r/iCloud

Hey all, my dad recently gave me his old iPhone 4S, but I can't seem to fully remove Find My from the iPhone. I even went onto my dad's iCloud account on the website and removed the iPhone 4S from there, but the iPhone 4S is still acting as if it was still connected to iCloud. And whenever I try to remove the iCloud account from the iPhone itself, it says the password is incorrect when it's not. Also, the Find My part of the iCloud website still detects the iPhone for some reason, despite the other part of the website clearly showing that the iPhone has been removed. I just want to disable Find My so I can safely factory reset the phone, or at least delete everything user-installed and add my own iCloud account for a "DIY factory reset". Any help is appreciated.

So my iphone had 251/256 gb storage used. My old phone had backed up 5gb of nonsense on cloud photos. Now I got 2TB plan.

So If I were to start syncing it would first download/restore the 5gb. I didn't want to (since I dont have the storage, nor do I care about those photos), so I chose disable & delete everything in order to start a fresh backup.

Now it feels like I'm in a jail for 30 days in order to start again (iCloud on pc says - iCloud Photos has been disabled. You have 29 days remaining to make sure you have a complete copy of your photos and videos).

Is there anything I can do so that this deletion is expedited? Or do I need to wait for 30 days? I can free up some space so that the 5gb bs can get downloaded, if only I can find the option to undo my deletion.

Why is this so difficult to figure out? PS: I have 180gb photos currently on my phone alone.

Illegal CP pics on iPad.

I need the groups help with this issue. Im a senior with very limited iPad technical experience . I recently within the last year purchased an iPad. I did not know how to set it up or even what some of the options meant. So I allowed an acquaintance to help Mel me set it up and teach me how to text emails etc. in return i allowed him to use the iPad as he could not afford one. Im in Canada. Long story short I get an email from Apple to an accept their new terms and conditions. After several attempt to accept them with no luck i phoned apple support. I told them my story but they would not say why my Apple iCloud account was frozen and I had no access to it. They did give me reasons such as security risks illegal pics child antimal porn etc. For five days and limited computer knowledge I went through my entire iPad. In photos in Hidden Photos I found CP and animal porn. I now know why they suspended the account. I confronted my acquaintance and he fessed up that he download the illegal pics on my iPad to avoid the.scrutiny of his wife at home. I called apple and explained the situation . They said they would escalate my request. Ive now phoned twice and have heard nothing . So what do I do now. Questions if I’m not sure I got everything off my iPad should I erase the iPad? I have three Apple IDs . If i erase one Apple ID do they all get erased.What do I need to do and how do do it? This iPad is my lifeline and access to the outside world. Ive had a stroke cannot follow tasks all times and limited mobility. I m 75 yrs old and use the iPad for emails from doctors, order groceries meals on wheels uber emails you tube. Text messaging. Im just recovering from two broken hips and use the iPad like it was my bible. I still have no access to my Apple accounts and keep thinking the police will arrive any moment because of the pics. The worst thing about this is my son who lives in British Columbia face times me several times a week on an iPhone he bought me in case I fall.and to check on me. I phoned him and lied and said I must have hit an app or toggle and now FaceTime does not work. I said I would get it fixed.. if I can’t get my account back Im screwed and son can’t check on me and he will ship me off to a nursing home. I can manage at home fairly well. have a person who showers me,tidies up and changes my bed. Most meals are delivered. What can I do to ensure all illegal activity is off my iPad and or phone. I have told this acquaintancehe no longer has access to my iPad.Please help me . Thank you very much.I

Alright so i’ll try to explain this as best as i can. i hope questions like these are allowed as im not familiar with this sub, so my icloud storage has been full for awhile but it hasn’t been years only a few months im pretty sure. so i went to my icloud to make sure everything was syncing, then saw for my notes app it wasn’t so i turned sync on so in case my phone ever broke i would have notes saved to icloud as i use it literally everyday, but it deleted and wiped out my entire notes app that ive used every single day for the past 5 years, and synced back to the version i first had when i got the phone im using which was in 2020. i turned sync back off to see if it would reverse it but it didn’t. this is more of a question so pardon for the useless question but does anyone know what happened? :( im just confused because i get my icloud was too full to sync my newest bits version, but my icloud was only full for a few months, yet it synced to the 2020 version. i didn’t know turning sync on would sync it to the latest version last synced? i thought it would just sync it to icloud so i’m very frustrated because i thought turning sync on would’ve saved my notes in case my phone broke but it actually wiped out the entire app and sent to the earliest version.

It doesn’t make sense because my icloud storage was full for months, so my notes app should’ve had time to at least sync to the version of the year beside this one or earlier in this year, but no it synced to the 2020 version but i’m almost SURE that within the 5 years of having my phone, it would’ve had time to sync to at least a earlier version rather than the first version. again, i’m just so confused on how turning sync on would sync it to the earliest version, and not just sync the newest version to icloud as that’s what i thought i was doing?

to sum it up, i turned icloud sync on for my notes and it synced to the 2020 version(earliest version) instead of keeping the version i last had in my phone and im not sure why or how to get it back

recently got a new phone but the same model iPhone I’ve had for the past 4 1/2 years, an iPhone 13 Pro Max with 128 GB of storage. I was almost full when I had my old phone and now that I got the new one I have almost half the storage and at least 10,000 more pictures in my camera roll then I did on my other same model phone. Why is that?

It does have IOS 18.6.2 instead of 17.6.1 but still it has the same capacity

I’m not fully sure if this is what caused it but it’s the only thing I lost suddenly. Primarily events I added from years ago, my current events and future events. All gone.

Only certain events that I deleted and declined stayed. Everything else is gone. I’ve tried to restore it through the archival system but it didn’t not help.

Hello, I have a question. I want to sign into my old iCloud account on my new phone however I don’t want anything re-downloading and staying onto my new phone automatically. I want to access the apps and files manually and save what I need from my old account individually to my new phone without having everything put back on this new phone all at once. How can I do this and what to do ?

If I have 55 gb of photos and I buy the iCloud+ 50gb version, will my 50 gb of photos sync and 5gb remain on my phone or I need to buy the 200gb version?

My I pad pro died and I want to get a Samsung tablet cause its Hella cheap rn but I need my photos and videos cause they have videos of my dead cats

Idk what to do

Ugh, where to start.

Dealing with my late 80's in-laws and trying to clean up their IT world. They live 90% of their life on iPhones and iPads. But these are not optimal for a lot of tasks where they need a bigger screen.

One of the biggest messes is around their passwords, just imagine your worst case scenario and know that it is 10X worse. And, somehow, they have added Chrome into the mix.

They have a windows laptop.

What I would like to do is add Safari for Windows to their laptop.

Then add my mother in law's iCloud account to the Windows laptop. I would create a shared passwords group for all of the critical ones between their two iCloud accounts.

Essentially what I hope to end up with is a Windows laptop that runs Safari and easily utilizes all of their iCloud passwords where she would have 100% of all of her passwords plus ~75% of my father in law's passwords that are in the "shared" password group.

Is this viable?

I am using an Iphone 14 Pro with IOS 26.5, with 2T icloud storage and half of my 256gb storage still available in my iphone.

Never encountered this issue before, last saturday after i updated my whatsapp. it completely froze, i couldn't do anything with it for hours. So i tried to offload the app and install again several times with no luck, at one point my phone didn't even let me install the application again. My final option was to delete the app completely, and restore it from my icloud again. Which i did, however my first time restoring, it was stuck for 15 hours at 99% and couldn't move (22gb 10 years of back up messages including work), deleted the app and tried multiple times with no luck

I then looked to reddit users for solutions and tried the following

1. Toggle the whatsapp option in icloud on and off
2. Restart my phone and try again
3. Use a stronger wifi
4. Contact apple support and tried to settle it for almost an hour, they said nothing wrong with my data
5. Emailing Whatsapp support (which was Ai and completely useless)
6. and finally the option that worked, was to miror my phone to a Macbook, and toggle the restore there, which worked.

however then i was faced with another issue, after backing up, msgs started to flow, however, none of the media was in and i couldn't even search for any words in any conversation, and the app completely froze again after 5 minutes permanently. I then tried to transfer my whatsapp to whatsapp Biz, again i can use it for 30 minutes then it stopped. same issue.

was tempted to get a new Iphone until the next day, i went to a mobile phone shop and tried again

1. Transferring everything from my current phone to a new iphone, and tried to restore whatsapp there (didn't work)
2. only installing whatsapp in a new iphone, and restoring whatsapp without other apps (didn't work as well)

So now, after a week without whatsapp which my work heavily rely upon, i am here asking whether anyone also faced the same issue and found a solution, because i really cannot lose my whatsapp data ): Please help guys....or does anyone knows someone in whatsapp that could help, would really appreciate any help and advise !

my last option is to start completely fresh, while keeping my icloud backup. and hopefully one day i could restore it again....

Currently, I edit my photos in Luminar Neo, and export my edited photos to a “Saved Photos” folder on my Windows 11 laptop. Within this folder, I have many subfolders that are organized according to trips we’ve taken, events, etc.

I like to view these thousands of photos on my iPad, to do that I sync the “saved photos” folder to my iPad in iTunes for Windows. It works well, the photos are categorized according to my windows folder structure, and I don’t have to be on WiFi to view the photos on my iPad.

Should I come out of the stone ages and start using iCloud Photos?
- I’d like to share my photo library with my wife so she can view my photos on her iPad.
- I’d still like to be able to save and view all my photos on my iPad without being connected to the internet.

If the Reddit recommendation is yes, I should be using iCloud Photos, how should I proceed?

Thank you!

A vulnerability in Apple’s “Hide My Email” tool lets almost anyone discover a person’s real email address that is supposed to be hidden by the feature, and Apple has failed to fix it for more than a year, according to a security researcher and 404 Media’s own tests.

404 Media is not revealing the exact details of the vulnerability because it can still be exploited as of Monday, when 404 Media verified the issue with one of our own hidden email addresses.

”Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden. We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago. We don't know why it hasn't been fixed, but we don't feel comfortable waiting any longer. Hide My Email users deserve to know that it may be possible for attackers to discover their hidden email addresses,” Tyler Murphy, the co-founder of EasyOptOuts, which discovered and reported the issue to Apple, told 404 Media.

“Free, publicly accessible people-search sites make it easy to link an email address to other personal details, so people relying on Hide My Email for safety may be at risk,” Murphy added.

Hide My Email is part of Apple’s paid iCloud+ product. It lets users generate an anonymous email addresswhich they can then use to sign up to services or email people with instead of their personal email. These email addresses are often two random words and a number ending in the @icloud.com domain.

This can be useful for all sorts of reasons: to reduce spam; to create an account you may not want linked to your personal address and identity; and to not have your personal information held by a site that may later suffer a data breach. I personally have generated more than 400 email addresses with Hide My Email, for example.

To test the issue I generated a new Hide My Email address and provided it to Murphy. Around five minutes later, he replied with my real email address linked to my Apple account which was supposed to be hidden.

“We don't know the full scope of the issue, but in our limited tests with volunteers, 100% of Hide My Email addresses were exploitable,” Murphy said.

Murphy first reported this issue to Apple in June 2025, according to a copy of Murphy’s messages with Apple he shared with 404 Media. A month later, Apple replied and said it was looking into the issue. In March of this year, Apple said it had “addressed the reported issue in a recent system change.” But Murphy found the issue had not been fixed. He provided more information, and later that month Apple said again it was looking into it. Apple said it was still investigating in May.

“We are still investigating this issue. To avoid placing our customers at risk, we would appreciate you not disclosing this information until our investigation is complete. We appreciate your assistance in helping us to maintain and improve the security of our products,” Apple wrote in May.

“It seems that ending new sales of Hide My Email until the problem is fixed would be an effective way to limit the number of customers at risk. Is that an option?” Murphy wrote back.

At the end of May, Apple said it was planning to address the issue in a future security update “expected in the coming weeks.” Murphy then contacted 404 Media on Monday and provided details of the issue and his statement saying, “We don't know why it hasn't been fixed, but we don't feel comfortable waiting any longer.”

Apple did not respond to multiple requests for comment from 404 Media.

In June, TechCrunch reported Apple plans to make changes to Hide My Email that will make it significantly less effective. It will change generated email addresses from using the @icloud.com domain to @private.icloud.com, which means websites or services will be able to more easily block signups from those addresses.

Selling two 600GB family group slots for £3 a month each

Anyone successfully using Parachute Backup to backup their iCloud photos & iCloud files to pCloud? I want an easy way to do this and I'm thinking of buying a lifetime membership to pCloud. Any experiences are appreciated.

Title pretty much says it all. I have a 256GB iPhone and my 200GB iCloud plan is maxed out. My library holds memories dating back to 2012, so deleting everything isn't an option, though I’ve already cleared out all the clutter and junk videos.
Is upgrading to the next iCloud tier the only seamless way forward, or is there a reliable, preferably free/cheap way to back up years of media outside of Apple's ecosystem? What's your current setup?

Hey everyone,

I signed into my iCloud on another iPhone, but I don’t want Shared Albums to show up on that specific device.

I went into Settings → Photos and when I try to turn off Shared Albums, I get this message: “Turning off Shared Albums will delete all shared photos from your iPhone.”

That wording is confusing me a bit 😅

So I just want to confirm:
\- If I turn off Shared Albums on this one device, will it
delete the albums from iCloud entirely? remove them from my other devices? or just hide/remove them from this phone only?

Basically, I only want to disable viewing them on ONE device without affecting anything else.

Thanks in advance!

Hi.

Today for work reasons I had to opt-out of the macOS 27 developer betas.

When I reset my Mac and opened passwords, I noticed they were empty; I had ~200 passwords there, and around 4 passkeys and now they're all gone.

Same on my iPhone now, I had to reset it to 26 and I almost lost access to my iCloud if it weren't for the fact that I remembered my long-apple-generated password.

This has never happened to me and I always thought they lived inside of iCloud but now they're completely gone alongside the passkeys that would allow to recover most of the times.

This is really scary, I have reinstalled iOS many times and updated it and this has never happened to me before (never backwards though). And now they're completely gone. Everything, the only remaining items are apple sign in items.