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Effusion01

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 10, 2011
92
7
Want to delete everything and start again, am using the photo app and want to reset and start again, how do I do that, as when deleted using photo app on iMac it deleted all but still shows on iPhone and iPad.
 

bob24

macrumors 6502a
Sep 25, 2012
582
501
Dublin, Ireland
Want to delete everything and start again, am using the photo app and want to reset and start again, how do I do that, as when deleted using photo app on iMac it deleted all but still shows on iPhone and iPad.

Same issue here.

On your iOS device you can go to Setting/iCloud//Storage/Manage Storage/iCloud Photo Library. There you will have an option to completely wipe your library.

Problem is the is a 30 days retention period before your data is actually deleted and there doesn't seem to be any way for he user to override this ... I myself have 20 days to go before I can start over again :-/

I reached out to Apple's customer support via online chat and they were not much help and basically told me to wait.
I can't believe they don't have a better solution - I didn't bother callign again as anyway I am waiting for Photo for OSX to be out of beta before I get serious about this, but maybe another :(would give a better answer.
 

Fuchal

macrumors 68030
Sep 30, 2003
2,604
1,058
Same issue here.

On your iOS device you can go to Setting/iCloud//Storage/Manage Storage/iCloud Photo Library. There you will have an option to completely wipe your library.

Problem is the is a 30 days retention period before your data is actually deleted and there doesn't seem to be any way for he user to override this ... I myself have 20 days to go before I can start over again :-/

I reached out to Apple's customer support via online chat and they were not much help and basically told me to wait.
I can't believe they don't have a better solution - I didn't bother callign again as anyway I am waiting for Photo for OSX to be out of beta before I get serious about this, but maybe another :(would give a better answer.

I haven't tried this because I don't plan on wiping my library - but after deleting your library, have you gone into the Albums > Deleted Photos album on iOS or Web and hit Edit > Delete All? This immediately deletes the 30 day photos.
 

bob24

macrumors 6502a
Sep 25, 2012
582
501
Dublin, Ireland
I haven't tried this because I don't plan on wiping my library - but after deleting your library, have you gone into the Albums > Deleted Photos album on iOS or Web and hit Edit > Delete All? This immediately deletes the 30 day photos.

Yeas I thought of but actually the option to wipe the whole library doesn't seem to mark the pictures as deleted the same way you would do it manually.

If I open the photo library on my devices that are still there as before and not in the recently deleted album.

The only think that happened is that now when I go to Manage Storage / iClioud Photo Library there is a message saying "iCloud Photo Libaray has been disabled on your account. In 20 days, the photos and videos stored in iCloud will be deleted and iCloud Photo Library will be turned off on all your devices.". And there is a button to cancel the library deletion. The spaced use by my Photo Library on iCloud is also now listed as 0KB whereas it was about 40GB.

I think Apple did that is that don't want someone to be able to easily and quickly wipe their whole library by mistake - or maybe so that if you get your account hacked you have a second chance to cancel the deletion process.
 
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