Wife deleted entire library of pics. Plz help?

[Xanderstone12]

can anyone help me recover my photos ? Wife had iCloud library turned on. I bought her a MacBook Pro. And when all the pics showed up she deleted them. Which took them off her phone too. She also has emptied her trash bin since this. Is there any way to recover this?

 

[whodatrr]

Do you use Time Machine? If so, you can go back to an older library on your MacBook. also, you can probably dig up older images on your phone, through iCloud backup.

 

[aristobrat]

If she doesn't have Time Machine, I'd have her log into www.iCloud.com with her Apple ID, go into the Photos section, and look in the Trash folder there. That Trash folder is separate from the normal Trash on her Mac, so they may still be there.

 

[Xanderstone12]

I'd have her log into iCloud.com with her Apple ID, go into the Photos section, and look in the Trash folder. That folder is separate from the normal Trash on her Mac, so even if she's emptied that, they may still be in the separate iCould Photos trash.

no

I'd have her log into iCloud.com with her Apple ID, go into the Photos section, and look in the Trash folder. That folder is separate from the normal Trash on her Mac, so even if she's emptied that, they may still be in the separate iCould Photos trash.

no time machine.. and i cannot figure out how to recover these. apples website states that they are kept in purgatory for 30 days but i cannot find out how to recover them from it.

 

[Tarrant64]

I thought on iCloud.com if you login and view Photos there's a Recently Deleted photos option.

 

[Xanderstone12]

not that i can find

 

[aristobrat]

So when you login to icloud.com, do you even see an icon for Photos?

 

[Xanderstone12]

So when you login to icloud.com, do you even see an icon for Photos?

Yes but no options for recovering deleted photos

 

[0970373]

When you say she emptied the Trash, I assume you mean on the Mac itself - not the Photos app. There is no "Trash" in the Photos app or iCloud Photo Library so I just want to make sure we're talking about the same things here.

If you open the Photos app on the Mac, there should be a folder called "Recently Deleted." Just select all the photos (command+a) and hit Recover in the top right corner.

If you have an iOS device, you can recover from here as well. Go to recently deleted, select what you want and hit recover.

Take a screenshot and post here of what you see if these instructions aren't working for you.

 

[0970373]

Yes but no options for recovering deleted photos

 

[Xanderstone12]

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Ok so she had "iCloud photo library" turned on , on her iPhone. I don't know why.

So all these pics show up on the photos app. She didn't want them all there so she deleted the entire bunch of them.

They disappeared from her phone.

The "recently deleted" album has nothing in it.

There's no tab for restoring or removing deleted photos in the Mac "photos" app

 

[0970373]

Ok so she had "iCloud photo library" turned on , on her iPhone. I don't know why.

So all these pics show up on the photos app. She didn't want them all there so she deleted the entire bunch of them.

They disappeared from her phone.

The "recently deleted" album has nothing in it.

There's no tab for restoring or removing deleted photos in the Mac "photos" app

The screen shots I provided are from iCloud.com. From experience, it's really not easy to completely nuke your iCloud Photos Library. It's a process - I know because I was trying to reset mine and it was a pain. You must be very deliberate in deleting all these things from all places.

But if she emptied the Recently Deleted folder on all devices, there's nothing you can do. The photos are gone.

It might be better if you call Apple Support to help you walk through some of the different ways to recover photos.

 

[Xanderstone12]

I believe she nuked her whole library... I can't believe she did this. 4000 photos

 

[0970373]

I believe she nuked her whole library... I can't believe she did this. 4000 photos

One more hail mary. Does she use iCloud Back up? From her phone, Settings --> iCloud --> Backup. What does it say the last backup was?

If it was before she nuked the library, there's a chance you could recover the photos by restoring an iCloud backup. She really would have had to go to like 5 places to delete everything completely.

 

[aristobrat]

There's no tab for restoring or removing deleted photos in the Mac "photos" app

They go into a "Recently Deleted" album inside of the Mac Photos app, too. Once they're in there, it's possible to delete from that album (before they expire on their own in 30 days), but that's a manual process. She really had to go out of her way to do that. :/

 

[chabig]

I believe she nuked her whole library... I can't believe she did this. 4000 photos

For future readers of this thread, don't be the person who lives without backup.

 

[Xanderstone12]

For future readers of this thread, don't be the person who lives without backup.

She had a iCloud backup.. But iCloud Photo Library was on when it last backed up. So no pics came back when we restored from that backup

 

[Xanderstone12]

Her mentality was that she could delete them from the Mac bc she had them all on her phone. She didn't realize she had "iCloud library" turned on

 

[0970373]

They go into a "Recently Deleted" album inside of the Mac Photos app, too. Once they're in there, it's possible to delete from that album (before they expire on their own in 30 days), but that's a manual process. She really had to go out of her way to do that. :/

That's what I mean. She would have had to very deliberately select all and delete from multiple places in order to do this. Maybe it wasn't an accident?

 

[chabig]

Backups need to serve two purposes. They should protect you from hardware failures, but they should also protect you from user mistakes. A single point in time backup can't protect you from the latter, because if you make a mistake, and then a backup occurs, you're screwed. That's why Time Machine is so great. But if certain data is important it's important to keep multiple copies on multiple media. Even Time Machine is worthless if the drive it's on fails.

I'm really not being critical. I'm sorry your wife's pictures seem to be gone. I just wanted to comment so future readers might be motivated to learn from this unfortunate experience.

One hopeful thought...iCloud might take some time to update after a change of 4000 photos. In a few hours or days, they might just show up in Recently Deleted. Crossing my fingers for you...

 

[fisherking]

is this in the Photos app? did you check the albums in Photos, for recently deleted. also, time machine! it is ESSENTIAL...as you've discovered, and it's easy to use...

 

[Xanderstone12]

so I called  and the guy was able to push them all back. All 3300 of them. He said it was a new option on his screen and he had never even gotten to use it yet. He was as stoked that it worked as we were.


love 

 

[venom600]

Great, now back them up. I have my Photos library uploading to Google and Flickr because I lost an entire decade worth of photos in an HD crash a few years ago.

 

[snaky69]

so I called  and the guy was able to push them all back. All 3300 of them. He said it was a new option on his screen and he had never even gotten to use it yet. He was as stoked that it worked as we were.


love 

Good. Now get going on a decent backup strategy. If you have no backup, you're just begging to lose all that data when the computer eventually croaks.

 

[cerberusss]

Good. Now get going on a decent backup strategy.

This.

Topic starter, open your browser, go to the Apple Store and order an external usb3 drive of a gig in size, or something. Connect it to the wife's Mac and it'll ask whether you want to use it for backups. Done.