How do I prevent my iPad from downloading photos that I’ve taken with my phone

hobbittater wrote:

My iPad is automatically downloading pictures I take on my phone to my iPad. This is filling up all the space on my iPad, so I cannot use it how I need. I’ve looked through my iPad and forums but haven’t found any information.

disable this feature Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

The only way this can happen is if you have iCloud Photos turned on in both devices. Did you intend to do that?

iCloud Photos has two purposes:

1. iCloud automatically synchronizes all the devices connected to it. When you engage iCloud Photos on a device, then the Library on that device is kept exactly the same as the iCloud Photos Library, and vice versa. So, for instance, if you take a picture with your iPhone, it is added to the iPhone's Photos Library, copied to iCloud Photos Library at iCloud.com, and then copied to the Photos Library on your iPad, if the iPad is connected. If you delete a picture on your iPad, then that picture is deleted at iCloud.com and on your iPhone. And, if you delete a picture on iCloud, it will be deleted everywhere else. That's what "synchronization" means.
2. With iCloud Photos you can choose to "Optimize Storage."  If you set a device to "Optimize Storage," then Photos may store only smaller images on the device and rely on iCloud to keep the full sized images. This is great, since with the lower resolution images you can scan through pictures very quickly, and they look great on the screen. And, if Optimize is chosen, and you want to edit or crop a picture, Photos will reach out to iCloud to get a full sized image for you to work with. Your optimized Library may take up less than 20% of the space of a fully downloaded Library. On my iPhone, Photos takes up way less than 10% of the space it uses on my Mac. 

iCloud Photos is not a backup service, it's a synchronization service. If you make mistakes in editing your files, those mistakes will be immediately copied to iCloud when you save. You should have a true backup plan for your pictures, perhaps using an external hard drive.

If you like the idea of synchronizing, then you may be able to relieve your anxiety about filling up the iPad's storage space by using Optimize Storage. If you don't want synchronization or Optimization, then you should turn off iCloud Photos on your devices.