Are iOS betas independent of iCloud Photos?

[virginblue4]

Hi everyone,

I have an iPad Air (M1) at home that only gets used for streaming services a few times a month so am thinking of putting the iPadOS 26 beta on it. I have no issues with bugs or apps not working properly but I have around 60,000 photos and 15,000 videos all backed up to iCloud, is there any risk of losing these due to the beta? I assume even if something were to go wrong they technically would go into a deleted folder but this is the only thing that makes me worry about installing a beta.

Do I need to worry about this?

 

[HouseLannister]

Don't make iCloud your sole backup. I'd recommend at minimum putting One Drive or Google Photos on your iPad and syncing the photos there too. And/or keep a copy on a computer that is incrementally backed up.

There are only two types of people: those who backup and those who have never lost data.

 

[virginblue4]

Don't make iCloud your sole backup. I'd recommend at minimum putting One Drive or Google Photos on your iPad and syncing the photos there too. And/or keep a copy on a computer that is incrementally backed up.

View attachment 2520027

There are only two types of people: those who backup and those who have never lost data.

Thanks, good advice. I’m already in the process of uploading my photos to Amazon Photos, my videos to Onedrive and then both photos and videos to two external hard drives but have only done the last years worth so far so still got quite a way to go!

 

[russell_314]

Thanks, good advice. I’m already in the process of uploading my photos to Amazon Photos, my videos to Onedrive and then both photos and videos to two external hard drives but have only done the last years worth so far so still got quite a way to go!

I would create a physical back up of all your photos on a separate hard drive. Just make sure it’s the actual photos and not some shortcut to them because I know on macOS you can tell it to offload photos to iCloud where it just has the shortcut on the Mac.

I don’t consider any cloud syncing service like iCloud or Amazon photos a backup just for the reasons you mentioned. A back up is where you can delete everything off your computer and it’s still somewhere.

There are cloud backup services that are actual backups like backblaze and carbonite where it’s not going to delete the photo on the cloud when you delete it on the device.

 

[Paddle1]

The answer to your actual question is yes they're independent. iCloud Photos is its own platform and a certain device being on a different OS than another doesn't affect iCloud itself.

Still, there's always a risk as nothing can be 100% guaranteed.