Are photos and videos really included in my iCloud backup?

Question

Level 4

1,220 points

Are photos and videos really included in my iCloud backup?

Hello

I'm trying to get my head around what's actually included in the daily iCloud backup. I've read the support article, which says:

Photos and videos on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro

If you haven’t turned on iCloud Photos, iCloud Backup may include photos and videos in your Photos or Camera Roll, as well as face information from the People & Pets album. When you use iCloud Photos, your photos, videos, and face information automatically sync to iCloud so they aren’t included in your daily backup.

I don't have iCloud Photos turned on, but according to my iPhone its iCloud backup is merely 8,5GB in size, which is far less than the camera roll.

The operating word in the quote above is "may", which has me worried.

Are my photos and videos included in the iCloud backup and is there a way for me to verify this?

Thank you very much in advance

philip

iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 11, 2025 1:18 AM

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Answer 1

muguy

Level 10

91,190 points

Sep 11, 2025 2:21 AM in response to pullman

If you do not use iCloud Photos, your photos are included in your device backup. If you enable iCloud Photos, your images are not included in the backup as those items already sync with iCloud. Verify the contents at settings - Apple account - iCloud - iCloud backup. So long as photos is toggled on, the items are backing up.

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Answer 2

Sep 11, 2025 11:59 AM in response to pullman

pullman wrote: …The operating word in the quote above is "may", which has me worried.

I think that "may" is there for those pictures that were transferred to an iPhone by cable from a computer or some other source so that they are not actually controlled by Photos. You can tell that a picture isn't under Photos' control, because such a picture can't be edited or deleted. I can't think of a batch method to find these orphans, and I don't have any like that, so I can't test for it.

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Answer 3

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Sep 11, 2025 8:27 AM in response to muguy

Thank you very much for replying. I checked in the iCloud Backup Details and Photo Library is not turned on.

The reason I am asking this is that I need to restore my iPhone 16 Pro to factory settings as I am experiencing battery drain. So I'm trying to figure out the best way to get my photos and videos back after the reset without having to restore a full backup.

On the reset phone, once I log in with my Apple ID is it possible for me to select what to restore from a backup? If not I may need to transfer the photo library to an SSD or such and try to copy the photos and videos back from that.

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Answer 4

Sep 11, 2025 9:14 AM in response to pullman

I'm not sure how you "transfer the photo library to an SSD." You can transfer the pictures, but that's rather complicated, time consuming, and doesn't get all the information stored in a Photos Library.

You could pay $3 for 200GB of iCloud storage for one month, turn on iCloud Photos, wait a few days, and the entire Library will transfer to iCloud.com. Then when you restore and turn on iCloud Photos, your iPhone's Library will fully re-populate from iCloud. Then you turn off iCloud.

If you have pictures transferred from a computer, pictures that can't be edited or deleted by Photos, then those will be a problem.

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Answer 5

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Sep 11, 2025 10:53 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thank you for replying Richard. That sounds like a good way. My main concern, in addition to getting my photos and videos back, is to get rid of whatever app or setting it is that causes the battery to drain. I suppose I could overwrite the backup by deleting pretty much all apps and hope that that cleans away whatever gremlins cause this. Restoring the backup after that would hopefully let me get back to as clean a start as I possibly could but with the photo library intact.

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