Hundreds of my photos have disappeared

I have the same problem except with THOUSANDS of photos from the last 10 years. I went to go through them and just noticed them all gone. I didn’t delete them and I have no idea how to recover them since they’re not in recently deleted, iCloud storage or in my hidden folder. If someone could offer assistance as to how I recover my photos I’d be extremely grateful. I’m also on an iPhone 14 which I just got a month ago.

I’m having the same issue. How was this resolved?

Does anyone have a solution for this problem if it has been more than 30 days since the photos disappeared? The same thing happened to my wife. We tried all of the solutions proposed. We are going to try Apple support, but we are not sure when this happened. It may have been more than 30 days ago. We did not notice it previously.

I have spoken to Apple support and they have been able to restore my photos remotely. As I acted quickly (within 30 days) this was possible. They were very helpful and it was quite a quick fix. Hope this helps anyone else with similar issues.

Basically Apple do not give a ****! Hence all these complaints and no replies!

Same problem - all pics prior to a date in 2023 (10 years or more of pics) just disappeared. They suggest that if I had acted within 30 days then may have been able to recover. What's purpose of iCloud backup? Mine had updated within last 30 days and thus backup doesn't exist either. I wonder if it is a problem specific to a phone model. I have 14Max.

Same here! I am freaking out because it is all my son’s baby pictures. I just don’t know why they wouldn’t still be in iCloud. I never delete pictures.

I have been putting together an album of the last year and there are lots of random photos that are just missing. Not on any of my devices or iCloud, but I remember explicitly taking them and even favoriting a few. It's like they just vanished.

I'm utterly devastated. Lost 9 years worth of photos into thin air. No explanation. As far as I know, I haven't done anything (downloaded a 3rd party app, etc.) or deleted anything and just noticed that everything from 2015 - August 2024 is gone - on the cloud and on my phone. That's my kids growing up. The problem, judging by all the recent posts, seems to be with Apple. Tech person could not help and he escalated to engineers, but I'm not hopeful. I pay so much for Apples hardware, services, etc. for reliability, safety, and accountability. What do I get? No explanations, solution or compensation. Just oops and a shoulder shrug. Thousands and thousands of memories...It feels like a weird and unexpected violation. Like somebody hit me over the head and I lost 9 years of memories. Catastrophic. Devastating. Bigger problems in the world to be sure, but really feeling the pain of this right now.

This is a possible system problem which Apple needs to investigate.

When did you last see any of these thousands of photographs. Has anybody had access to your iPhone since you last saw any of them?

I was asked in April 2024 by the police to provide copies of photographs of evidence of a physical assault on my partner which occurred on 16 October 2023. The required images were taken by my iPhone between 17 October and 24 October 2023, along with some other images of the results of actions taken by the partner between early September and mid-December 2023. I checked that the images were present on the iCloud in early January 2024 and all were present. The point at which I discovered the deletion was beyond the 30-day period on which I could have undeleted the images.

When I attempted to locate the images on my iPhone and my iCloud account the entire group of images for the period 1 September 2023 to 31 December 2023 had disappeared.

I contacted Apple Support to clarify how this situation had occurred. The response was that one of four situations must have occurred:

1: that I had carried out the deletion myself. I am not a fool and we are not talking about the accidental deletion of one or two or even several images but hundereds.

2: that a software application had deleted the images under the control of settings on my computer. I have no such applications. No such instances have ever occurred in ten years of using the iCloud/iPhone image management facilityand none has occurred since the deletion event.

3: a third party with knowledge of my email address could have accessed my iCloud account and deleted the images. This would also require possession of my iPhone in order to authorise the request. Although many third parties know of my email address, including the assailant, my iPhone has not been out of my hands over the relavnt period.

4: an authorised agency (such as the Police) with knowledge of my email address could have accessed my iCloud account and would be able to bypass the iPhone authorisation phase. This is the only logical explanation of the situation but is the most difficult to pursue.

Has anybody else had a similar experience? Apart from the immediate problem of losing the evidence, I am keen to prevent a recurrence of the situation.

KEYSPELL5140

Recovered: I installed Apple devices and iExplorer on my PC. Took a backup of my phone. Used iExplorer to open the backup and was able to restore the photos and videos using the free version. They still don’t show up on the phone.

I just got back from vacation and noticed I have nothing from July 3rd to July 6th. I have pictures and videos I took from before that and after that but all is missing from those dates. I definitely didn't delete that range. I back up to Google Photos and not iCloud. I don't even see the photos in Google back up. Not sure how they would complete just disappear and nothing in Recently delete nor Hidden. Hope there is something that can be done.

I last saw them when I first got my phone last month. I haven’t really gone through my photos since I got the new phone in May and no one has had access to it to delete any of them.

Had the same problem and found them all in Deleted photos so was able to recover them all.