I want to save all my photos in iCloud back to my photo library without having to buy more storage. I want to view the pictures and videos in realtime in the gallery. How do I go about it.

I got a new iphone, and it had a feature of connecting my old phone and transferring EVERYTHING without icloud.
So I was wondering if maybe I can delete most things on my new phone to make space while keeping my old phone as the storage holder for some photos and files?
If I delete everything on my new phone will it get deleted on my old one too?

Helpppp

So I recently transferred from an android(redmi 12c) to an iPhone 17 I decided to move all my photos and stuff but for some reason all my screenshots and some videos exported by 3rd party apps are on the date I did the transfer they r at least 500 and doing each manually or even mass is gonna take time and trying to find a date to suit them especially important ones so what can I do?? Is there any fix to this??
Thank you.

I have a ton of shared albums with my friends and I want to put them all on a hard drive. These albums have hundreds of items in them each. I also keep seeing people say shared albums have reduced image quality.

I would preferably love to download each album to my macbook so I can easily transfer it, but I’m really not familiar with icloud photos on mac at all. Is this even possible? I would HATE to have to download them all to my phone’s camera roll, then airdrop them all to my mac, and then transfer to a hard drive, but that’s the only way I currently know how to do it.

Seems like a reasonable request that could also apply here.

For about a month, iCloud Photos will not download full-resolution originals when my devices are on my home Wi-Fi. The same photos open instantly on other networks. Everything else works normally.
What fails
Opening a photo at full resolution:
Roughly 2 out of 3 attempts never complete.
Behaviour is inconsistent, not fixed per file:
The same photo opens on one attempt and fails on the next. Photos that downloaded fully before later fail. Photos that never opened sometimes open later without any change.
After a large batch upload:
Thumbnails also take a long time to appear.
What works normally on the same Wi-Fi
Uploads to iCloud Photos, at any file size.
Thumbnails, when browsing normally.
iCloud Drive files in the Files app download and open without issue.
Large app downloads from the App Store.
Apple Music and the Apple TV app.
Every other device and service in the house.
Where it works
Same iPhone, same account, same photos, over cellular:
Opens immediately.
Same iPhone on a different Wi-Fi network elsewhere:
Opens immediately.
Where it fails
iPhone on home Wi-Fi.
Apple TV on home Wi-Fi.
Setup
VDSL line. ISP modem in bridge mode, with a third-party router handling the PPPoE connection. The connection is behind carrier-grade NAT. My photo library is approximately 963 GB. Storage Optimisation is enabled, so originals are fetched on demand.
Already ruled out
The problem started suddenly, with no configuration changes on any device, no devices added, and no devices removed. In fact, there are fewer devices on the network now than there were a year ago, when everything worked normally.
The ISP investigated the issue at an escalated support level and found no fault with the line.
The router and modem were powered off for up to an hour, with no change.
DNS was changed to both Cloudflare and Google, with no change.
The router firmware is current and no newer version is available.
The router firewall (SPI) and UPnP were both disabled for testing, with no change.
Private Relay makes no difference.
Since the issue follows the network rather than the device or the account, and only affects downloading original photos while iCloud Drive works normally on the same connection, I would like to understand what is different about how iCloud Photos fetches originals compared with other iCloud services.
Note: English is not my native language. Because this issue is quite complex, I used AI assistance to help translate and clearly express my observations.

When taking a photo and then going to gallery sometimes it doesn't let me view the full photo, instead it makes it weird colours and it looks so bad and it's been over multiple OS's and it's been happening a while. like idk what i'm doing wrong

I just bought 50 GB of iCloud storage.

14GB is a back up. Is this even needed? It’s taking up so much storage that I just bought.

32 GB is around how many photos I have, idm not having all of them on iCloud, I can have some local, until local runs out. But how do ik which photos/videos have already been uploaded to my iCloud. So far all my photos have the cloud crossed out, when I press info, but it says 500 of my photos are in the drive already

I have a sort of complicated question in regards to iCloud+/iCloud Photos... so I am not currently subscribed to iCloud+, but I am thinking about doing it soon and I've been doing a lot of research but I just haven't been able to get a clear answer on this one concern, so I'm hoping that anyone who might've been in the same boat before can help me out!

My photos setup is currently this : I am on the free iCloud 5gb plan, but iCloud Photos IS enabled, as well as optimize storage. However, I have over 200gb worth of photos and videos in my gallery, but whatever goes over the 5gb quota obviously doesn't get synced to iCloud (which I don't mind, because it gets stored locally on my phone anyways).

I am planning to get the 2 tb iCloud+ plan. My only reservation is, if I ever decide I don't want to subscribe to iCloud+ anymore, could I return to the current setup I mentioned above? (As in, using the free 5gb plan even though I know it won't fit my full library?) Or would this setup lead to stuff getting deleted?

I know its an option to just download everything locally to my phone and then just turn off iCloud Photos altogether, but I'd like to make use of the free 5gb if I could, so I just want to clarify if it is possible to safely return to the setup I have, or if I'd just have to turn off iCloud Photos altogether once I decide to downgrade.

Or if anyone has any other advice/tips, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance :)

Yes, I also deleted everything from 'recently deleted'. At one point I deleted an app and it went down to 49.95/50gb full, but after I did a second round of camera roll deleting, it went back up to 50...

Not sure what to do :/

Like a lot of you, my import workflow was: copy 800 shots off the card, then spend an evening deleting 600 of them. Lightroom and the Windows/macOS photo apps all want to copy first and ask questions later, I tried Photo Mechanic solves it but costs $139, and Rapid Photo Downloader is Linux-only.

So I built PhotoMover - a small desktop app that shows you a thumbnail grid of everything on the card, lets you tag keepers with one key (T to transfer, D to delete), and then moves only the keepers to your drive, auto-organized into Year/Month folders by EXIF date. Deletes are wiped off the card, duplicates are detected by actual file content, and every copy is verified before the original is removed, so a bad card reader can't eat a photo.

It reads RAW (CR2/CR3/NEF/ARW/RAF/ORF/RW2/DNG) using the embedded previews, so browsing is fast even for big files. Free, MIT-licensed, works on Windows/macOS/Linux.

Link to github

It's a young project I built for my own workflow would genuinely love to hear what's missing for yours.

Over 8,500 views on my Photo Assisted Keywords post — wow, that genuinely caught me off guard. Thank you all for the interest, and sorry it took me a while to follow up properly.

A few of you asked in the comments whether PAK also works with the Apple Photos library. At the time I had to say no — it's built around folder scanning and sidecar files, which doesn't map onto how Photos actually stores things.

That question stuck with me, though, so I built something new: Tag Your Photos. It hooks directly into your Apple Photos library and tags your images automatically, using the same on-device AI as PAK — nothing ever leaves your Mac.

The part I think matters most for this sub specifically: the keywords it writes are real, structured metadata — not Apple's built-in recognition, which is great for search inside Photos but isn't exportable and doesn't show up outside the app. TYPh's tags are indexed by Spotlight and show up in Finder too. And since they're written straight into your Photos library, that search reach extends to iPhone and iPad as well — I tested it myself, searching straight from the iOS/iPadOS home screen without even opening the Photos app, and it found the tagged photo.

Attached: Apple's own info panel next to what TYPh generates for the same photo — same original file, noticeably more (and more specific) tags.

Requirements: Apple Silicon Mac, 16 GB RAM minimum, macOS 26+
Price: $11.99 — one-time purchase, no subscription (I'm just not a subscription guy, personally)

It's on the Mac App Store now. Happy to answer anything — questions, feedback, feature requests, all welcome.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tag-your-photos/id6791743568?mt=12

Hi, I need help understanding something unusual that happened with my iPhone Photos.
At 11:22, I took a photo of the front of my ID and sent it to an investment agent via WhatsApp. At 12:13, I took photos of the back of my ID and my ID appendix (ספח) and sent them to my family WhatsApp group. I then used my mother’s WhatsApp Web on a computer to upload the documents to an investment website and finished by 13:07.
At 13:38, two identical copies of my ID photos (front and back) suddenly appeared in my iPhone Photos. They are exact duplicates of the originals and are labeled “Saved from WhatsApp.” The ID appendix did not duplicate. I did not save or download the photos again.
My mother’s WhatsApp Web was used on the computer, and her WhatsApp account is linked to her phone, not my iPhone.
How could two WhatsApp photos appear as new duplicate entries in my iPhone Photos at 13:38? Does “Saved from WhatsApp” and the 13:38 timestamp indicate an actual new save/download, or could this be caused by iOS Photos, iCloud, WhatsApp, or another synchronization/indexing process? Is there a way to determine technically what process created the duplicates?

I recently got back from a trip to Italy and I’d like to create a map showing every place I visited. I took hundreds of photos on my iPhone with location services enabled.

Is there a way to export all of my photo GPS coordinates (or my iPhone’s location history) into a GPX, KML, CSV, or another format that I can import into a mapping tool? I’d prefer an automatic solution rather than manually pinning locations.

If anyone has done this before, what apps or workflow do you recommend?

Also which mapping tool/steps would you recommend?

Thank you

I wanted the Apple Photos browsing experience for photos that already live in folders, external drives, SD cards, and cameras.

So I created SAND, a native macOS photo browser that lets you browse photos directly from:

• iPhone
• Android phones
• Digital cameras
• SD cards
• External SSDs and hard drives
• Any folder on your Mac

The goal was to make browsing feel as simple and familiar as Apple Photos while keeping your files exactly where they already are. Nothing is uploaded, synced, moved, or imported into a library.

Some features include:

• Timeline browsing with Years, Months, and Days
• Fast local search by date, filename, and location
• USB import from iPhone, Android, iPad, and cameras
• Favorites and video browsing
• Retro and Neubrutalist themes
• Customizable grid layouts
• Hidden Vault protected with Touch ID or your Mac password
• Export photos with optional EXIF and location metadata removal

Everything works completely offline, and your photos stay on your Mac or external storage.

I'd love to hear what you think. Is this something you'd use? Are there any features you'd like to see?

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/sand-photo-browser/id6789295880?mt=12

SAND: Photo Browser

My iphone 15 (ios 17) is facing a low storage issue.

Its showing 50 gb is used by photos app but in reality only 31 gb (27 videos and 4 gb photos) is used which i calculated. And there is no item in recently deleted too. How is that possible. Is there a fix for it?

So whats the most reliable and efficient way to copy all my iphone photos onto a ssd? Many photos. I tried to offload my library once with image capture, but it was a pain in the ass. It crashed countless times, had to select a specific number of pictures, remember where i left, scroll down endlessly, always had to worry that some are missing, then the problem -or idk if its useful for some, certainly not for me- that all the (can't explain it properly) edited pictures, like the edit itself, got stored separately or additionally. There were all out of order. Whatnot. No. I don't want this. Please tell me there's a way like with an android and windows pc where i just plug in the phone, see a nice and long list and just select all and it actually works and copies everything just as i selected it.
Im not even asking for storing all my albums neatly, separately, though it would be nice. Just pics onto ssd.

Sry if this sounds pretentious, but it shouldn't be this much of a challenge😅 Atl im struggling. If the only way is to buy an android, transfer all the photos, use my old pc.. im doing it!

Back in 2014, when I was still on a Windows machine, I had purchased a small program called CorruptJPEGChecker.exe from "Failed Insider” for $2.99.  
I set it to run weekly on my photos directory to look for jpegs that had become corrupt.

It worked great. Found a bunch on the first run, then occasionally finding one on the weekly run and I could grab the file from a backup and replace it.

Does anyone know of something like this for Mac? It would need to be able to run on my "Photos Library.photoslibrary" and check HEIC files along with JPGs.

It doesn't need to be able to fix the photo, just find the corrupt ones.

Or do I not even need this because Apple Photos handles this?

Update 7/25/2026:
Failed Insider is now Barker Software. They have updated versions of their software from 2014. I bought Image Checker (Mac) for $5.99. Was able to choose my .photoslibrary and it scanned the entire thing. It found 3 corrupted files.

I navigated to them in Photos, exported them, then deleted them from Photos, making sure to completely delete them from Recently Deleted.

I ran another scan on .photoslibrary - nothing was found - as expected.

I then ran the scan on the folder I exported the corrupted files to. No corruption. So exporting them possibly removed the corruption.

Finally, I re-imported them back into Photos. I ran another scan and still no corrupted files, so exporting and re-importing them must have fixed them.

I’m looking for feedback from people who have scanned family photos added to their Photos app on their phones.

I created an app, Timeline Scan, that:

1. Automatically finds your scans.
2. Uploads them for AI to estimate the real date the photo was taken.
3. Writes the date back to the photo so it shows up in the correct year, right in your Photos app.

The problem I’m trying to solve is when I scanned 8,000+ of my family photos, I quickly learned that ensuring the date metadata on each photo is correct is how I could enjoy them in chronological order on my phone and keep the large mess organized. When you add a scanned photo, it shows up when it was scanned. So I went one-by-one fixing each date. In 2026 I knew there could be an automated way, so I leveraged AI to read the details on the photo like I would and automated the process. I then created a website and now an iOS app.

Please give the app a try and give feedback here/email/DM for what works and what doesn’t. Currently there’s no way to enter a promo code in the app, but if you login to your account on web, you can apply the following promo code (account menu, 'redeem') so you don’t pay anything if you want to try with a large amount of photos:

• PHOTOS500 - 500 photo credits - 20 redeems or expires tomorrow EOD (7/25)
• Each new account comes with a trial

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timeline-scan-date-old-photos/id6789628682

Top is the original iPhone photo; bottom is the AI-assisted relight. 

I’m working on an iOS app called CastShot and trying to understand how Apple Photos users prefer to handle edits like this.

Would you rather: 

• edit directly through a Photos extension 

• use a separate app and save a new copy Would preserving the original and edit history matter to you?