I'm trying to back up my photos manually. I've already saved some photos from my old phone onto my Windows PC. Now that I've switched to an iPhone SE (3rd gen), I want to use iCloud, but it insists on backing up all my photos. I don't have enough space for that and I'm not interested in paying for extra storage. Is there a way to upload just the individual photos I want? I've tried using a USB cable to transfer them, but that keeps crashing. Any advice?
3 Answers
It sounds frustrating! Honestly, if you're looking to save a bit of cash, paying that 99 cents a month for extra iCloud storage can give you peace of mind. With that, you can just let everything upload without worrying about space. Then you can back everything up elsewhere afterward if you want. Just a thought!
You can actually go to iCloud.com through a PC or Mac and selectively choose photos to upload from there. Just be aware that on the website, it might prompt you to enable iCloud Photos on your phone, which would lead to uploading everything, so it can get tricky.
That’s what I encountered too! The iCloud web portal seems to want me to turn on iCloud Photos to upload anything, which defeats the purpose since I just want to back up specific photos to my PC.
Unfortunately, there isn't a straightforward way to do just selective uploads on the iPhone. You can choose to sync or not, but if you sync your photos, they’ll upload all the ones on your device. On a Mac, you could use the Photos app to manage uploads more selectively, but deleting any photos from iCloud would remove them from all synced devices. It's a bit restrictive for sure.
I agree, it's frustrating! I've been using my iPhone for a little while, and there are too many little quirks that make it a hassle sometimes.
That's a valid suggestion, but it doesn't really solve my specific issue.