With the introduction of the iCloud photo library to sync to your iPhone, Apple has made a platform where all devices share the same library. Even when you select Camera roll and go into the ‘album view’ you will see it change to ‘all photos’. This means that what you are seeing is actually synced to your iCloud and deleting them will just mirror in your iCloud.
However, if by any means you would want to delete photos from your iPhone but still want them to appear in your iCloud account you are in for a trade.
How to delete photos from iPhone without deleting from iCloud
To delete photos on your iPhone and leave them on iCloud, it will require you to disconnect the two photo libraries. You should;
Disable the ‘iCloud photo library’
- On the iPhone, Go to settings
- Select your account/ Name
- Select iCloud
- Photos
- Toggle the ‘iCloud photo library’ off
`Turning it off will enable your iPhone to have a different photo library that will not reflect changes to your iCloud account
Read Also: How to recover photos from a dead iPhone
Sign out of iCloud
When you sign out of iCloud from your iPhone you will also be able to delete photos from the iPhone without the reflecting to the iCloud.
- Open setting from your iPhone
- Select iCloud
- Scroll down to sign out
- Select sign out and confirm the action
- Choose either to keep or remove iCloud from your iPhone
When you sign in again iCloud will automatically start sharing photos with your iPhone and the photos will automatically reappear.
Delete photos from iPhone but not mac
The above methods will also unlink your iPhone to iTunes meaning your Mac can contain all the photos that you delete from your iPhone thus you can keep the copies.
This is great especially after importing your iPhone photos to your Mac.
You now have a separate iPhone and iCloud Photo Library
Now that you have disabled the sync between iCloud and your device, you can now keep a separate photo library on your iPhone and another on iCloud. Syncing them again is simple. If you are still encountering problems, let us know.
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Alex is an IT technician who shares his experiences with Apple devices occasionally. He has a collection of Apple devices (from iPhone 4) and has recently started trying out Android.
IG: @I M_Alex