iCloud Photos Question

[BigMcGuire]

Phone: iPhone 6+ 128GB
iOS: Latest

Question: Is there anyway to remove photos from the iPhone locally without removing them from iCloud Photos?

Why? : I have used cellphones for a long time. I've gotten in the habit of using Google Photos to back up all my photos (67k+). I've lived with 16GB iPhones for a long time so this habit I got into was to manually delete photos every month (having Google Photos store them all). Yes, I know I have a 128GB iPhone now, but I noticed with iCloud Photo Library turned on there is no way to remove photos from the iPhone without removing them from the iCloud Photo Library as well and Apple removes any way to mass delete photos (only way to delete with iCloud Photo Library ON is to manually select each photo one by one).

I pay for storage with Google Drive and Apple's iCloud and would love to use both to store my photos while continuing my habit of removing photos from my iPhone every month. But it looks like if I use iCloud Photo storage it will NOT let me remove photos from my iPhone and keep them in the iCloud.

Time to kill the habit or am I missing something?

 

[TwiceNightly]

Phone: iPhone 6+ 128GB
iOS: Latest

Question: Is there anyway to remove photos from the iPhone locally without removing them from iCloud Photos?

Why? : I have used cellphones for a long time. I've gotten in the habit of using Google Photos to back up all my photos (67k+). I've lived with 16GB iPhones for a long time so this habit I got into was to manually delete photos every month (having Google Photos store them all). Yes, I know I have a 128GB iPhone now, but I noticed with iCloud Photo Library turned on there is no way to remove photos from the iPhone without removing them from the iCloud Photo Library as well and Apple removes any way to mass delete photos (only way to delete with iCloud Photo Library ON is to manually select each photo one by one).

I pay for storage with Google Drive and Apple's iCloud and would love to use both to store my photos while continuing my habit of removing photos from my iPhone every month. But it looks like if I use iCloud Photo storage it will NOT let me remove photos from my iPhone and keep them in the iCloud.

Time to kill the habit or am I missing something?

There isn't a way of deleting photos on the phone without deleting them in the iCloud Photo Library as far as I know. However, it does sound like enabling the "optimise iPhone storage" in the photos setting would work well for what you're after. I have 7950 photos and 161 videos in my library and it only takes up just under 3gb on my phone.

 

[tomekosiowy]

Wait for iOS9. You will be able to enable better management sub-system for iCloud Drive. In shorter words: You will move photos to a folder of your choice on iCloud Drive.

 

[bushido]

what i do is ...

disable iCloud Photo on my iPhone
delete all the pictures from the iPhone
enable iCloud Photo again
now it will add everything back as lower quality images

i do that every few month to get rid of all the local copies that add up after a while
i used Google Photo before and the "problem" was that it made iCloud Photo download every single picture in the background so it could upload them to google. I did the steps above to get my storage back once they were all uploaded to google

 

[vipermo]

Is there a quick way to remove all photos from your phone ? i have disable iCloud Photo on my iPhone

 

[BigMcGuire]

Is there a quick way to remove all photos from your phone ? i have disable iCloud Photo on my iPhone

When I have iCloud Photo Library turned off and I hook my phone up to my Macbook it gives me the option to "Delete Items after Import" with the photos app. But with iCloud Photo Library turned on that option is not available.

Also if you have a Windows computer nearby (with or without iCloud Photo Library turned on/off) you can delete items after importing photos to the computer. This seems to be the fastest way (I don't readily have a Windows machine to do this anymore (Mac Mini + Macbook Air)). Apple disables that "delete items after import" unless iCloud Photo Library is off.

With iCloud Photo Library on I have to manually select each photo by hitting Select on the top right (in the iPhone) and tapping each photo once then doing a delete. Remember to go to Albums --> Recently Deleted --> Delete All.

 

[vipermo]

Guy this is amazing thanks to all of you my phone has gone from 33 gigs to 1.2
Shame you have to do this tho but very handy should be made a sticky..
thanks again guys..

 

[Fuchal]

iOS manages photos cache on your phone and when space gets low it will automatically remove the full size version with optimized images or thumbnails.