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laurentiu210
User level: Level 1 (4 points)

How to recover missing photos taken after May 2025 from iCloud on iPhone?

Hello, I need urgent help recovering my missing photos.


Today, October 24, 2026, I opened the Photos app on my iPhone and discovered that all photos taken after May 2025 had disappeared. I am using the same iPhone as before, and I did not intentionally delete any photos or change any settings.


iCloud Photos is enabled, and there is enough storage space available. The missing photos are not in Recently Deleted, and they are also missing from iCloud.com/photos. The only photos I can see in iCloud are from May 2025 and earlier.


An iCloud backup shows today’s date, but I do not know whether it contains the missing photos.


These photos are very important to us. Could you please help me investigate what happened and tell me if there is any way to recover them? I would prefer to communicate through chat rather than by phone, if possible.


Thank you for your help.


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Photo

Posted on Oct 24, 2026 1:15 PM

2 replies

Servant of Cats
User level: Level 9 (55,707 points)

Oct 24, 2026 6:31 PM in response to laurentiu210

laurentiu210 wrote:
An iCloud backup shows today’s date, but I do not know whether it contains the missing photos.


Since you are using iCloud Photos, that backup will not contain any photos.

What does iCloud back up? - Apple Support (AL)


You may want to check to see whether you accidentally moved photos to the Hidden album.

Hide photos on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Vision Pro with the Hidden album - Apple Support


You also may want to check whether you have applied a filtering option to the main Library view. If you, e.g., filter by "not in an album", photos that are in an album will seem to have "disappeared".

Community User

Oct 24, 2026 3:15 PM in response to laurentiu210

Keep in mind that the Apple Support Community is a user-to-user forum. We are fellow users helping each other out, not Apple employees. To get direct assistance from Apple, you can reach them at support.apple.com.


Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256382291