apple gives you for your icloud account (5gb I think? I don't remember). Then you start getting the messages you've been getting. You either have to delete photos, pay for more storage, or download the photos from your icloud account, then delete them from icloud, leaving more room for new photos.
posted by skewed at 4:54 PM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I don't care if every photo that's on iCloud right now is deleted in iCloud. But does this mean they'll be deleted on Husband's phone? I do not want that. I want them to stay on his phone.

As usual, Apple is sure it knows what you want better than you do, so its iCloud "backup" process has already deleted those photos from his phone. If you want them, you'd better download them quick smart.
posted by flabdablet at 9:01 PM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


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