Hundreds of my photos have disappeared

OK. So did you back-up your old phone's images and, if so, did you check they were on iCloud at that point? Did you delete the images from your old phone before you sold/destroyed it? If so, you might have deleted the corresponding iCloud images. Even so, you should still see them in the deleted items folder for up to 30 days ...

I have hundreds of photos missing from iCloud! I agree that what’s the point of iCloud??? Luckily, I have them backed up Costco/Shutterfly, but not sure what to do going forward! Went through and deleted almost a thousand of photos/videos (I do have ALOT) to make room but nothing did not seem to restore anything.

I had this happen to me just yesterday. I'd been checking photos on my phone on Sunday as I needed to send someone a video, only to find all photos except for 2024 on my phone. I'd lost everything including the last photos I took with my mum before she passed.

After finding this thread doing a google search, I did what a couple of people recommended and called Apple. The tech guy I spoke to was able to restore all my photos.

the key is you have to call within 30 days of noticing your photos missing.

That is completely inaccurate. If you purchase 2TB of icloud service you have that much space on an Apple server and that is where your photos reside. They don't if you choose not to save them to the cloud or you do not purchase or have enough space. But if you select save and have the space, they absolutely reside on an apple server.

That is just a silly comment.

If it is beyond 30 days there is nothing Apple can do. This is why people have to have solid backups (again, iCloud is not a backup; it is a transfer function). You have to backup on hard drives. If you use Time Machine, you can get your photos back.

I just noticed I’ve lost everything from June 30- August 8, 2024. I have documented SO much this summer and it’s all gone without a trace. Nothing in recently deleted. Wtf. Thank god I had one weekend uploaded to whatsapp but I made so many memories in July, and they are all gone. So very upset. This might be the thing that finally makes me leave Apple. Been an iphoner since iphone 4.

I can seen to find about 12 years of photos from my phone and cloud it’s like someone got into my cloud and erase most of my most important moment and best photos, plus apple also eliminated my apple Id and did not returned my movies that where very expensive and I purchased through that account, now all my family history is gone so much money to pay for cloud storage for them to erase what I paid for!

The same thing happened to me. I resolved by going to photos in Settings. There I saw that my syncing to my phone had been toggled off. There were only 2,000 photos on my phone but 11,000 on iCloud, so now it has begun the syncing back to my phone. Hope that works for you too

I am currently going through the exact same situation.

10 years of photos, thousands, the last photo of my grandparents, my baby photos, my recent engagement… all gone through no fault of my own.

I contacted Apple support a handful of times, they asked me to:

update my phone

sign out of iCloud and re sign in

factory reset my phone.

and at the end of it.

I was told there was nothing else they can do, I was suggested to backup my photos on a hard drive- to which I replied “why have I been paying for iCloud then for the last 10 years of my life”.

absolutely devastated.

I know this sounds simplistic and maybe everyone else's situation is different, but I just got the 20,000+ photos from 2-5 years ago that went missing returned back on my phone (they were still stored online in the cloud but not accessible on my phone until a few days ago)... I just went to profile settings and realized my device backups was toggled OFF (for whatever reason), so I toggled it ON: then it started Syncing again until I had all 20,000+ missing pics back on my phone again.

I pay $9.99 for 2 Terabytes of storage monthly as well.

I sincerely hope its this easy for the rest if you to fix. Just check all your icloud settings. Also see if its on "storage optimization" versus "keep originals" setting too. I toggled it back to "keep originals" which may have helped jumpstart it back to life - probably after trying to fidget with settings to try bringing my photos back onto my phone ...

Additionally I do have Google photos app that are all intact from 2009. Cheers for the rest of you!

I lost 90% of my thousands of photos, but was able to recover them. I realized my iCloud Photos toggle had gone to off. Go to Settings then Photos and toggle on. It took about a week for the photos to all load.

Remember: iCloud is not a backup service. It is a transfer service. You need to backup all information in separate places. If you are on Mac, then definitely use Time Machine. However, also conduct regular (monthly or bi-annually) backups on a hard drive.

Apple deletes photos without any sense or reason. They say they don't know about this issue but it is rampant. It has happened to me several times over the last decade, including a few months ago. I am a high-level user. When I talk with Apple they deny; go to the discussion groups and you find it around the globe.

If it's happened to you, it is likely too late. You 30 days once they have disappeared, and they probably disappeared a long time ago. If not, go online and in the Photos trash and bring them back from the dead.

If they are gone for good, hopefully you have a backup somewhere and you can begin the arduous process of bringing in your photos and then de-duping them. It took me several days to do this and, hopefully, I had backups from years ago on a drive.

yes I did all that. They weren’t on my iCloud backup either. Nor my recently deleted or hidden folders. I checked everywhere for them and couldn’t find them.