I recently cleared space on my iCloud account by removing photos and stopping the photo sync on my phone. However, this action also deleted those photos from my phone. I've restored the photos in my iCloud, but I can't seem to get them back on my phone. Every time I try to re-enable photo sync, it prompts me to buy more iCloud storage, which I'd like to avoid. How can I restore the photos on my iPhone so that they retain their original organization and details? My phone shows 3.7 GB of photos, but the downloaded versions are only 1.5 GB, so I think they're compressed. I've seen advice suggesting checking the 'Files > iCloud Drive', but it doesn't display any of my photos.
1 Answer
iCloud synchronizes between devices, meaning any deletions on one device reflect on all others connected to that iCloud account. If your recently deleted folder has been emptied, those pictures are gone permanently unless you had backed them up somewhere else. Also, your photos are only in iCloud Drive if you manually moved them there. It sounds like you have the 'Optimize Storage' feature enabled, which saves space on your device but keeps full-resolution originals in iCloud. You can check out Apple's support page for more details on this.
I see what you mean, but I did recover the deleted files from iCloud, so they exist there but not on my iPhone. Is there any way to download original quality files from iCloud? I figured out how to do that now! I just need to get those files back to my phone and hope the organization stays the same. Thanks for mentioning the optimization; should I keep it turned off? I honestly don't plan to rely on iCloud for photo storage much in the future.