I'm trying to understand how iCloud works, especially when it comes to iCloud Photos. If I turn off iCloud Photos, does that mean iCloud has none of my photos anymore, or just the new ones I take after it's disabled? I got pretty confused because when I switched to a Samsung phone, I found all my photos, even some I thought I had deleted years ago! If I want iCloud to keep no photos at all, what steps do I need to take?
1 Answer
iCloud Photos is more of a sync service than a backup. When it's enabled, every photo you take automatically goes to iCloud. If you disable it, all the photos already uploaded stay there; you just won’t sync any new ones. That’s why you saw deleted photos on your new Samsung—they were still in your iCloud account. To make sure iCloud shows no photos, you'd have to log into icloud.com and delete them manually, keeping in mind that if iCloud Photos is still active on any device, deleting from the website will remove them everywhere.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I had no idea you have to manually delete them.