- You can delete photos from your iPhone but keep them in iCloud by turning off iCloud photo sharing.
- You can also use a different iCloud account to keep the previous account's iCloud photos safe.
- Another solution is to use a different cloud server, like Dropbox or OneDrive, to back up the photos.
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Apple's iCloud service allows you to share photos across devices, while also giving you an automatic backup should something happen to your iPhone.
For these reasons, the iCloud's memory is more permanent than the memory on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac and can serve as a failsafe if something happens to one of your Apple devices.
But there are limitations. The connectivity between iPhone and iCloud means that if you delete a picture on your iPhone, it's also removed from iCloud.
Luckily, there are a few workarounds that allow you to delete photos from your iPhone yet keep them in the cloud in perpetuity.
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Turn off iCloud photo sharing
1. Start the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on your name (Apple ID).
3. Tap iCloud.
4. Tap Photos.
5. Turn off Sync this iPhone by swiping the button to the left.
6. If Optimize iPhone Storage is enabled, you'll see an option asking if you want to transfer a copy of the iCloud Photos folder onto your phone. You can choose either Remove from iPhone or Download Photos & Videos, but no matter what you choose, the iCloud originals will remain intact.
There is a drawback to this method: If you reconnect your photos to iCloud, it will update to match your phone, deletions and all. If you want a more permanent cloud backup for your photos, use a different cloud server.
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Use a service other than iCloud for photo backup
The example below uses Google Photos, but there are other cloud options you can choose from, including OneDrive and Dropbox.
1. If it's not already installed, start the App Store app and install Google Photos.
2. After it's installed, start Google Photos. The app may ask you for access to your photo gallery, so tap Allow access to all photos.
3. If you see a pop-up asking you for access to your photo gallery again, tap Allow Access to All Photos.
4. On the next pop-up, decide whether you'd like Google Photos to send you notifications or not.
5. If you have more than one Google account on your phone, choose the account you want to back up the photos to and then tap on Back up as [name of Google account].
6. Choose the image quality of your backups: Storage saver or Original quality. The former reduces the size of the images by reducing their quality, while the latter stores them in their original size and quality – choose the option that best suits your needs.
7. Tap Confirm, and Google Photos will start backing up your images.
To track the progress of the backup, open the Google Photos app and tap your profile image on the top right corner of the screen.
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Sign into a different iCloud account
This option is best used if you want to keep a running iCloud sync to your iPhone, but also want to keep a separate iCloud account with all your previous photos.
1. Start the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap your name (Apple ID).
3. Scroll to the very bottom and tap Sign Out. It will ask you to authenticate that you want to sign out.
You'll be asked which data you wish to keep on your iPhone after you sign out.
Now, you can sign into a separate iCloud account:
1. Start the Settings app.
2. Tap Apple ID.
3. Your iPhone will ask you to sign in. Whatever iCloud account you use to sign back in will now be your synced iCloud account.
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Download your photos onto your Mac
You have one final option: You can transfer photos from your iPhone to a Mac using an intermediate storage device like an external hard drive or SD card, then delete the photos from your iPhone.
1. Connect your iPhone to an external storage device. To do this, you might need a cable adapter such as a Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, or Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader.
2. When you attach the external storage to the iPhone, you might need to select Trust to allow the phone to connect to the device.
3. Start the Photos app, tap Select at the top of the screen, and then choose the photos you want to save to your Mac.
4. Tap Share and then choose Save to Files.
5. In the Files app, tap the external storage device in the Locations section and tap Save.
Freelance Writer
Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.
