Camera Roll v. My Photo Stream v. iCloud Photo Stream
April 28, 2019 10:03 AM   Subscribe

In iOS 12, will disabling/deleting an iCloud account delete photos from the Camera Roll folder? Snowflakes galore inside...

On my wife's 6s (iOS 12.2), her Photos app contains the usual Camera Roll folder as well as a My Photo Stream folder (whatever that is). Camera Roll contains every photo she's ever taken. My Photo Stream appears to contain a small subset of Camera Roll pics. How they got in there is anyone's guess. She doesn't recall ever enabling any sort of photo stream. Every pic that is in My Photo Stream is also in Camera Roll.

She keeps getting prompts to sign into an iCloud account she used to use at another job. She wants to just delete this account from her phone. But, of course, when she tries to, she gets the famous, purposefully scary, "Disabling iCloud will delete iCloud Photo Stream photos from this device" warning.

Q1: Are My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Stream the same thing? If not, what is the difference? There is no iCloud Photo Stream folder on my wife's phone. Only My Photo Stream (and, of course, Camera Roll)

Q2: If I'm reading my research correctly, deleting the iCloud account will not delete any photos currently in the Camera Roll folder. It will only delete pics in the iCloud Photo Stream folder (which doesn't exist). Will it also delete pics in the My Photo Stream folder? And, if it does, am I safe in assuming those photos will still remain in the Camera Roll folder?

FWIW, the iCloud account she wants to delete was for the previous job's shared iCal setup. As far as she can remember, she never used the iCloud account for photos. She does not have iCloud enabled in her actual Apple ID account.

Thanks.
posted by Thorzdad to Technology (2 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: If I recall correctly, it will prompt you after removing the account if you want to keep pictures, contacts, etc. You’re probably fine to delete,

BUT

better safe than sorry. Plug that phone into a computer and download the pictures, or set up some kind of non-iCloud photo sync service like Dropbox or google and verify the pictures are all uploaded. Back it up before taking the risk!!
posted by sleeping bear at 12:01 PM on April 28, 2019


Response by poster: I backed the phone up to our iMac and then removed the iCloud account. It did prompt me about the pictures, and I told it to delete. It deleted the Photo Stream folder, but the pics in question remained in the Camera Roll. So, it's all good. No more iCloud.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:16 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


« Older Online psychotherapy within US   |   Casual learning about anthropology and sociology Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.