iPhone Any way to stop iCloud Photo Library from populating new phone?

[boygiant]

I wanted to start with a fresh Camera Roll on my new phone but iCloud Photo Library already downloaded all my photos (25,000+) to it. Is there any way to keep all those in iCloud but have a empty camera roll on my new phone (and have new photos still upload to iCloud?)

Thanks in advance!

 

[Puonti]

Not exactly.

The thing is, iCloud Photo Library is specifically meant to be a library synced across your devices - they all have copies of the same images, whether they are full-resolution or optimized. That’s the purpose of the feature.

I haven’t tried this because I don’t yet use iCloud Photo Library, but in theory you might be able to work around this if you have a Mac:

1) Disable iCloud Photo Library on the phone

2) Enable Photo Stream on the phone

3) Enable both iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream on your Mac

4) Make sure the Mac is set to download and store original, full-resolution versions of photos and videos

My theory here is that the phone will send new photos you take to your Photo Stream, the Mac will download them from the Photo Stream, and then add them to iCloud Photo Library. If you do try this, I’d love to hear if it actually works.

I should note that I suspect Apple will get rid of Photo Stream somewhere down the line. It’s an older feature, which iCloud Photo Library is no doubt intended to supercede in their mind. Yes, they work differently, but from Apple’s point of view they duplicate syncing functionality and Apple probably wants to simplify this in the future.

 

[M. Gustave]

Set your iPhone to Optimize Storage, then it will only keep thumbnails on the phone.

If you simply don’t want to see your old photos, select them, then open the share sheet and click “Hide”. They’re still shown in album views and All Photos, but not in the camera roll.