disable photos

[petekjohnson]

I have an iPhone XR that is not activated on cellular service that i want to basically use as a household shared "iPod Touch" in the living room. I would like to NOT have any of my photos accessible, but even when i turn off Photos in iCloud, they all are still there, and if I go the extra step of trying to delete them, it tells me that they will be deleted from iCLOUD PHOTOS in 30 days unless i undo it. I dont want anything to happen to my iCloud Photos, online or on my actual phone or mac. I just dont want this XR shared device to be able to see any of them. Cannot figure out how on earth i am supposed to do this.

 

[petekjohnson]

UPDATE: I THINK maybe the only way to do this is to fully disable iCloud Photos on the device and turn off Photos within iCloud settings and then manually delete every picture (all 11,000 of them) which will delete them FROM THE DEVICE while otherwise not touching your cloud library at all and disabling all further syncing in both directions to that device. Not remotely easy to find, let alone do.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I have an iPhone XR that is not activated on cellular service that i want to basically use as a household shared "iPod Touch" in the living room. I would like to NOT have any of my photos accessible, but even when i turn off Photos in iCloud, they all are still there, and if I go the extra step of trying to delete them, it tells me that they will be deleted from iCLOUD PHOTOS in 30 days unless i undo it. I dont want anything to happen to my iCloud Photos, online or on my actual phone or mac. I just dont want this XR shared device to be able to see any of them. Cannot figure out how on earth i am supposed to do this.

So what I did was create an Apple Family and created an account specifically for Apple TV purchases and shared devices. This prevented the photo problem that you're describing.

That said, my experience in the past is, if you turn off iCloud Photos it'll slowly remove them all eventually.

 

[petekjohnson]

So what I did was create an Apple Family and created an account specifically for Apple TV purchases and shared devices. This prevented the photo problem that you're describing.

That said, my experience in the past is, if you turn off iCloud Photos it'll slowly remove them all eventually.

Hmm, had not occurred to me to try this method. But I already have a Family and i think i am maxed out on members, so i cant test it now anyway. I THINK my above solution is the solution i wanted, it was just neither obvious to figure out or simple to do.

 

[Puonti]

I happened to go through this recently so I can confirm the way to do it is as you described (except you don't need to manually remove anything - it's a really simple and easy procedure). For the benefit of anyone else coming across this thread later, as of iOS 16 the procedure is:

Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> Photos -> Sync this iPhone OFF

You'll be asked if you want to remove all photos from the device you're doing this on. If you do, originals will still be kept in iCloud.

 

[petekjohnson]

Actually that was the first thing i tried, and unless i grossly misunderstood the following dialog boxes, it basically told me that the photos were deleted (no device specified) and would be fully removed from iCloud Photos in 30 days, unless you undid it. If you log in to iCloud dot com, a yellow banner across the page informed you that your photos were pending deletion. I could not figure out if this was actually going to delete everything, everywhere, or just a lot of very badly worded messages. I could not take that chance. That is why I wrote my post to begin with......

Thanks,
Pete

 

[AppliedMicro]

and then manually delete every picture (all 11,000 of them) which will delete them FROM THE DEVICE

Easier to do from a (connected) Mac then doing it manually.

 

[Puonti]

@petekjohnson If you weren't posting on the iOS 16 forum I would be tempted to guess that you're describing an older version of iOS. I recall feeling that the iCloud Photos disabling experience used to be unclear way back when, but at least with iOS 15 and 16 I've felt confident in the messaging.

If these same steps gave you warnings about photos being deleted from iCloud after 30 days, though, then I'm glad you found a way around it.

 

[petekjohnson]

yes iOS 16. i disabled internet on this device before deleting photos to ensure that no deletions got passed up against my wishes, but it was perfectly safe. Very poor explanations and settings design.

 

[fatTribble]

Just a thought. Could you add a new family member and use that Apple ID for your iPhone XR? It would have access to subscriptions like Music but not Photos.