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BarefootFlooring
User level: Level 1 (4 points)

iPhone 18 Pro photos disappeared from iPhone and iCloud after iPad sync

Most of my photos disappeared from iPhone and iCloud. I use an iPhone 18 Pro (four weeks now), and five days ago most of the 2400 photos on my iPhone disappeared.


At first, all my photos that were from before 2022 disappeared from my albums. I was able to located them in the Library section, and asked my daughter to help. She saw the 3100 photos on my iPad and synchronized them (iPad sync had been turned off before this). Somehow, the iPad photos replaced all my iPhone photos. Only about 10% of the original iPhone photos remained. I removed the iPad photos from my iPhone (they now appear in the Recently Deleted folder), but none of the missing iPhone photos are anywhere in the iPhone Photos or iCloud Photos.


The Genius Bar recommended the standards--checking the Hidden and Recently Deleted folders on the iPhone and iCloud--which did not solve anything. They spent hours searching and could not find my photos. I really want to get my photos back, they were the best 2400 out of the tens of thousands I have taken (I usually keep only the one image that I think is best out of a set), and most have personal value to me.


When a similar problem occurred on Dropbox, the administrator was able to reset the folders to their state as of a few days ago. Is there something like this on iCloud? Thanks.

Posted on Nov 8, 2026 12:49 PM

1 reply

léonie
User level: Level 10 (205,585 points)

Nov 9, 2026 1:30 AM in response to BarefootFlooring

Which system version is running on your iPhone?


What kind of albums have you been using? Shared albums or standard albums? The behavior of Shared albums has changed in iOS 27. The shared albums can now be set up to store the photos only temporarily and will purge the older shared photos automatically after 30 days.


It looks like you want to have different sets of photos on your iPad and your Mac. In that case you must not use iCloud Photos on both the iPad and the iPhone. iCloud Photos is meant to keep the photo libraries on all your devices and in iCloud identical. When you delete photos from your iPhone or iPad they will be deleted from iCloud and all synced devices, and when you add photos on one device, they will appear in iCloud and on all your other devices. With iCloud Photos enabled you are always working with the same, identical library on all your devices.

If you have been using iCloud Photos on the iPhone, your older iPhone photos may have vanished from your iPhone, because you deleted them on another device.

Or, if your photos had been synced to your iPhone from a computer using a USB connection or the local network, they will have been deleted automatically, when you enabled iCloud Photos, because iCloud Photos and manually syncing are mutually exclusive. Do you have a computer as well, and do you have copies of them on your computer?


Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256390973