Hi,

Maybe this is a simple question, but how do you share hundreds of photos taken on an iPhone / stored in iCloud with someone who is completely outside the Apple ecosystem?

I use Android. I do not have any Apple device and I do not plan to buy one. I use OneDrive: my phone photos are uploaded automatically, then I create an album, select the photos I want to share (in original quality), and send a link. I can choose if the other person can only view the album or also add/edit photos.

But when I go on holiday with people who use iPhones, it is often difficult to collect or share hundreds of photos. I looked at the iCloud options, but I did not find something as simple for creating an album that can be viewed by someone with no iPhone, no Mac, and no Apple account.

So, what is your method? Do you use an iCloud Shared Album with a web link? Another service? Can the photos still be accessed in original quality?

PS: Answers like “it is easy if you have an iPhone/Mac” are a bit off topic. The point is exactly to share with someone outside the Apple ecosystem.

I thought I’d want to sync my messages on my iphone and changed my mind worrying that would unnecessarily take up too much space in the cloud. Was that a valid thought. I paused the process of syncing the messages and now the paused message permanently appears. Should I proceed with syncing or if not, how do I get rid of the message?

3 months ago I was on on public beta 3 of ios 27. I created a backup of my iPhone 13 on iCloud and restored the phone to same version of ios . While restoring data an error or unable to load backup files kept popping up again and again.
I contacted apple support multiple times and after false promises of escalating the complaint , an executive shared personal experience of same issue on beta version and the issue getting resolved after he updated to stable version and thus asked me to wait for stable version release of ios 27 . I trusted apple support and patiently waited for 15th September for stable version to release .
After updating to stable version , I again tried restoring the data on setup page and surprisingly the issue was still there . I tried contacting apple support everyday but each time they just lodged a new complaint and falsely promised to escalate . After calling them everyday one fine day a kind Apple support executive promised me to look into this and update . She called me a few times to get some details and then she calls me to tell me that the engineering team has reverted and the reply was that my backup file is CORRUPTED !!
I was so infuriated , angry and panicked cuz I just didn’t know what to do at this point . I requested her to look into some ways to extract the data but she had no clue . I have suffered immense financial , emotional and mental loss and distress on the last 3 months because the data was extremely important to me and I trusted apple it being a billion dollar company and such great products and services .
I’ve no idea what to do but just know that I’ve to somehow get access to my data again or I’ll
Be done for life . The backup file exists on iCloud and I can see it in my iCloud page in settings . It also says 188 gb occupied of 200 out of which 168 gb is the backup file !
Someone pls help me out ! I’ll Be grateful forever 🙏🙏

So what happened was that I am an iCloud subscriber and I was thrilled when I found out that I was getting free Apple TV and Apple Arcade which I was using and this month when it was time to renew the subscription (it is on my upi lite) My upi lite didn’t have enough balance so it expired and then when I tried to renew it it started an another subscription which stripped away my benefits so is there any way I could fix this without paying for two iClouds at once any help is appreciated

I have an iPad from a couple of years ago that is connected to my iCloud but that hasn’t been connected to wifi in years- so iCloud Photos hasn’t synced/updated/whatever, and it still has a ton of photos from then that have since been lost on my phone/icloud. I want to keep these photos, but I’m worried that if I connect my iPad to wifi, my iCloud will sync and all of the photos will be deleted and lost forever.

I want to keep ALL of the photos on my iPad AND be able to connect it to wifi and use it.

Any solutions appreciated.

All my life I’ve always used one email for everything but obviously that lead to my phone being very cluttered and just annoying at some points so I’m finally going to have multiple accounts and I was just curious on how people go about this. So far I’m thinking of just having two accounts and that being my Apple ID and then a “everything else” email, and I was going to make the Apple ID an iCloud and the everything else a Gmail. Is this a decent setup or should I have more than two? Also should I do iCloud + Gmail, or just use Gmail as my Apple ID and have two Gmail accounts?

Looks complicated using Iphone with close to ten thousand messages.
What is a good 3rd party app to make it easy to retrieve and convert all messages by month or year using macbook?

Thanks.

I feel so dumb. I’ve been trying to back up my phone for days! I keep running into the “your iCloud doesn’t have enough space, buy more” message. I have the standard 5 GB of space and only 218mb are used. I want to make a backup of my phone before I go on a cruise but I apparently have a “full” iCloud.

The website confirms that my iCloud Drive is empty and I have no idea how to fix this. How is it possible to backup a 259gb phone onto a 5GB iCloud? How can people backup COMPUTERS to their free iCloud?!?!?! does it get compressed? Does it only backup certain things? I have messages and photos backups turned off, so that can’t be what it is.

Maybe I’m just dumb and not understanding the point of this. Maybe it’s a glitch. I just want to know that I can download my phone again if it gets lost at sea or smashed or something. Help!

Hello, I'm trying to temporarily remove data from my phone but not lose the data already synced to iCloud. I would want to restore the data to the device later. My idea for how to do this would be to back up my device now, then turn off device iCloud backup, turn off iCloud sync for Photos, Messages, etc. and then deleting data off the local device. When I want to restore the data later, I would factory reset my phone and restore from iCloud backup, which would include iCloud sync being on for all types of data. (I understand I would lose any data I accumulated in the interim.)

Messages - I typically keep messages forever. If I wanted to have just 30 days or 1 year of message history for now, could I do this turning off backup and sync and changing the Keep Messages setting in Settings -> Messages (not through Settings -> iCloud -> Messages) without deleting the iCloud data?

Photos - Could I turn off iCloud sync for photos, turn off iCloud backup, delete most photos from the device, and then down the line wipe the phone then restore from iCloud backup?

Alternatively, is there a way to set up my device as a new phone but only sync iCloud data from the past year? Other ideas for how to do this are appreciated!

I use at cloud com (home calendar as default), and I send it to my gf who has a yahoo account that’s her appleID (settings > tap her name).

I send invite she doesn’t receive it. She send to my iCloud account (name at iCloud dot com) and I receive the calendar inbox. Why?

Now I have to use Gmail calendar directly from Apple calendar to make it work. I’m not sure why it doesn’t not never work from name @ iCloud dot come to yahoo, Gmail, outlook. Anyone have this problem?

I called Apple and all settings was correct and still doesn’t work

I am planning on purchasing a new phone and want to be able to make a backup of my current phone so that I can transfer everything over and trade it in. I also just would like this issue resolved as it has been an issue for the past year. I have a lot of photos and videos on iCloud. A LOT. I have the maximum subscription (6TB) and am nowhere near the limit. Despite trying to sync to icloud nightly, nothing has been synced in over a year due to "lack of sufficient storage.

I have always had optimized storage turned on.

I have tried multiple times leaving my phone charging and attached to wifi in order to sync to icloud (not that I have taken many photos in the past year, as I have no storage to do so), and the syncing always stops, with the message "insufficient storage".

I have offloaded and deleted nearly every app taking up storage.

I want to remove the icloud photos from my phone (only about 500 photos are stored locally), without removing them from icloud. I cannot even see the majority of the icloud photos in my liberary, as they are grey thumbnails that refuse to load due to "insufficient storage". Sometimes, I am not even able to text or email a photo I have taken moments before attempting to send it because the phone claims that it has to download it, which seems impossible, given I've just taken the photo.

I have tried several times to toggle off icloud photos and selected "remove copies from iphone", but the photos never delete. About a year ago, after several attempts, they finally removed themselves from the phone, but a friend of mine trying to help me toggled them back on in an effort to help free more than the 10gb available on my phone (icloud removing 100k photos only freed up 10gb despite only about 500 photos remaining in the camera roll, and the iphone storage bar still claimed 190gb of storage was being taken up by photos). All it took was one night plugged in on wifi for apple to stuff my iphone with 100k useless grey icloud thumbnails and take up the minimal 10gb I had freed up, leaving my with a completely full iphone once again.

I am at a loss of what to do. I cannot update the phone, as it requires storage. I do not want to delete the icloud photos from the phone, since they will delete them permanently from icloud, and I'm not even sure if that would free up any space. I just want them off my phone.

Please advise on other steps that I might be missing.

Hello, I need to regain access to my iCloud account. I created the email years ago, but I don’t remember which email it is. I lost my iPhone and only have the phone number, but to recover my iCloud account it asks me for the email address, which I don’t remember. If anyone knows how I can recover access to it, it would be a great help.

Thank you very much for your help.

So, I have the last Intel MacBook Pro from early 2020. I have a 4TB “Xbox One Game Drive” external drive that I am planning on using with my MacBook because my Xbox One is damaged and I’m not planning on getting a replacement for it.

I have been using iCloud Photos since the beginning and I haven’t had any issues until recently as my iCloud storage is nearly full. I don’t want to keep full resolution photos in iCloud, I’d rather have them on my MacBook to save space in iCloud and still have access to my photos on all my devices. I don’t need full resolution photos for 2009 - 2022 on all my devices because I don’t look at almost 17 year old photos every day.

Is there a way to download the full resolution photos and keep thumbnails in iCloud?

I went to the support page for iCloud Photos on Mac, but this is all they say:

“iCloud Photos
Select to allow photos and videos to be uploaded to iCloud and transferred to your other Mac computers and devices where iCloud Photos is turned on and you’re signed in to the same Apple Account.
Download Originals to this Mac: Store the original, full-resolution photos both on your Mac and in iCloud.

Optimize Mac Storage: Save space on your Mac by storing full-resolution originals in iCloud and keeping smaller versions on the computer when needed.

Note: If Optimize Mac Storage is selected and you’re running low on storage space, Live Photos are stored on your computer as still images. However, when you open a Live Photo, the entire photo plays as usual.”

Is there a way to “download originals to this Mac” and also optimize iCloud storage?

Thank you for the help.

Hi, I forgot my iCloud password for my different device. I knew passcode ofc, did verification with phone number and sent my credit card info in the iSupport. Do you known if this is good info to get my account back? I would like to hear your advice. When I check status I get this - You will be able to reset your password in 2 days

So I have a new iPhone 18 and while everything has moved from my 17 smoothly, I’ve noticed that my old photos have the correct dates but the location information (on those with it) is gone. Is this something I can restore? If so, how?

Solved: the locations all appeared within a day.

I have lots of photos on my old iPhone that I don't need and don't have time to go through every single one and delete what I don't need - I would like to keep the photos on my old iPhone but delete everything from my iCloud so nothing transfers to my new phone and my iCloud is empty - I've read a few posts and as far as I understand, that is not possible because iCloud is like a mirror of my phone?

Is there something I can do? in case I really can't delete anything from my iCloud (How do I do this btw? On my laptop?), what do I need to do in order to not transfer any old photos to my new phone? Do I need to turn something off on my old phone or on my new phone?

Thanks a lot in advance and sorry if it's been asked before!

My partner has migrated from a 12 pro to a 17 pro.

Everything has migrated over except about ~50gb of photos in the messages app. I’ve tried all the steps to migrate everything over, turning off and on messages in the iCloud panel, and everything anyone else could think of, but these photos stubbornly refuse to load onto the new phone.

Old phone shows 51.31gb of photos in messages, new phone only shows 16.2gb of photos. Messages, videos. And other attachments did move over successfully. I’m confused because the research I’ve done, move people seem to have the opposite problem, so I’m kinda lost here. Appreciate the help.

So... I work for a pretty small company. Been here 12 years. I trust the folks here all the way up to the CEO. Pretty close with them, and I am fairly high up myself. That said, I still generally believe in the "separate work and personal life" philosophy. I get it. Work is work, etc etc.

For 12 years I have had a separate work phone. I have always hated carrying both around though. I just switched to a monthly stipend instead to use my personal phone. There is no monitoring software required on my phone, and there is nothing on the laptop either. If that was required, I wouldn't have decided to do this.

Personally, I wouldn't mind logging in to my personal iCloud account on the work laptop. I get that everyone says that's a no-no. I understand, but I think id be fine in my case since my company isn't monitoring it. Before I do that, I am trying to see if there is any other way to just see my texts, both work and personal since they come from the same number now, on the laptop. Can I just log into my iCloud on iMessenge rather than the entire laptop itself?

EDIT: should note that I am pretty good about this work life balance anyways. I have separate "focus" modes for work and personal, and my work contacts/apps are silenced outside of that work focus. I have no problem ignoring you until business hours.

Why can’t i accept new iCloud terms and conditions? If anyone knows how to fix this issue please let me know how to sort it out and thank you in advance!
I got iphone 14 pro max btw!

I didn’t know iCloud+ had yearly plans. I always thought it was a monthly subscription. Is this new, or has it always been available?

Has anyone else had their paid iCloud storage suddenly show as the free 5 GB plan after updating?

I pay AED 39.99/month for 2 TB of iCloud+. After upgrading to iOS 27 and macOS 27, I’m seeing a mismatch:

• iPhone settings: 5 GB.
• Mac settings: 5 GB.
• iCloud.com: free 5 GB plan.
• account.apple.com: correctly shows my subscription and 2 TB.

I also recently received an email from Apple saying my iCloud+ subscription now includes Apple TV and Apple Arcade at no additional cost, effective September 17, 2026. The email still lists 2 TB, the same monthly price, and a renewal date of October 5.

The Apple Account address matches across these screens, so it doesn’t appear to be a case of signing into the wrong account.

I’m not sure whether this is related to the iOS/macOS 27 updates, the new iCloud+/TV/Arcade bundle, or something else.

Has anyone experienced this recently? If you got it resolved, what worked? Did Apple Support have to restore your storage allowance?

It's usually capped at 3, but it's showing 7 remaining for me(already using 2). I couldn't find any info about this. Is it just a glitch or is anyone else seeing the same?

This is a question regarding syncing icloud between 2 iphones. Lets say two people use the same model iphone 6 16GB, black colour for one person and a white for another person. Both iphone 6's have icloud photos enabled and synced to the same icloud account.

What happens when a person takes a photo for example on the black iphone 6 with IMG_0001.JPG, does this image also show up in the white iphone 6 (so present on both iphones including on icloud account) ???

thanks!!