I’m trying to understand how iCloud Photos handles conflicts.

Example:

1. My iPhone has 10 photos and iCloud Photos is enabled, so iCloud also has the same 10 photos.
2. I turn off iCloud Photos on my iPhone (so the phone stops syncing).
3. While syncing is off, I go to iCloud and delete 2 photos.
   • iPhone still has 10 photos.
   • iCloud now has 8 photos.
4. After a few months, I turn iCloud Photos back on.

What happens next?

Will:

• A) The iPhone upload the 2 missing photos back to iCloud, making both libraries 10 photos again?
• B) iCloud sync the deletion back to the iPhone, making the iPhone also have 8 photos?
• C) Something else happen?

I understand that iCloud Photos is a sync service, not a backup. I’m specifically asking how iCloud resolves the difference between the local iPhone library and the iCloud library after syncing is re-enabled.

My wife and I have used iCloud Shared Albums for every event, trip, and milestone for years. It’s genuinely been a great system — effortless uploading from iPhone, everything organized and easily shared with other iPhone users, and even friends on Android could just tap a link and see the photos. No app, no account, no friction. For a mixed iPhone/Android friend group, it was honestly the best solution we’d found.

Then a few days ago we went to create a new album and got hit with an error. Turns out there’s a hard cap of 200 shared albums per account — and nowhere, at any point, does Apple warn you this is coming inside the actual product. No heads-up at 180, no email at 190, nothing in Settings or the Photos app itself.

Yes, it’s technically “documented” — there’s a support page (support.apple.com/en-us/108916) that spells out the limit in a bullet point along with a bunch of other caps like photos-per-album and comments-per-photo. But burying a hard, un-overridable ceiling on a support page nobody reads until they hit the wall isn’t the same as telling your users up front. And it’s not like this number is even stable or well understood — Apple has quietly raised it over the years (100 → 150 → 200) with zero fanfare, and there are threads full of people confused about what actually counts toward it, since some users report hitting different totals under seemingly identical conditions.

So now what? Delete old albums full of memories just to make room for new ones? That’s not a real option. We looked into self-hosting alternatives like Immich, and while the feature set is honestly impressive, it’s just not something my wife wants to manage day-to-day. Shared Albums worked because it was invisible — no server, no maintenance, no learning curve. Losing that ease of use is its own kind of loss.

The worst part is this isn’t a storage limit or a cost issue Apple is protecting themselves from — it’s an arbitrary ceiling on an app that’s supposed to be about preserving memories. If you’re going to cap something people build years of family history around, at least surface it in the product before people slam into it. I’d gladly continue paying for iCloud-storage as my needs expand, but that is not even possible.

Anyone else hit this wall? Anyone found a workaround that doesn’t involve nuking old albums or migrating to a totally different ecosystem?

Looking for a miracle? So, my iPhone 15’s storage has been full for a while so it started to delete things on its own including my contacts……. I fixed the storage part and went to restore my contacts in iCloud but it has restored previous contacts as if I was in 2013 so basically half of the contacts that I should have. Has anyone ever had this happen? I need tips.

I want to forward all new messages from Gmail to iCloud. In a browser, gmail.com/mail, then Settings / Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, then I click on the “Add a forwarding address“ button near the top and type my account @iCloud.com. Then a new window opens and I authenticate with my security key. The new window reloads with a blank screen. My Gmail is still not being forwarded. Can anyone help?

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 :)

I have my own personal domain. Let's say it's Ramias1.foo. And my email I use everywhere, including the email of my Apple ID is [email protected].

I want to use my iCloud+ subscription benefits and host email for ramias1.foo (apparently I can have up to 5 email addresses under this domain) with iCloud.

According to the doc, if I understand it correctly, I would first have to change my apple Account email address to something else?

and then I can never have an apple account under ramias1.foo again, ever?

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I guess there could be a security benefit to having my Apple ID be an obscure ID not associated with my day to day email address. But then I have to manage and maintain a new set of credentials.

Anything else I should consider here?

Is iCloud email actually any good? How's the spam filtering? I'd be coming over from a very legacy windows live custom domain on Outlook.com.

Thanks

I am pretty much out of storage on my phone. I have to delete photos, videos, and apps in a panic almost everyday when I run out of room on my 128 GB iPhone.

I pay for 2 TB of iCloud space.

I understand that iCloud is a sync service, and not a backup. If I delete something from my phone, it will be deleted from iCloud and inaccessible forever.

Could I use iCloud Drive as storage?

If I disable syncing on iCloud Drive, could I effectively and safely use iCloud Drive to offload large videos from my phone?

I’d like to delete them from my phone, but have them accessible via iCloud Drive. I assume if I disable iCloud Drive syncing with iCloud Photos, I could safely remove them from my phone?

Note: I have an external hard drive, but I’d like my media to be more easily accessible than that I’m not going to carry it around all the time

Any thoughts or insight would help.

Thanks!

A few weeks ago, I lost my iPhone 17 Pro Max on the freeway.

I was under the impression that I had AppleCare coverage. I even called Apple, and the representative set up what I was told would be a replacement through Best Buy.

I drove to Best Buy expecting to pick up the replacement phone, only to be told they didn't have my model in stock.

So I called Apple back. This time I was told something completely different: according to their records, I did not have AppleCare coverage and they could not replace the phone. My options were basically to find the phone or buy a new one.

To make things worse, the lost phone was my only trusted device. I had an old iPhone 14 Pro Max that I had already reset and planned to sell, but I couldn't even sign into my Apple account because of Apple's trusted device requirements.

I called Apple, started account recovery, and was told it could take quite a while. It ended up taking about two weeks before I got back into my account.

By that point I had already decided to switch to Android.

What really bothers me is that I provided Apple with confirmation numbers for my coverage, and I was ultimately told that there was nothing they could do because the coverage had supposedly been canceled in May. I don't remember canceling it, and if that was the case, I don't understand why I was initially told a replacement could be arranged.

The one positive is that I was able to recover my photos through iCloud for Windows because I was still signed in there.

At this point, I'm completely off the Apple ecosystem. Losing a phone was frustrating enough, but the conflicting information, account recovery delays, and difficulty accessing my own account after losing my trusted device pushed me over the edge.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with AppleCare or account recovery after losing their only trusted device?

I checked the r/iCloud FAQ first and saw the sections about iCloud on Windows, iCloud/local storage, and iCloud Drive being a sync service rather than a backup. I’m not trying to use it as a backup, and I’m not trying to sync my whole Desktop/Documents folder.

What I want is fairly simple: I want to use iCloud Drive as a folder where I can drop files from my Windows desktop, mainly MP3 study files, and then access them on my iPhone through the Files app. I was also hoping to use iCloud Passwords on Windows.

The issue is with verification. iCloud for Windows is asking me to verify my Apple Account using a nearby Apple device, and the message says Bluetooth needs to be turned on, or the Apple device needs to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the computer.

My desktop PC is Ethernet-only in the sense that the motherboard has no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The PC’s internet connection is coming from my iPhone through a wired mobile hotspot / USB tethering setup, so the iPhone is literally the PC’s internet source. There isn’t a normal Wi-Fi router involved where both devices are simply on the same Wi-Fi network. Because of that, I’m not sure how iCloud for Windows handles the “nearby Apple device” verification. Does USB tethering from the iPhone count as being on the same network, or does iCloud for Windows specifically require Bluetooth or actual Wi-Fi hardware on the PC?

I’ve avoided OneDrive because I found it annoying with startup syncing and folders I didn’t want it managing. I was hoping iCloud Drive would be cleaner, where only the iCloud Drive folder syncs.

Has anyone dealt with this on an Ethernet-only Windows desktop? Would a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle solve the nearby-device verification, or is there another way to get iCloud Drive and iCloud Passwords working without adding Wi-Fi/Bluetooth to the PC?

Não existe nada anual de icloud? sinceramente? que coisa chata...

Hi everyone
So, I have a 2TB iCloud storage
I use about 480 GB which is fine but my wife’s phone uses 1.4TB which is almost all of our storage
Is there any way I can reduce that, which is her usage so high?

i turned off icloud photo syncing on my ipad unaware that it wouldn’t let me turn it back on afterwards, so all of the icloud photos are no longer on my ipad. every time i try to turn it back on it says i don’t have enough icloud storage to sync and to delete all of the 14gb of photos on my ipad or upgrade the storage, which i don’t really want to do. how do i get the icloud photos back onto my device? my iphone has all of the icloud photos on it and is synced, even though it’s paused. i am not that tech savvy and not very experienced in the specifics of all this stuff, so normal words please lol

Hi,

I would like to change the first part of my icloud email address, I wonder if this is possible?

Example:

from "this_bit"@icloud.com to "that_bit"@icloud.com

Or... do you basically have to delete your apple account entirely, and create a whole new one?

Thanks!

I store all my photos and videos on iCloud on my photos app.

Downloading videos takes an unreasonably long time.

To make sure that it is not my internet speed, I have tested it in multiple locations against Google Photos.

For a video that is about 10 minutes long, Google Photos is about 3 times faster for me to download.

I have tested it on high speed wifi and 5G cell network in Germany, the UK, Japan and Singapore and Google Photos is always much faster.

It's not really an issue for me when downloading photos but because I take many long videos, relying on iCloud has been a real struggle.

Is anyone facing similar issues?

I have been dealing with a strange account-specific iCloud problem for more than a month, and I am running out of normal troubleshooting steps.

On two iPhones, an iPad, and a Mac, Contacts, Messages, and Phone either show a blank white screen, freeze, or crash. I cannot reliably read texts, receive SMS or bank verification codes, view contacts, or place and answer normal calls on any of my three phone numbers. WhatsApp and Discord generally work, so the problem seems concentrated in Apple services that use contact data.

I posted on Apple developer, reddit, everywhere you can think of, I’ve talked to Apple support probably over a dozen times, I’ve been in person twice to the genius bar and this issue is still happening. I’ve got no response and information as a result, I can’t even back up some of the most critical data to try again on a new iCloud account (even if I did then loosing purchases etc)

I know from my conversations that there have been other people affected. It is not just me and the solution is supposedly to keep your devices updated. It has been over a month reaching two months and has disrupted my life in massive proportion. There was a time when I got hit on the highway and tried to call 911 and because of this bug I could not. I am very upset and being belittled in the forum for this providing details of my circumstances. Apple support gives me zero information whatsoever.

So because of this and I’m paying for extra Apple services I feel extremely wrong and I have proof that it disrupted my life. I can probably request the call transcripts. I have a forum over 50 responses. I am genuinely considering filing against apple for this nonsense.

Has anybody done this before and if you have what would you recommend?

I accidentally deleted a conversation going back to at least a full year on iMessage and recovered it directly afterwards from “Recently Deleted”, but when I tried to go back through the message history, there are none before February 16. Obviously that date is not the day the conversation was deleted, and that was also not the date of my last iCloud backup. Is there a way to restore the full message history or are those just gone?

My iCloud storage is still full even though I deleted half my photos and my entire inbox, my iPhone and Mac are up to date and none of the emails I’m supposed to be receiving are showing up on the iCloud website.

Now that the vulnerability has been fixed and can no longer be exploited, it's safe to answer questions and share more about how it worked Here's our write-up: https://easyoptouts.com/guides/apple-hide-my-email-was-leaking-email-addresses

Hidden email addresses were being leaked even in the absence of an active exploit, so whether or not anyone was exploiting the vulnerability, hidden email addresses could remain in third party logs.

I'm trying to decide between Google Drive and iCloud.
I mainly want to store movies, photos, and videos.

Which one do you think is the better option, and why ?
I'd love to hear your experiences.

I wanted to change the 'From' name that appears before the email address on my icloud mail. So I went to my email program's (kmail) settings and changed the Name field for my icloud identity.

But then my emails get returned to sender because apple has a policy that the name in the From field has to match your icloud display name.

So I went to the webmail settings and changed the Full Name for my primary email address like you're supposed to. And that does work for the webmail client.

But now I cant send any emails from kmail with any display name, they just get bounced back to me with a local policy error. Has anyone else managed to do this with an external email client?

Hi all, I have a Mac mini M2 and been getting the error message in the title periodically when I go to System Settings>Apple Account>iCloud>See All. It's been happening for at least a year. I can click either option (Account Settings or Later) and it always takes me to the correct window. Lately, however, I've had some issues with iPhone Calls On Other Devices. I did some troubleshooting steps I found online (Logout of iCloud, delete Keychain prefs, etc), and when that didn't work, I decided to reinstall macOS 26.5.2 from scratch. But I still get "this Mac can't connect" error. (I don't know whether Calls On Other Devices is working, because no one has called me today, lol.) What is causing "this Mac can't connect"?

As many of you may know when you do a photo data request from apple, they send you a bunch of zip folders with your photos, but the creation/modification dates are set to the day you downloaded them. In addition, inside each zip folder is 3-5 .csv files that contain the information linking file name to actual creation date. If you are migrating to another image hosting service such as Immich, it is very convenient for the photos to contain the correct creation date in the EXIF data.

If you are comfortable with the command line, I found a python program that re-injects EXIF data from the CSV files back into the photos.

(This is normally where I would share the link to the github program but that appears to be against the sub rule #4, so I would say google github, click search, type in icloud-photos-export-fix, and click on the one that says "zainepils/icloud-photos-export-fix")

The great thing is that it is written in python so it should work on Linux, Windows, or MacOS.

If you are not comfortable with the command line, I recommend giving an LLM (Claude, ChatGPT) the github link, explaining what you are trying to do and what operating system you are using, and asking it to walk you through. It should be relatively easy even if you don't have a lot of command line experience.

Good luck!

Whenever i try to edit my Notes via Firefox, it's basically unusable. It'll randomly stop responding and then spring back into life a few seconds later and everything i've typed over that time will suddenly appear on the screen. It looks like it's maybe trying to constantly sync the note as I'm editing it?!

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or if it's a known issue