iCloud photos missing

[SophieKartofi]

I recently found a software problem on my iPhone 7. I don’t know if any of you have experienced it, it didn’t connect with the microphone and speaker at all. That’s not important, but what I read about it was that the only way for me to get rid of the problem was to get a substitute from an Apple store. I was travelling at the time so I knew I had to do this as soon as I got back. I realized that I have to find a way to save all my stuff so I bought 200 GB iCloud storage to store all my apps but most importantly, my photos. I turned on every single thing in the iCloud settings on my phone before backing it up. Long story short, I got a brand new iPhone 7. I restored it from the iCloud and everything was okay, except for my photos. There were 2 photos from the first days of my previous phone’s life and around 150 other ones, from my trip. There are around 4000 photos out there somewhere and I have no idea how to access them. I downloaded iCloud for Windows on my laptop and followed all the tips I found on Apple support. What should I do? Seems like they’re all lost, but why? What did I do wrong?

 

[nieks]

first of all:

I realized that I have to find a way to save all my stuff so I bought 200 GB iCloud storage to store all my apps but most importantly, my photos.

Icloud does not store apps. It stores data, and only some apps might store some data.
Back to the photo's. I experienced a similar issue with my sisters phone yesterday. She said: i bought 200GB storage, but somehow there are no photo's in there! What happened? And i believe, the same happened to you. It's this:

Photos will upload all your pictures to the cloud, but it will not upload all 4000 pictures over 3g/4g/LTE. To save on your dataplan, it will upload large quantities of pictures over wifi. In your case, if you bought the 200 gb, changed phones, but meanwhile your old iphone did not upload the pictures into icloud, there are no photos for the new iPhone 7 to be downloaded. You should have checked that everything uploaded before you switched phones.

There are around 4000 photos out there somewhere

Most unfortunate and most probably: you are too late, and there are no 4000 photos out there anymore. I'm sorry. If you handed in your old phone, there is no way of getting back your photo's. To make sure: on a computer (mac or windows, does not matter), open a browser and go to www.icloud.com , sign in and click on the Photos app. Here you will directly see all the photos and albums that are in your iCloud account.

 

[SophieKartofi]

Excuse me for my wording, I meant to bring the attention to the photos being the most important thing. I did it all over WiFi. I also didn’t have a way to check. I didn’t have the two phones at the same time or anything. I thought everything was okay. I even made the backup the previous night to make sure all was good. I have no idea what is happening. Checked it on the computer and they’re not there, but I’m still sure this can’t be.

first of all:


Icloud does not store apps. It stores data, and only some apps might store some data.
Back to the photo's. I experienced a similar issue with my sisters phone yesterday. She said: i bought 200GB storage, but somehow there are no photo's in there! What happened? And i believe, the same happened to you. It's this:

Photos will upload all your pictures to the cloud, but it will not upload all 4000 pictures over 3g/4g/LTE. To save on your dataplan, it will upload large quantities of pictures over wifi. In your case, if you bought the 200 gb, changed phones, but meanwhile your old iphone did not upload the pictures into icloud, there are no photos for the new iPhone 7 to be downloaded. You should have checked that everything uploaded before you switched phones.


Most unfortunate and most probably: you are too late, and there are no 4000 photos out there anymore. I'm sorry. If you handed in your old phone, there is no way of getting back your photo's. To make sure: on a computer (mac or windows, does not matter), open a browser and go to www.icloud.com , sign in and click on the Photos app. Here you will directly see all the photos and albums that are in your iCloud account.

 

[nicho]

Excuse me for my wording, I meant to bring the attention to the photos being the most important thing. I did it all over WiFi. I also didn’t have a way to check. I didn’t have the two phones at the same time or anything. I thought everything was okay. I even made the backup the previous night to make sure all was good. I have no idea what is happening. Checked it on the computer and they’re not there, but I’m still sure this can’t be.

If you have iCloud Photo library turned on, they are not backed up in a second place (the icloud backup).

It sounds like you didn't leave enough time for the photos to upload to icloud. For reference, my wife recently re-enabled icloud photos and it's done about 8000 photos in 24h, but we have really really good (200meg) internet and the phone has been unused.

I'm afraid if I'm following what you've said, and you only turned it on the night before wiping the phone, there's a good chance they're not out there somewhere, they're gone.

 

[nieks]

I have no idea what is happening.

Please read my post and please read what @nicho posted. That's whats happening: you took the 200gb icloud storage, but did not take enough time to let your phone upload all photo's to the cloud.

Checked it on the computer and they’re not there, but I’m still sure this can’t be.

Well, you better be at peace with this, because (and again, I'm very sorry for you for losing all photos) if they are not visible at www.icloud.com then they will not be visible anywhere else, because they do not exist anymore

I even made the backup the previous night to make sure all was good.

Your iCloud backup will not backup your photo's, as this is usually taken care of through the iCloud Photolibrary.

It sounds like you didn't leave enough time for the photos to upload to icloud. For reference, my wife recently re-enabled icloud photos and it's done about 8000 photos in 24h, but we have really really good (200meg) internet and the phone has been unused.

So yeah, that problably happened. I'm sorry we can't be of any more help