Son has 8gb iPhone which is full of photos and videos he wants to keep, though don’t need to stay downloaded on the phone itself. I upgraded icloud storage thinking that would solve it but doesn’t. I’ve tried fiddling with the settings to no avail and don’t really understand the differences between photostream and icloud etc as I’m an android user.
He prefers not to use Google photos for storage though I think that would be an option?
Any ideas.. I’m thinking must be a simple solution that I’m missing….

Photostream is on the iCloud. It is just Photostream is effectively free storage on the cloud and doesn’t come off your iCloud storage capacity allocation.

Can’t you plug the phone into a computer and upload to the computer HDD via iTunes. iTunes can then upload to Photostream.

It doesn’t really matter which back-up system you use, it doesn’t seem very easy to bulk delete photos and vids from iThings once they’ve been moved to the cloud.

It’s almost like they’d rather you just bought a bigger device in the first place…

Photostream is your last 1000 photos, iCloud you can keep copies forever. You could have just copied them to Google Drive and then deleted from the phone – this is different than Google Photos / picasa. You can have apps (like Flickr) which automatically copy all photos there and you get 1tb free.

I don’t use iCloud for backup / photo storage as mine are stored locally on my mac via phone sync, however the cloud will do the job for you. Let me look at the settings now ….

Setting / Photos and Camera / iCloud Photo Library

Mine is off set your son’s to on (note you have picked an expensive solution – which is seamless though, others are free)

It’s almost like they’d rather you just bought a bigger device in the first place…

or failing that sign up for expensive ongoing cloud commitments 😉

(note you have picked an expensive solution – which is seamless though, others are free)

£0.79 / month isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things?! And it seems to be the only fully automated way of managing photo storage on the iPhone and keeping full quality copies of the photos.

Agreed the 50GB for 79p a month is cheap by anyone’s measure but considering its an iThing it’s insanely cheap – I just wish there was a simple setting whereby you could store say the last 500MB of photos locally and the rest on the cloud.

I’ve got a 128GB phone now so it’s been a while since a looked, but I couldn’t find a simple way to bulk delete old photos. I’ve got 7000+ pics on mine – I would guess 500-1000 of them will be of ‘special moments’ and my nearest and dearest the rest will be serial numbers, wifi passwords and other IT stuff I just needed to remember for a few hours.

Bad Apple. Fancy paying for and building a multi-million dollar server facility and not making it free to use for everyone.

But if you’re not bothered about cloud storage, not beyond photostream at least, then you can set your iphone/pad up to automatically sync to iTunes with your laptop/desktop, so it is effortless. I’ve then got a folder/album set up in iTunes and I can drag and drop photo’s into it and it syncs with my iphone so I have a selection of photo’s on my phone – no need to have every single photo I’ve got on my phone at all times.

I think between photostream, iCloud, any other cloud service you might use and your laptop/desktop all possible permutations of back-up, sharing and storage are pretty much covered. Even sharing photo albums with friends works a treat, well those friends with iPhones of course.

£0.79 / month isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things?!

It’s 100% more than using google drive.

£0.79 / month… .forever! Or you lose access… plus, they can put the price up any time they like (see Photobucket!)

(Obviously, he’ll still have to housekeep his phone once auto-iCloud is on)

@mrmonk [geek alert] are you sure 😉 infinitely more expensive [\geek alert]

It’s 100% more than using google drive.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

ICloud you get 5Gb for free. Your son probably doesn’t have 5Gb of videos and photos on his phone, the issue will be that iOS and other apps will be using a large bulk of the storage.

Do what Jamba recommends but without paying the 79p extra.

£0.79 / month isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things?! And it seems to be the only fully automated way of managing photo storage on the iPhone and keeping full quality copies of the photos.

Sidebar: I think given Apple expects people to backup their, possibly multiple, devices to iCloud. They should give more than 5GB for free. Should at least match Google’s 15GB. Apple is an inherently greedy company, tho, so it’s not surprising.

Bad Apple. Fancy paying for and building a multi-million dollar server facility and not making it free to use for everyone.

The issue has next to nothing to do with photo storage as they take up relatively little storage.
The issue is video’s and the cunning way Apple have not given a photo only option to iCloud backup… its either photo’s + burst + video’s or nothing.

They also removed any option to only delete a photo/video from the cloud. when you delete it propagates to all your devices which if some are 128GB and others 8GB seriously limits options.

@Drac I think you’ll run through 5GB pretty quickly with photos, cloud encourages you to be even lazier and not delete stuff. I have a 64gb phone with 17gb photos plus photostream is 700Mb – i have far too many duplicates, large pointless videos i could delete etc. I am an old duffer too, kids have even more stuff

It’s 100% more than using google drive.

You missed the key sentence in my last post… “And it seems to be the only fully automated way of managing photo storage on the iPhone and keeping full quality copies of the photos.”

Granted 16MP for free in Google Photos is pretty good, but its not automated in the way the icloud photo management is.

Yeah I have about 20b of photos and videos but that’s 7 years worth not 45Gb I was including my film purchases too. 😳

See that’s the youf init, mine are about 7 years worth too 😳

I could delete the vast majority of my music off the Phone / iPad too as I virtually never listen to it

@steve you are quite right re video, Apple is a business and they want to keep that share price moving up which is fair enough. They are monetising our convenience / laziness

The next version of iOS (the beta is available now) automatically manages storage of photos between your device and your iCloud data storage for you. Basically, stick with what you are doing and it will get much easier soon.

Or install the beta, if you are inpatient 🙂

Rachel

whats wrong with downloading them to Iphoto or photo or whatever the free photo database software is called this week and then the software gives you the option “do you want to delete from phone” when downloaded

^^ ’cause most users never bother to connect their phone to the computer.

@tom Flickr app is automated and 1tb free, not sure of quality though (tink its full?)

@allthegear thats interesting – smart for them to offer features to encourage sign up

^^ ’cause most users never bother to connect their phone to the computer.

Can sync over wifi…

@tom Flickr app is automated and 1tb free, not sure of quality though (tink its full?)

Flickr pro is unlimited and stores full resolution. can’t recall what it costs, but not much (otherwise I would recall).

Thanks all. If he downloads/syncs to Apple photos app on the Mac or via iTunes would he still have access to them in the cloud on his phone? ie streamed rather than kept on the device itself?

No. Once sync’d with Photo’s and deleted off the phone you’ll only have access to whats in Photostream as the photo’s that have sync’d will be wherever you’ve got iTunes storing content – probably the computer HDD.

What I do is create an album in Photo’s which you can then set to sync wit your iPhone/pad. Then once the photo’s have sync’d with photo’s I delete off the phone then drag and drop photo’s I want on the phone into my Photo’s album which will then sync with the phone. A wee bit of manual intervention, not really a major PITA.

Another option is to create a shared album on the phone. You don’t have to share it with anyone if you don’t want. Then put the photo’s you want on the phone into the shared album which is on the iCloud and sync’d with your phone. I’ve got loads of shared albums , probably about 10 or so, of holidays and other events. I’ve only got a 32Gb iPhone, but plenty of photo’s

Flickr pro is unlimited and stores full resolution. can’t recall what it costs, but not much (otherwise I would recall).

£35 per year and you have to choose which ones you want to upload.