- To delete photos from iCloud on your synced iPhone, just open the Photos app and delete them.
- You can also delete photos from iCloud on the iCloud website.
- To delete photos on iCloud but not on your iPhone, you'll have to turn off iCloud Photos syncing.
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iCloud might not be a feature you think about very often, but its automatic backups of your most important data makes it an incredibly powerful tool.
If enabled, every photo and video you take on your iPhone or iPad is automatically copied to iCloud. Consequently, you might sometimes need to delete some of those images to free up iCloud storage.
There are two ways to delete photos from your iCloud storage.
How to delete photos from iCloud
If you want to delete a single photo or a small selection of photos that are synced to iCloud from your device, you can do that easily using the Photos app. Note, however, that this will delete them from your device too.
Open the Photos app and find the photo you want to delete, then:
- To delete a single photo, tap and hold the image until the pop-up menu appears, then tap Delete.
- To delete several photos at once, tap Select at the top right of the screen, then tap each photo you want to remove. When you're done, tap the trash can icon at the bottom-right of the screen.
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How to delete photos from iCloud but not iPhone
What if you want to delete photos from iCloud — just a few, or all of them — without also removing them from your iPhone or iPad?
If the iCloud Photos feature is turned on, you can't do this because everything stays in sync. But you can delete photos from iCloud without affecting your devices if you turn off iCloud Photos syncing.
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How to turn off iCloud Photo syncing
1. Open the Settings app on one of your devices.
2. Scroll down and tap Photos.
3. Tap the toggle for iCloud Photos to turn it off – it will go from having a green background to a gray one.
4. In the pop-up, tap Remove from iPhone if you want to delete the low-resolution copies of the photos from your iPhone – the originals will still remain on iCloud. If you want to restore the original photos to the iPhone, tap Download Photos & Videos.
5. Repeat this for any other iOS devices connected to that Apple ID account. Once iCloud Photos is turned off, each of your devices' photo collections will be managed individually.
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How to delete multiple photos at once from iCloud
1. Open iCloud.com in a browser and sign in with your Apple ID if needed.
2. Click Photos.
3. Hold the Ctrl key on PC or the Command key on Mac and click on each photo you want to delete. If you want to select all the photos, press Ctrl + A on PC or Command + A on Mac. Keep in mind that you can only select up to 1000 photos at a time.
4. Click the trash bin icon in the top right part of the page to delete the photos.
Dave Johnson
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.
