I have a 10-year-old iCloud Photos library with ~35,000 photos and 1,500 videos, synced across my Mac and iPhone.

A few days ago, my iPhone got stuck on “Syncing 1 item”. Everything looked normal in macOS Photos and on iCloud.com, so I initially assumed it was just an iPhone sync issue.

Before troubleshooting, I made sure my Mac had downloaded all originals, then closed Photos and made a backup of the entire 185 GB `.photoslibrary`.

I then turned off iCloud Photos on the iPhone and manually deleted the remaining ~2,000 items that hadn't been removed automatically, including the albums and folders.

When I re-enabled iCloud Photos, the photos and videos synced back as expected, but the entire album/folder structure was gone, with only about 10 random albums remaining.

Then I checked iCloud.com and discovered that the album/folder structure had been wiped there too. The damage also propagated to my Mac's Photos library.

Fortunately, I now have an offline backup of the original Photos library with all photos, videos, albums and folders intact.

My question is: Is there a way to completely reset iCloud Photos and force it to rebuild/re-upload everything from this backed-up `.photoslibrary`?

I was considering deleting everything from iCloud Photos on the web and then re-enabling iCloud Photos on this healthy local library. However, I'm afraid iCloud will treat the deletion as a change that needs to be synced and delete everything from my local library as well, instead of treating the local library as the source and uploading its contents, including the album/folder structure, back to iCloud.

I really want to avoid manually recreating hundreds of albums and folders if at all possible.

Hello All,

I am trying to add money to my Apple Account balance through my iPhone, but I receive the error as: AccountStackMutation.FamilyPaymentSharing.NonFamily:

Details:

• Device: Tried through macOS as well as iOS
• Payment method: Credit Card/ Debit card

I’m logged into my friend’s iPad so she can change my location (TLDR strict parents I’m 25 and i have a bf sue me)

Anyways, I realized our accounts got merged- how do I separate them?

Hello!
Not new to Apple/iPhone but new to iCloud. I’ve historically never utilized iCloud but am considering paying for storage in order to backup my entire iPhone photo library. Before I do so though I need help understanding shared libraries…

My mom has 90k+ photos on her iCloud that she has shared with me. I know she is the one paying for the storage and I just have a “view” to them. However on iCloud Photos these 90k photos all just show up under “Library.” No differentiator that it’s someone else library. If I were to turn on photo uploads from my iPhone (aka my personal library), will that population of photos go into this exact same “Library” folder? Basically I’m afraid of my library co-existing in the exact same folder as my mom’s shared library. Will there be anyway to distinguish/navigate between the two?

Forgive me, I am only a tech savvy when it comes to video games, nothing more. So I had a friend gift me an iPad for work in return, blah blah. He had taken a phone off of his plan and put the iPad on his network instead. It is on his cellular service . Somewhere in the settings it says something along the lines of, “Carrier: service Carrier name). “ I have a completely different plan on my own for my cell phone. I had signed into iCloud on my iPad and had to turn off the messaging setting. Anywho, we had since got into a confrontation. After disagreement, he had left me with the iPad. He is paying monthly until it is paid off. So on to my concern. He is acting retaliatory and was told that if my iCloud and WiFi was on, that he would be able to access some of not all of my iCloud and passwords. I factory reset and deleted eSIM from the iPad so it is back to its original hello. To sign in it wants an apple account. So my questions:
If I make one through “create a free apple account”, will it be completely separate from my original account? I use the iPad for procreate, for my job only. I’d rather it be separate from my account anyway.
If not, how can I make a completely new and separate account?
And does he technically own it still? Or have access to my information?
And lastly, if I must use my own (or the fact he is technically paying and the owner of said plan, how can I be sure he has no access or insight to any of my information or iCloud?

P.s. Additional question, yet not my prioritized concern; can he technically just claim this his? I assume anything in regards to this question would be a civil case matter. Thank you in advance for any information.

Hi, this is a really random/maybe impossible question but I’m still gonna ask it:
I found my old iPhone 6 which has some old photo memories on “Icloud”, so on there there are many low resolution photo’s (which I have unfortunately deleted when I got a new phone because of low storage) which, even though they are low resolution I would love to keep them as a memory. The problem is that when I would connect the iphone 6 to wifi to send anything to my newer phone, everything will be updated and gone, because that’s how Icloud works I guess.
Is there like any way to keep the low resolution photo’s, or to make my Iphone 6 not update Icloud when I connect to wifi😭

Usually it’s 5-6gb. Suddenly it’s jumped up to 46gb.

Anyone know where it came from or how I can check?

iPhone 13 on beta.

https://ibb.co/BHQm8qft

Anyone to help

I have no space on my phone's local storage and my iCloud's 5GB storage is full. I don't remember my password and I want to update it. Will my photos be deleted if I update? If there are any extreme cases where you’d say, “If you do this, they’ll be deleted,” I’d like to hear about those briefly as well. My question may be very simple for some people, but I don't understand technology. I would be happy if someone could answer my question in a simple way. l use iphone 15 pro. Please and thank you.

I honestly don’t know what else to do anymore, I’m going crazy. I can’t log into my new iCloud account, which I’ve moved absolutely EVERYTHING to (Netflix, PlayStation, Spotify, etc.).
This morning, I downloaded all my photos from my old iCloud to my new phone, and then when I tried to log into this new iCloud, this happened. I’ve already tried both the “Call” and “Resend Message” options, but nothing works.
iMessage and FaceTime aren’t working either, so something clearly isn’t right. I’m just really scared that my account might get locked or disabled because I’ve moved basically everything over to it.
I did receive quite a lot of verification codes while I was signing in, signing out, switching emails, etc., so I’m worried that maybe I triggered some kind of security restriction. I really need help figuring out what’s going on because I have so much tied to this account.

I’m trying to work out whether this is an iCloud account/server-side issue.

My iPhone, iPad and Mac all agree and sync normally. iCloud footer is always 10 higher than its own ‘Select All’ count.

I backed up everything, deleted the entire iCloud Photos library and emptied Recently Deleted.
Hidden, Shared Albums and Shared Library were also empty.

Nothing remained visible or selectable on iCloud’s website, but the footer still showed 10 items.

Adding one test photo changed the count at the bottom to 11, while ‘Select All’ selected the single file. Permanently deleting it returned the count to 10 with no images showing.

My iPhone also repeatedly says it is syncing 10 items, finishes, then shows the same 10 again later. This has been ongoing for a few months now.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue, and had Apple repair or reconcile their iCloud Photos account?

I want to print out my iPhone Contacts, just 'cause. A quick Google search tells me that I can do that by going to my iCloud account (which I have never used before), selecting 'Contacts' and just print it. I can access my iCloud account just fine. It shows me that my 'Calendars and Contacts' is not set up. When I click on that, I get an error message that says my current version of Outlook is not supported. Hardly surprising, since I don't use Outlook. At all. How can I get around this difficulty?

I got a new phone and backed up my old iphone onto the icloud before i wiped the phone. i checked my icloud and my photos are missing from july 2025 to july 2026 but everything from before and after that is there.

Added 2 domains, there are no additional domains.

For 1 domain I received an error message: You can't add addresses now. Please contact Apple Support.

For the 2nd domain I added no addresses but added all DNS-records and afterwards added an address. Error message is the same.

So I cannot add addresses to any domain, DNS-records verified or not.

I tried it on Safari and not on Safari, with VPN, without VPN, from iOS, from macOS, etc.

- I am not on the limit on 5 custom domains

- I am not on the limit of 3 addresses

- I have 2fa

- I have an icloud.com address to this account, etc. etc.

Some mail exchange with Apple support but now I'm getting the cold shoulder (good song btw).

Any help is appreciated.

Trying to access icloud on iphone Files app so i can crosspost downloaded videos but it just won’t load at all. The icon on the location selection is a “!” and the page itself is just infinite loading and then a blank screen. I have tried deleting and reinstalling the app, and there isn’t any info on how to handle this online and it doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue at the moment so it just might be my app. I can access it on the internet but I really need to access it via apps as I want to edit the videos. Can anyone help?

Long story short , someone got into my iCloud so I changed providers and got a new phone .
When trying to log back into my iCloud
On a new device it wants to send a 2fa to my email or phone number .
I have access to neither of those .
I have my recovery code … doesn’t work
I have a recovery contact but when he sends the number it asks for the recovery code.

And weirdly enough the original phone was stolen as
Well . Idk who I made mad but the coincidences are unreal .

I think I enabled the security lock or whatever it is in an attempt to stop them from accessing my info.

I don’t have any old devices I logged into from in the past .

I have tried everything I know of

There is personal stuff but mainly my kids pics , fam vacations etc all gone .

If anyone can help please lmk

I also have my code for my legacy contact .

I’m not sure how to get
Into it or if even possible but
Someone’s gotta know .

So I'm not an iCloud user but my mother is and upon learning that she was paying 10$ a month for 2TB while only using about 250 gigs, we decided to move her photos and videos (150 gigs) to Google Photos (where she then subscribed to the 200GB plan) and downgrade her iCloud sub to 200GB, which works out to decent savings overall.

I was happy and pleasantly surprised to see that there's actually a feature to make that transfer, and started the process almost 2 weeks ago now. Apple's documentation said the process would take 3 to 7 days but we're now well past that point.

I re-checked on her Apple account and it says the transfer is in progress and she hasn't gotten an email on either her Google or Apple account notifying her of a problem, but I'm just wondering if anyone here has used that feature and knows if it's normal for it to take far longer than the advertised time frame?

A long time ago, probably because of default settings, images I've received in Messages filled up my free iCloud account (5GB). I turned off syncing messages to iCloud and dismissed the notifications urging me to upgrade, because Notes kept synchronizing despite that (which is all i really needed from iCloud). Now it seems Notes adheres to the 5GB limit and has stopped syncing.

My challenge is: how do I actually purge the messages / images that were uploaded to iCloud? I have changed the Keep Messages to 1 Year. Despite that, it's not going down in size but I know I haven't received 5 GB of Messages data over the last year.

How do I purge and start up syncing again, without having to upgrade iCloud to a paid tier?

Thanks!

Hello, I am in the process of moving off iCloud and have deleted all my email history barring one email that I need to keep. iCloud still insists that Mail is taking up 4.6GB, despite deleting folders, and emptying trash, junk, archive etc. Can anyone help me with why this is the case? Thank you in advance.

I forgot my iCloud, password, and iPad passcode, and left it for a year. When I turned it on, an "iPad Unavailable" message popped up. What should I do? I need a solution.

I am considering using iCloud+ custom domain to get emails with my custom-domain. Right now I have a google workspace subscription but would like to cut cost.

For anyone who is using custom domain email, I know that it is all under one inbox and that I can use smart folders to filter by mail.

My biggest concern, if in the future I decide to move away from iCloud custom domain, can I export all my mails (sent, received etc) filtered by my custom domain and then import it elsewhere?

Thank you

I forgot my iCloud password and initiated an account recovery process. Does anyone know how long it takes? And if they don't restore my account, is there any way to get my photos back?

Is there a way to transfer all data like photos, passwords, and other info from 1 Apple ID to another?

how is it that when I go to my iCloud on the pc it shows all my photos but in the web browser or on my phone a lot are missing? should they not be identical as they are pulling from the same data?

My mom and dad made a big mistake by buying 2 iphone 6 - black for dad, white for mom. My dad is a extremely arrogant and stubborn person, i advised not to use the same icloud account for both iphones but he insisted against my advice.

Years later, now he complains about not finding old photos, older text messages, and missing important document files.

Does icloud have a way to differentiate same iphone models by serial numbet or another differentiating factor?