Question about iCloud photos

[yaxomoxay]

Ok, possibly a very stupid question…

If on my iPad I disable under Settings —> iCloud Photos, that won’t touch my actual icloud photos and the setting on my iPhone, correct? It will just free up space on the iPad, without deleting photos or anything from my iCloud, right?

 

[Slartibart]

you are using the same Apple ID on both devices, I assume? if you disable iCloud Photos on one device , it will not affect the photos on the other device.

It won’t magically free up space on the device (let’s call this one “Bjœrn”, okay? ?) on which your turned off the iCloud Photos-support.

But if you delete photos on Bjœrn (photos which where synced to iCloud Photos when this sync was active) and activate iCloudPhotos in the future again, they will be deleted on iCloud Photos too.

 

[yaxomoxay]

you are using the same Apple ID on both devices, I assume? if you disable iCloud Photos on one device , it will not affect the photos on the other device.

It won’t magically free up space on the device (let’s call this one “Bjœrn”, okay? ?) on which your turned off the iCloud Photos-support.

But if you delete photos on Bjœrn (photos which where synced to iCloud Photos when this sync was active) and activate iCloudPhotos in the future again, they will be deleted on iCloud Photos too.

Thanks!

 

[BBDDVV]

hmmm, I think this works slightly different/safer:
when turning this setting off, I seem to remember it asks you what to do with the pictures on you iPad: delete them (will free up space) or keep them.
As stated by Slartibart above, this will not affect the pictures in iCloud, they'll stay there. Nor does it change the setting on any other device you're logged in with the same Apple ID.

When you choose to keep them locally and then delete some on your iPad, switching this setting back ON again later, will not delete the pictures from iCloud, but will re-download the ones that are in iCloud but you don't have locally... I.e. only when the setting is ON and you delete a picture, the picture will be deleted from iCloud...

 

[contacos]

yeah I used to do this a lot

Deactivate iCloud Photo on device X
You will probably still see photos on device X itself (even if you tab "delete from device")
Wait a little bit to make really sure it is not your "iCloud data"
Now you can delete all the remaining photos in the photos app without deleting them from iCloud Photos.
Everything will remain in place on device Y
Once you activate iCloud Photo on device X again, everything will return (most as thumbnails, with full copies stored in the cloud)

I mostly did this to wipe my locally stored photo data but of course it will return, depending how much space is left on your device. Apples algorithms decides how many photos to offload in full to the cloud based on your available free local space on device X or Y.

 

[w5jck]

If you need to free up space on a iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can set up "shared albums" for photos and videos to be stored in the iCloud. You will then have access to view those photos and videos on any of the devices that use the same iCloud account sign-in. This means you can view them, even copy them to your device or share them with others without having to put them on your device. It does require access to the iCloud though via Wi-Fi or cellular data. I find this very convenient since I have and personally use two Macs, two iPads, and an iPhone. For my use it makes more sense to have the photos and videos stored in one place on the iCloud rather than trying to put them on multiple devices. But of course YMMV.