How to Delete Photos from Your iPhone But Not iCloud: A Comprehensive Guide

Running out of space on your iPhone? It’s a common frustration, especially for those who love snapping photos and videos. The good news is that you don’t have to sacrifice your precious memories to free up storage. You can delete photos and videos from your iPhone while keeping them safely stored in iCloud. This guide will walk you through various methods to achieve this, ensuring you understand the process and avoid accidentally losing your treasured media.

Understanding iCloud Photo Library and Storage

Before we dive into the how-to, it’s crucial to understand how iCloud Photo Library works. When enabled, iCloud Photo Library automatically uploads and stores your photos and videos in iCloud. This means that your media is accessible across all your Apple devices signed in with the same Apple ID, and it’s also backed up in case anything happens to your iPhone. There are two main storage options associated with iCloud Photo Library:

1. Optimize iPhone Storage: This option, which is generally recommended, stores smaller, device-optimized versions of your photos and videos on your iPhone. The original, high-resolution files are kept in iCloud. When you view a photo or video, your iPhone downloads the original version from iCloud on demand. This helps save a significant amount of space on your device.
2. Download and Keep Originals: This option stores full-resolution versions of all your photos and videos on both your iPhone and in iCloud. This ensures immediate access to your original files but takes up considerable space on your iPhone.

The key to deleting photos from your iPhone without removing them from iCloud lies in using the ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ option. If you are using ‘Download and Keep Originals’, deleting a photo from your iPhone will also delete it from iCloud, which is generally what we are trying to avoid. However, even when using ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’, if you do delete photos on your iPhone, these will still end up in the ‘Recently Deleted’ album on your iPhone and iCloud until they are permanently deleted.

Method 1: Enabling ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’

If you haven’t already, the first step is to ensure that ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ is enabled. Here’s how:

1. Open the Settings App: Find and tap the ‘Settings’ app on your iPhone’s home screen. It’s the grey gear icon.
2. Tap Your Name: At the top of the Settings menu, tap on your name. This will take you to your Apple ID settings.
3. Tap iCloud: Select ‘iCloud’ from the list of options.
4. Tap Photos: Under the ‘Apps Using iCloud’ section, tap ‘Photos’.
5. Select ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’: Choose the ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ option. If it’s already selected, you’re good to go. If ‘Download and Keep Originals’ is selected, you will need to change it to ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’. This process will cause your phone to upload your originals to iCloud and then reduce the size of the photos stored on your device. Note that this process may take a while depending on how many photos and videos you have. Ensure your phone is plugged into power and has access to a stable Wi-Fi connection to speed the process up.

With ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ enabled, your iPhone will intelligently manage your photo storage, keeping full-resolution versions in iCloud and smaller, device-optimized versions on your iPhone. Now, when you delete a photo from your iPhone, it won’t be removed from iCloud.

Method 2: Deleting Photos from Your iPhone

Now that you’re set up with the correct storage option, here’s how to delete photos from your iPhone:

1. Open the Photos App: Launch the Photos app on your iPhone.
2. Navigate to the Photo(s) You Want to Delete: Browse your photo library to find the specific photo(s) or video(s) you want to remove from your device. You can use the ‘Library’ tab or the ‘Albums’ tab to locate your media.
3. Select the Photo(s):
   • To delete a single photo: Tap on the photo or video to open it.
   • To delete multiple photos: Tap ‘Select’ in the upper-right corner of the screen. Then, tap on each photo or video you want to delete. A blue checkmark will appear on each selected item.
4. Tap the Trash Icon: Once you’ve selected the photos, tap the trash can icon (located in the bottom-right corner of the screen for a single photo and bottom left corner for multiple selected photos).
5. Confirm Deletion: A confirmation message will appear, asking if you want to delete the selected items. Tap ‘Delete Photos’ or ‘Delete [Number] Items’ to proceed.

The deleted photos and videos will now be moved to the ‘Recently Deleted’ album, both on your iPhone and iCloud. They are not permanently deleted at this stage.

Method 3: Emptying the ‘Recently Deleted’ Album

When you delete photos and videos, they are moved to the ‘Recently Deleted’ album for a period of 30 days. During this time, you can recover them if you change your mind. After 30 days, they are permanently deleted. If you want to free up space immediately and permanently remove the deleted files, follow these steps:

1. Open the Photos App: Launch the Photos app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the ‘Albums’ Tab: At the bottom of the screen, tap on the ‘Albums’ tab.
3. Scroll Down to ‘Utilities’: Scroll down until you find the ‘Utilities’ section.
4. Tap ‘Recently Deleted’: Tap on the ‘Recently Deleted’ album.
5. Select Photos to Permanently Delete or Delete All: You have two options:
   • Select Individual Photos: Tap ‘Select’ in the top-right corner. Tap on the specific photos or videos you want to permanently delete, a blue checkmark will appear on selected items. Then tap ‘Delete’ in the bottom-left corner, then tap ‘Delete [Number] Items’.
   • Delete All Photos: Tap ‘Delete All’ at the bottom of the screen and then confirm your decision by tapping ‘Delete [Number] Items’ again. This will empty the entire album.

Once you’ve deleted the items from the ‘Recently Deleted’ album, they are permanently removed from your iPhone and iCloud. They will no longer be recoverable. Note that in some cases, especially when dealing with large volumes of photos, the deletion may take some time.

Method 4: Utilizing Shared Albums (An Alternative Approach)

Another method to save space on your iPhone while retaining your photos is by using Shared Albums. This method doesn’t directly delete photos from your main library, but it can serve as a secondary storage for some of your media. Here’s how it works:

1. Create a Shared Album:
   • Open the Photos App.
   • Go to the Albums tab.
   • Tap the ‘+’ button at the top left of the screen and choose ‘New Shared Album’.
   • Give your shared album a name and tap next. You can invite other people to the shared album but this is not required for this approach.
   • Tap ‘Create’.
2. Add Photos to the Shared Album:
   • Navigate to the photos you want to add to the shared album.
   • Select the photos and tap the share icon in the bottom left of the screen.
   • From the share options choose ‘Add to Shared Album’.
   • Select the shared album that you have just created.
3. Remove Photos from your device after they have been added to the shared album: Follow the standard photo deletion procedure to remove photos from your main library as discussed in method 2 above. The photo will still be present in the shared album.

Note that there is a limit to the number of photos in a single shared album, so for a very large photo library, this might not be a suitable approach for all your photos. This method can be a good solution if you want to create an organized separate library of photos for sharing purposes while at the same time removing it from your main library.

Important Considerations and Troubleshooting

• Wi-Fi Connection: Uploading to iCloud and downloading optimized versions requires a stable Wi-Fi connection. If your Wi-Fi is unreliable, the process might take longer or may not work as expected. Connect to a reliable Wi-Fi network before making any changes.
• iCloud Storage Limits: iCloud offers a free 5GB storage, but this might quickly fill up if you have a large photo and video collection. You may need to purchase additional iCloud storage, or alternatively use the shared album method described above.
• Time for Syncing: When you enable ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ for the first time, syncing your photo library to iCloud can take time, especially if you have a vast collection of photos and videos. Be patient and allow the process to complete. Also note that the optimized version takes some time to appear on the phone after the original has been uploaded to iCloud and the full-resolution version has been removed from the phone.
• Turning iCloud Photos off: If you decide to turn iCloud Photos off, you will be given the option to either download the originals to your device, or remove them from your device. If you chose to remove them from your device, the photos will still be present in your iCloud account. However, in future when you delete a photo from your iPhone, it will no longer affect iCloud. However if you re-enable iCloud photos, the photos will once again re-sync between your iCloud account and phone.
• Data Usage: When you’re viewing photos or videos that haven’t been downloaded locally, your iPhone downloads them on demand. This can consume data if you’re not connected to Wi-Fi, so keep this in mind if you have limited data plan.
• Recovering Deleted Photos: If you accidentally deleted a photo you wanted to keep, as long as it’s within the 30 day grace period, it’s still in the ‘Recently Deleted’ album, follow the same steps to get to the ‘Recently Deleted’ album and then select the photos to recover, then tap ‘Recover’ instead of ‘Delete’.

Conclusion

Deleting photos from your iPhone without losing them from iCloud is a valuable way to manage your device’s storage. By understanding how iCloud Photo Library and ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ work, you can keep your precious memories safe while ensuring that your iPhone runs smoothly. Whether you choose to utilize ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’, Shared Albums or both, these methods should ensure you are able to keep all your photos, videos safe without consuming all the storage on your iPhone. Remember to regularly clear out your ‘Recently Deleted’ album and be mindful of your data usage when accessing iCloud content on cellular data. By following the above instructions, you should now be able to delete photos from your iPhone while maintaining a complete library in iCloud and make the best use of both local and cloud storage.