2 Ways to Delete iCloud Photos from Computer

Updated Mar 22,2019 | by Cody

By saving photos to iCloud Photo Library, you can save a lot of space on your Apple devices and also sync your photos among all your devices. In some cases, you may want to delete photos from iCloud to free iCloud space or remove iCloud duplicates.

As you know, Cloud is also available on your computer, which gives you a better view of all your iCloud photos. In this article, I will show you how to delete iCloud photos from a computer whether it is a Mac or Windows PC.

No matter what device you use, you can head over to iCloud.com to manage all photos on iCloud as long as it has a web browser.

Step 1. Go to iCloud.com and then log in your iCloud account. You may need to go through 2-factor authentication if you have enabled it.

Step 2. Click on Photos.

Step 3. You can now select the photo you want to delete and click on the Delete icon on the upper right to delete it.

If you want to select multiple photos, just press and hold Ctrl key (Command key for Mac) while selecting photos. If you want to select all photos from iCloud and delete them, just press Ctrl + A (Command + A for Mac).

If you find unable to delete photos from iCloud, which means you have chosen the Optimize iPhone Storage when enabling iCloud Photo Library. That means the photos and videos are stored in iCloud and the small-sized optimized versions are stored in the iPhone. In that case, you need to disable iCloud Photo Library or switch to Download and Keep Originals option before you can delete any photos or videos from iCloud.

The latest version of IOTransfer has a new feature called iCloud Photo Manager that allows you to access and manage your photos and videos on iCloud conveniently. You can refer to the steps below to get started.

Step 1. Free download and install IOTransfer on your Windows PC if you haven’t.

Step 2. Launch IOTransfer. Click on Tools and select iCloud Photos Manager. Then login to your iCloud account.

Step 3. Now you have a clear view of all your photos and videos uploaded in iCloud. You can click on each item to select them and then click Delete to delete all the selected photos from iCloud.

As you can see there is a Select All option at the top, which make it much easier to delete all photos from iCloud. If you just want to select all videos, just go to the Videos section and hit Select All.

Before you delete any photos from iCloud, you can also use IOTransfer to download all photos to PC as a backup. Then you can release space from iCloud without worrying about losing your memorable photos.

With IOTransfer, you can define the folder to save the downloaded photos from iCloud and all the photos will be saved as is. As you can see, IOTransfer has many other cool features to help you better manage your iOS devices.

iCloud will keep the recently deleted photos and videos for 40 days, which means you can go to the Recently deleted section to restore iCloud deleted photos to your iCloud Photo Library within 40 days of the deletion.

If you want to permanently delete iCloud and prevent anyone from recovering them, you need to also delete them from the Recently Deleted folder.

Step 1. When you are in the Photos app, click on the album called Recently Deleted.

Step 2. Click Select All at the upper left corner.

Step 3. Tap Delete and confirm by tapping "Delete XX Items".

In most of the cases, you don’t have to do this extra step as it will automatically be deleted from the Recently Deleted album.

That’s how you can download iCloud photos from a computer with 2 methods. Now it’s your turn. Which method do you like the most? Share your thoughts on this in the comments.

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