iPhone + Photo Stream + Photos App = Mess

[prvt.donut]

Well done Apple, over the years you have added new functionality (some of them good) and removed others which have been controversial.

I once loved your eco-system but now I sit here with my iPhone constantly full, iCloud constantly full with you trying to make me pay to upgrade my storage options and i now can't update my phone because of it.

In fact I never know where I stand with the Apple photo syncing. Some things are automated? Some are still manual? Photos can be in the cloud, but be careful if they haven't properly synced to the Mac yet!

All i want is to have my photos that i take on my phone sync to my computer when I plug it in and let me delete out the old (sync'd) photos to clear out space.

I don't sync my photos back from my Mac, I just want them off the phone and off iCloud.

Why can't i delete my sync'd photos off my phone!

 

[wlossw]

Well done Apple, over the years you have added new functionality (some of them good) and removed others which have been controversial.

I once loved your eco-system but now I sit here with my iPhone constantly full, iCloud constantly full with you trying to make me pay to upgrade my storage options and i now can't update my phone because of it.

In fact I never know where I stand with the Apple photo syncing. Some things are automated? Some are still manual? Photos can be in the cloud, but be careful if they haven't properly synced to the Mac yet!

All i want is to have my photos that i take on my phone sync to my computer when I plug it in and let me delete out the old (sync'd) photos to clear out space.

I don't sync my photos back from my Mac, I just want them off the phone and off iCloud.

Why can't i delete my sync'd photos off my phone!

This is why I switched to icloud photo library. IT eliminates the pain points you are discussing. Along with a robust backup solution i find it to be far superior to the previous photostream system. The only downside is having to pay monthly for icloud storage.

 

[prvt.donut]

ugh! even worse now! It seems that I have some videos being held hostage in iCloud. They won't sync to my Mac as it says my iCloud isn't big enough to hold my photo library, but i want to download all my photos and videos to my local Mac, not upload. It seems i will have to pay $10 a month for the privilege to access and download them.
[doublepost=1480106085][/doublepost]Why don't the videos from iCloud download to my devices?

I created a new library so that it won't try to upload my current library and it is now able to see the videos that are in iCloud on the Mac Photos app. But when I turn off the iCloud sync, all those photos vanish off the computer again.

 

[prvt.donut]

UPDATE:

Well I seem to have a way of getting around Apple's money grabbing crap.

I made the new library as above, synced everything down to the computer, then opened the library in Finder and copied out all of the masters folders, then I imported those into my actual library.

I am now going through deleting all the old photos manually from my phone, turning off photo stream (i thought it was great, but it seems it doesn't do video files, which still need to be manually sync'd, so whats the point of having 2 methods.

Will be reverting back to the old way of doing things, manually sync to my Mac for all photos and videos.

No to reclaim space on my MacBook Pro how does a 500GB SSD manage to always be full!!!!

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Things are a little strange now aren't they? I remember when we updated to iOS 5 and setup iCloud and everything just kinda worked. Now iCloud is always full, pictures randomly go missing, and the streams get out of order. What happened to simplicity? Oh right... it infected the new MacBooks...

 

[C DM]

Things are a little strange now aren't they? I remember when we updated to iOS 5 and setup iCloud and everything just kinda worked. Now iCloud is always full, pictures randomly go missing, and the streams get out of order. What happened to simplicity? Oh right... it infected the new MacBooks...

Or, you know, iCloud now does more than just a couple of things. That's not to say there should be issues or they shouldn't be corrected as soon as they can be, but that the chances of issues certainly increases.

 

[gwhizkids]

I would just like clear directions as to how to do what the OP wants to do: take a photo, have it upload to cloud and be able to delete the photo from the phone without it being deleted from everywhere else. I'm paying for 200 GB of iCloud storage, so that doesn't bother me. I just have 16 GB on my phone and can't have photos (full size or thumbnails) taking up valuable storage on phone.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Or, you know, iCloud now does more than just a couple of things. That's not to say there should be issues or they shouldn't be corrected as soon as they can be, but that the chances of issues certainly increases.

Not for us it doesn't. Since day one, iCloud handled backups, Photos, Contacts, calendars, reminders, and Safari bookmarks. We literally don't use it for anything else. We started having issues with it when iOS 8 rolled around.

 

[prvt.donut]

My main problem with the situation is that lack of clarity. It's that some things do sync, others don't some things are copied in via photostream and when disparities occur it becomes hard to resolve because as I experienced today you can sync a new photo library to the iCloud to download your missing videos that are stuck in the cloud but if you subsequently turn off the iCloud syncing those videos will self delete! I had to create a new library, connect to iCloud, download them all, copy the files masterfully hidden inside the library file, open my original library and then import.

I discovered why my 500GB SSD in my MacBook Pro was so full with "documents", it seems that when Apple switched us over to the Photos App it created a second library. Luckily the new storage manage/clean up feature in OSX is fairly good so I could finally discover the cause.

It really feels like too little too late from Apple. Their desktop is too simple and their tablet OS is a phone OS.

I am being drawn towards the new Windows 10 tablets as the new computing form factor, taking notes, creating art and consuming content.

 

[prvt.donut]

I would just like clear directions as to how to do what the OP wants to do: take a photo, have it upload to cloud and be able to delete the photo from the phone without it being deleted from everywhere else. I'm paying for 200 GB of iCloud storage, so that doesn't bother me. I just have 16 GB on my phone and can't have photos (full size or thumbnails) taking up valuable storage on phone.

It's entirely unintuitive as to how to achieve that isn't it? In the old days you connected the cable and imported the photos and videos and select the option "delete after import"

Now we have the all pervasive photostream that uploads only the photos to iCloud photostream when connected to wifi. I think there used to be a rule that said you had a month to have a computer download these photos from the cloud before they get deleted but I guess that has gone now and the photostream sort of just blurs into the photo album on the devices.

I have no idea how the situation I ended up in happened but it seems that videos were uploading to the cloud from my phone but was not downloading to my computers because I hadn't turned on iCloud upload in my photo library, but I have about 240GB in my library so it wouldn't let me turn it on (it would try to force me to buy their 1TB $9.99 a month iCloud as it said my library was too big to upload).

So, I then had to do the steps above (create new photo library on the computer, turn on sync, copy the Masters folder out of my new library, import into old library) to rescue the videos being held hostage.

I have iCloud Photo Library turned off and photostream upload on my phone and deleted all the photos that had been previously deleted from the phone.

So now I have 4GB of 5GB free in iCloud and just over 5GB of 16GB free on my phone.



To answer your question, I think you need to go into icloud settings and choose the optimize storage option downloading to this device or just turn off the sync library to this device option all together.

 

[Galacticos]

The title of this thread sums it up. There isn't just one way for photos iCloud and an iPhone to go horribly awry

 

[Lappen71]

I discovered why my 500GB SSD in my MacBook Pro was so full with "documents", it seems that when Apple switched us over to the Photos App it created a second library. Luckily the new storage manage/clean up feature in OSX is fairly good so I could finally discover the cause.

A second library that dont take up space on you harddrive because it´s hardlinks.
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/180176/duplicate-photo-library-for-photos-iphoto

 

[prvt.donut]

A second library that dont take up space on you harddrive because it´s hardlinks.
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/180176/duplicate-photo-library-for-photos-iphoto
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204476

It was around 240GB in size, now I have nearly 300GB free space on my drive. The library said (migrated)

 

[ashindnile]

There's a serious shortcoming with iCloud Photo Library.
You can't store your photos in iCloud and not have them on your device at all.

 

[RByers8252]

All I have to add is that I've been paying $1 a month for 50gb for about 2 years now, I only use it for iPhone & iPad backups and iCloud photos. Both of which 100% of the time and I've never had an issue losing a photo or something not syncing properly. I do know from helping my parents with their accounts not having iCloud storage for photos is a pain to manage since you can't use and mount iDevices as external storage to mass move and delete like you used to be able to. My recommendation is to sign up for google drive for free or something similar to sync photos to your computer.

 

[Lappen71]

It was around 240GB in size, now I have nearly 300GB free space on my drive. The library said (migrated)

So you mean Apple and everybody else is lying and you know best?
It´s a fact that it´s hardlinks and not taking up double the space.

 

[Zandery]

iCloud constantly full with you trying to make me pay to upgrade my storage options.

It is 99¢/mo for 50GB... Worth it for the simplicity of storing Photos in the cloud as well as documents, videos etc.

 

[RByers8252]

It is 99¢/mo for 50GB... Worth it for the simplicity of storing Photos in the cloud as well as documents, videos etc.

I'm going to agree with you but must say Apple should be offering more than 5gb for free now with how much free storage google and drop box will throw at you. I imagine at some point Apple will up the free storage to 20gb to try and reel more people into the cloud.

 

[Zandery]

I'm going to agree with you but must say Apple should be offering more than 5gb for free now with how much free storage google and drop box will throw at you. I imagine at some point Apple will up the free storage to 20gb to try and reel more people into the cloud.

It is only a matter of time before they up it, you get 15GB free with Google and 10GB to 100GB with MS Cloud (if you buy an Android phone you get a 100GB storage for free). Ideally Apple would offer you 5GB per device for free but I will happily pay 99¢ for 50GB as it works, is streamlined and does as it says on the tin with Apple devices.

 

[C DM]

It is only a matter of time before they up it, you get 15GB free with Google and 10GB to 100GB with MS Cloud (if you buy an Android phone you get a 100GB storage for free). Ideally Apple would offer you 5GB per device for free but I will happily pay 99¢ for 50GB as it works, is streamlined and does as it says on the tin with Apple devices.

It's been a matter of time for years now...it seems it's still a matter of time.

 

[prvt.donut]

So you mean Apple and everybody else is lying and you know best?
It´s a fact that it´s hardlinks and not taking up double the space.

All I know is that there was a second library called migrated.

 

[Galacticos]

It is only a matter of time before they up it, you get 15GB free with Google and 10GB to 100GB with MS Cloud (if you buy an Android phone you get a 100GB storage for free). Ideally Apple would offer you 5GB per device for free but I will happily pay 99¢ for 50GB as it works, is streamlined and does as it says on the tin with Apple devices.

.. if photos and iCloud did what it says on the tin there wouldn't be a problem

 

[DaPizzaMan]

I just gave up with backing up my photos to iCloud. I happily use Google Photos for free, unlimited storage. Life is a lot easier this way.

 

[Lappen71]

All I know is that there was a second library called migrated.

That´s true and Finder is reporting a size for both library but in fact it´s only the biggest who is taking up space.

 

[gwhizkids]

I just gave up with backing up my photos to iCloud. I happily use Google Photos for free, unlimited storage. Life is a lot easier this way.

That's what I've done, too. I'd really like to use some of the Apple Photos features, but with even the low-res thumbnails taking up a lot of space on my Corp-issued 16GB iPhone 6, I can't.