So quick question, after we backup our photos to our iCloud account, can we delete them off of our phone and other devices? Or will that risk deleting my photos from my iCloud account too?
Because I know Google Photos, after they backup to my Google account, I can delete the photos off of my devices because I know it's safely backuped to Google's cloud server, so I was wondering if I could do the same to my iCloud account.
iPhone 13 Pro
iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See the following Apple article for more information: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support
Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Another way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photos turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.
Backing up photos to iCloud
