Pete_Coach

How do I clear the photos off my IPhone 5 without losing them entirely. They are on the ICloud .
I have searched and all I get is complicated responses and telling to be careful or you will delete them off the cloud and they are gone. One site has 27 answers and stats off with "The short answer is that you can't easily do this – at least not in any way that's practical for normal use."....and they are right, there is no definitive way.
Is there a simple way to delete them off the phone but still have them in the cloud and in Photos on my Mac?

eMacMan

One of the bad things about syncing photos to multiple devices and any cloud server.

I would copy everything you want to keep to a separate folder on the Mac, one that is not synced via Photos to iCloud. You can easily view the contents of that folder in Preview, no need to beat your brains out using Photos and wondering if it is syncing back to the cloud.

Once that is accomplished you can hack away at your iPhone photos to your hearts content secure there is a copy you can access later.

My own approach at that point would be to uncouple your iPhone photos from the cloud, then erase as needed. Since I have neither an iPhone nor an iCloud account, I will also suggest you wait until someone who has both and is familiar with the ins and outs confirms that this is a sound and intelligent approach.

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monokitty

You need to select "Optimize iPhone Storage" on the iPhone 5 under Settings > Photos. This will prevent photos from taking up all your storage while keeping the full originals on iCloud.

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pm-r

I agree with and prefer to use the method eMacMan suggested.

And to do that, I connect the iDevice and use Image Capture.app (Applications folder), select and Import and then delete. It also has an automatic option "Delete after Import" to check if you prefer.

With all the photos in their own, appropriately named folder, they are well protected and one can just drag the folder onto the iPhoto (Photos) app icon if desired. And yes, that does duplicate the storage space but no big deal if they are important.

BTW: I'm not sure and I would do some checking, but I've read some place that deleting photos from one's Mac or iDevice can also delete them from on'e iCloud, a place I tend to adamantly avoid or use.



- Patrick
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hppaswe

To clean these photos from iPhone without losing them entirely ,You should read this tutorial carefully ,because it has the power to permanently delete photos on iPhone.

pm-r

That's good advice, but I imagine they have managed it do it by now as they were asking about doing it some ten months ago.