Deleting photos from iPhone but keeping it in iCloud

BES518 wrote: …Is it possible to remove all photos and videos from my iPhone to free up storage space but keep the photos and videos in ICloud.

Well, you can turn off iCloud and delete pictures, but they will all come back when you turn iCloud back on. You really should keep at least 10% of your phone's storage free. Many operations use the storage space to manipulate files. With full storage, operations will slow way down, and some will become impossible. If the new OS uses more space, then you'll be stuck.

iCloud isn't a separate storage place like an external drive. iCloud is a synchronization service that keeps the Photos Library at iCloud exactly the same as the Library on your device so that the Library can be shared with other devices. When delete pictures on the phone, the same pictures are deleted at iCloud.

However, With iCloud, you can use Optimize Storage on a Mac, on your iPhone, or on your iPad. Are you using Optimize Storage? If you set a device to "Optimize Storage,"on your iPhone,  then Photos may store only smaller images on the phone and rely on iCloud to keep the full sized images. This can save lots of storage space! My 150 GB Library takes up less than 15 GB on my optimized phone!

Optimized storage is great, since with the lower resolution images you can scan through pictures very quickly, and they look great on the screen. So, if Optimize is chosen, and you want to edit a picture, Photos will reach out to iCloud to get a full sized image for you to work on. It's the same for printing or anything that demands the full picture.

You can set the iPhone to use optimized storage at Settings>[name]>iCloud>Photos. Just change the setting from Download to Optimize.

Are you already using Optimize Storage?

No you cannot remove photos from a device and keep them in iCloud while you currently have the Sync Photos option turned on for that device. That is the purpose of syncing photos with iCloud Photos, so you have access to the same photos on all devices and when you delete from one device, they are deleted from the others.

When using iCloud Photos, make sure you have Optimized Storage turned on. This will reduce the amount of device storage needed as the high resolution photos will remain on the iCloud servers and the smaller thumbnail will remain on the device until a higher resolution is needed. It is all done automatically so you cannot control which high resolution photos you want to offload.

Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support

You can also turn off the iCloud Sync option for Photos first, then when you delete the photo on the device, it will not be deleted from iCloud.

BES518 wrote:

Well, optimized storage is already on for me amd it still takes up like 40GB. There is no super-long videos or anything on it. I’m very frustrated. Also I have barely anything on my iphone other than photos.

I suppose this is a lost cause?

Then you have the option to not Sync the photos from that device where you will be able to delete them without removing them from iCloud.

Using a computer to install the update requires less space on your device since the update is downloaded to the computer instead of the device where it would then need to be uncompressed, installed, and only after the installation would that be deleted to return the space used by the update. Not sure how much space you are looking to free up, so don't know if that is an option or if you have a computer available.

BES518 wrote:

Thanks. This will only delete the local copy of the photo on my iPhone, correct? The iCloud version will be untouched?

Correct as long as you turn off iCloud Photos on that device first as seen here. You just don't want to use the steps at the bottom of the support article to turn off iCloud Photos on ALL of your devices:

How to turn off iCloud Photos - Apple Support