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Photos Missing On iPhone? Here’s Why & The Real Fix!

    David Lynch
  • 6 years ago
    • Categories: Photos

You can’t find some of your iPhone photos and you’re not quite sure where they could’ve went. You’ve scrolled through your entire photo library, but the one you’re looking for simply isn’t there. In this article, I’ll explain why photos are missing on your iPhone and show you how to find them!

Check Your Recently Deleted Album

Sometimes, the photos missing on your iPhone are just in the Recently Deleted album in the Photos app. To check your Recently Deleted album, open Photos and tap on the Albums tab at the bottom of the screen. Then, scroll all the way down to Recently Deleted under the Other Albums heading.

Tap on Recently Deleted and see if your missing iPhone photos are here. You can recover any photo from your Recently Deleted album by tapping on it and tapping Recover.

Check Your Hidden Album

If you’ve ever hidden photos on your iPhone, they won’t show up in the Camera Roll on your iPhone. They’ll only be accessible in the Hidden album.

So, go to the Photos app and tap on the Albums tab. Then, scroll all the way down and tap Hidden. Are your missing iPhone photos here?

If so, tap on a photo you’d like to recover, then tap the Share button. Finally, tap Unhide. Now these photos will appear in your Camera Roll.

Turn On iCloud Photo Library

If the your missing iPhone photos weren’t in the Recently Deleted album, head to Settings and tap on your name at the top of the screen. Then, tap iCloud.

Next, tap Photos and make sure the switch next to iCloud Photo Library is turned on. You’ll know it’s on when the switch is green!

It’s important to turn on iCloud Photo Library because this feature will save and store all of your photos in iCloud so you can access them on any of your iCloud-connected devices. If iCloud Photo Library is on, you may not see the photo on your iPhone, but you’ll be able to access it in iCloud!

Once you’ve turned on iCloud Photo Library, go back to the main page in Settings and tap Wi-Fi. Make sure Wi-Fi is turned on.

Give your iPhone a few minutes to sync up with iCloud, then go back to Photos on your iPhone and search for your pictures again.

Make Sure You’re Signed In With The Right Apple ID

If you’re still missing photos on your iPhone after turning on iCloud Photo Library, quickly make sure that you’re logged into the correct Apple ID. If you’re logged into the incorrect Apple ID, you could run into problems when saving your photos to iCloud and syncing your photos between devices.

To check the Apple ID you’re logged in with, open Settings and tap on your name at the very top of the screen. The email address you see under your name is the Apple ID you’re currently logged in with. If it’s the wrong Apple ID, scroll all the way down and tap Sign Out.

If you’re logged into the correct Apple ID, try signing out and back in anyway — a minor glitch could be causing the problem.

A Photo Finish!

You’ve found those lost pictures on your iPhone! Next time there are some photos missing on your iPhone, you’ll know exactly how to fix the problem. If you have any questions about your iPhone, feel free to ask them below in the comments section.

Thanks for reading,
David L.

View Comments (92)

  • is it possible to just download all photos from iCloud to a regular removable drive. This is so scary and I lost pictures as well. I have blacked out spots where the pictures where prior. This is so frustrating.
    Should we just save to another cloud or drive?

  • David I did every thing u suggested and my photos are still not there any thing else I can do

  • I just got a new phone and transferred all my photos onto it from my old phone, every single photo video screenshot and whatever. It SAID it had AL TRANSFERRED onto my NEW phone and so I left it for a bit. I then proceeded to clear my OLD phone of all photos as they were no longer needed and I needed to clear up some storage space for that phone and I left it for the night. This afternoon I reopened my photos app on my NEW phone only to find EVERY SINGLE ONE TO HAVE GONE. Absolutely annoyed and upset and they’d all CLEARLY transferred but now weren’t, and am very upset as I’ve lost thousands of close and memorable pictures of lost ones and family members so DO tell me what I should do.

    • Im afraid the same exact thing happened to me. The UX in this process is dreadful. IT asked if i wanted to use the new phone and it just deleted any of the photos i had not already exported. GONE, years of memories because Apple wants you to move everything to the Cloud so they can charge you for space.

  • I tried to follow your directions, but the download button is grayed out, as are all the other options. Help!!!

  • Yesterday I had over 1600 photos on my iPhone 11. I had my phone plugged in over night. Today there are only 30 photos on my iPhone. My guess is something happened overnight and my phone had to go to the backup, so all my photos are gone except the ones I had saved in iCloud. Apple doesn’t really allow download via usb cable to a windows laptop, so I had to use iCloud to share any pictures with my laptop. I don’t care to give more money to Apple so I have never increased my iCloud storage capacity. When I download images from iCloud and delete them from iCloud (to make more room in iCloud), I do see the message that says, “any images deleted from iCloud will be deleted from all synced devices”.

    I feel a fair amount of anxiety of losing that many photos, as I have recently been trying to download images (45 at a time) from iCloud to my laptop. This heartsick feeling is awful.

    I will try to download the iCloud pictures to my laptop today and see if any others reappear.

  • I got a new phone and I set it up last night and opened Photos this morning to send my mom some pictures and NOTHING is in my Photos now. I really need these pictures ASAP.

  • Like everyone here I have missing photos. From what I can see, most are pre 2015. All my son’s baby photo’s vanished (first couple of years gone). I note that Apple made iPhoto obsolete. Could it be that not all photos transferred to PhotoLibrary (new app). My iPhoto had an error where it would not update. I didn’t think it would affect migration to Photo Library. Could this be the issue - anyone have ideas?

    • I have the same issue. I made a few vids and took pics of me and my friends. I went back to look up on them and they're missing. I don't know what to do.

  • I have also lost all my photos and I have no idea where they are! I have searched in iCloud and they are not there. I only have photos from the last 30 days and one from each year from 2016 to now! I have not deleted them. Why is this happening to so many people and Apple says we must have done something wrong but I haven’t changed anything I do!

  • I set up iCloud and backed up all my photos to it. I confirmed they were all there on iCloud. Then I went into just my phone photos app and deleted all the pictures I didn’t want stored on my phone, somehow it appears they deleted in iCloud too! How can I fix this? It’s showing the only photos I have in iCloud are those that I have on my actual phone storage. But I should have thousands more on iCloud.

  • Technology has moved so fast toward having computers in our hands, the everyday user is uninformed of using them properly. The number one rule for using any computer no matter if it’s a smart phone, computer or tablet is to do a proper data back. Do you have a backup offline and a backup in the cloud??? Also it’s good to have a backup to your backup offline. I’m in IT school and I hope to push this narrative even more in the coming years after I’m done and have an IT job. Believe me it will save companies countless support hours which in turn will save them money by educating their customers on proper data backups.
    I know many customers won’t wanna do it because it’ll require extra work, but if they don’t, it’s their loss after they’ve been educated on it.

  • looking back through my photos on iCloud I see small groups of photos missing here and there. Luckily I also use google photos, and Amazon photos when I remember to open the app and let it upload for a bit.
    Rather frustrating considering I pay for iCloud storage. Seems it’s convenient on iPhone and I take a lot of photos.

  • About 3 weeks ago I tried to update my phone and it was basically a bad update. I had my phone stuck on the apple logo, but I fixed it through iTunes and everything was fine. I noticed that my photos and videos from February, March, and April are gone but everything else is still there. I didn’t delete anything and I checked my iCloud and Google photos. Is there any way I can get it back ?

  • Photos and videos that I know have been backed up won't show on my backups. Most websites say they're gone as I deleted the originals. Anyone know what to do?

  • Hi. I have just got off the phone to Apple Technical Support and they say they cannot help me and they have done everything they can. I can't believe they can just do that. All my photos in my folders are gone. I know I haven’t deleted them. They have no explanation as to why this is. Can they do that? Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks Dani.

    • Hi Dani! Did you store your photos on iCloud in addition to your iPhone? If so, have you already tried viewing your photos from your iCloud account?

      • They were all on the iCloud. One minute they were there, then gone. All the photos on my shared albums are still there. Only to normal album photos are gone. The albums are there with 0 photos in them. Really strange and Apple say they cant help. Can you help please?

        • Hi Dani, thanks for getting back to me! Did you already check your iCloud Photo's Recently Deleted folder? It might be possible to recover your photos from there if you can see them.

          If that doesn't work, it might be worth it to go to the Apple Store in person to have a technician take a look at the issue in person. It's possible they might be able to find a solution Apple's remote support team might not be able to — just make sure to make a Genius Bar appointment before you make the trip! I hope this helps!

          • Hi! I’m having the exact same issue as you currently and a few months worth of pictures have just disappeared, were you able to get them back?

  • I found this site after having similar problems with missing photos/videos after getting a new phone. If it helps anyone else, I found that the ‘upload’ of my photos was on pause, and I simply had to press ‘resume’ (located under photo album)…. an hour later, all were back. Good luck ?

  • iPhone 12 Pro Max and photos go missing a lot. My photos and vids keep disappearing and never last past 48 hours. Again I went to review my pics last week and 0 were available. I checked iCloud, iCloud folders on my Windows 10 PC, checked my MacBook Pro, checked for any recently deleted and nothing. Now, I opened my iPad Pro to Photos and was excited to see there they were BUT not even 20 seconds after I opened Photos, as I was staring right at the mosaic of pics, POOF! They all disappeared at once.

    My better half was sitting right next to me and we both thought WTF just happened. No recently deleted items at all, I again checked iCloud and repeated looking at everything else. No pics to be found. Plenty of space on my devices, plenty of iCloud space, I only have one Apple ID and have not made any changes to iCloud or Photos settings on my devices. I tried a few file recovery trials on my MacBook with my iPhone connected and although older pics were found, pics from last two months were not. Equally boggling. Anyone else experienced this? It actually started to occur somewhere around iOS 13 and into 14.

    • Hi Steve!

      It sounds to me like there's some sort of software problem with the image database that's causing your Photos to "disappear." When we open the Photos app on an iPhone or iPad, the mosaic of photos we see is a collection of thumbnails that are married to a database. I bet your files are all still there, but the database itself is corrupted.

      I'm assuming you have iCloud Photos turned on. Have you tried going to https://www.icloud.com/photos/ to see if they're there? This is kind of a tricky problem to solve remotely so you might want to make an appointment at a local Genius Bar. Back up as much as you can, of course. In short, I believe that at some point, some corrupted file got in there and messed up the database. Now it's time to call in the big guns and get help.

      Best of luck!
      David P.

  • Has anyone found the solution in recovering their missing photos? Whole lot of my photos/videos from 2019 just vanished and it’s not even in the recently deleted folder either. If anyone has found any solution please help me!

    • Hi, just had same problems with my new phone. The upload had simply paused, so I pressed ‘resume’ (under albums) and they have all returned ? good luck ?

  • I had so many pictures of my daughter when she was really young! Now all of my pictures from 2007-2015 are gone, and I have tried everything in this article… Please someone help!

    • Hi, is there a ‘resume upload’ message under your albums? I’ve just got mine back after noticing it! Good luck ?

    • Hi Tanya, I'm so sorry to hear about your photos! Did you upload any of your missing images to iCloud? If so, they should not be gone forever!

      Head to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID, you should be able to see any photos you've uploaded to iCloud there. Here's an article Apple published about iCloud photos with some more information: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264

  • Hi, for my old iPhone 6s, I forgot the password, so I had to restart the iPhone. When I went back on it the old pictures were gone, and some from my new phone were in it. I can’t find the pictures anywhere, and I’m not sure if their in iCloud. Can you help? Thanks.

    • Hi Duygu, did you upload them to iCloud? If so, they should be available on iCloud.com. Just log in with your Apple ID and you should be able to view any images you've saved to your iCloud account.

      If you'd like more information about iCloud Photos, here's an Apple Support article with some great tips: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264

  • i had over 5000 pictures on my iPhone 11 and they all have disappeared except 700 and theyre all prior to February that are missing. How can I get these back I had iCloud set up and they used to be there but now they’re all gone lost memories I’m so devastated!!! Apple support told be I must have deleted them, NO I DID NOT!!!! 5000 pictures and over 400 videos gone!!! Help I can get them back? Wonder if there’s a virus as I keep getting weird text too!!! When I buy another phone I won’t be buying a iPhone since this has happened anyone know how to get these back are they still somewhere on the phone can I buy a program that will extract them directly from inside the phone somewhere HELP PLEASE!!!!

    • Hi Sharon, sorry to hear you're going through that! Have you gone to icloud.com to see if you can access your photos through Apple's website?

  • iCloud says I have over 4000 photos but when I try to transfer from my iPhone to my pc it only transferred only 677. I am trying to transfer photos from my iPhone to an external hard drive connected to my pc. Can you help? The photos all show on my phone and iPad. Also in iCloud some pics are showing but I cannot page down. I can only see what comes up when I first go to iCloud photos.

  • Same here- but this first happened over a year ago- and now it happened AGAIN several months ago
    luckily My camera was also saving them to Google photos

  • Help! I've lost my most cherished photos and none of this tips or any I've seen are helping. What happened was:

    1. The photos were on my old iPhone 5S. They had been backed up to my iCloud account associated with that phone AND my newer devices, however I recently accidentally wiped the photos from iCloud.
    2. I booted up the old iPhone and the photos were all there.
    3. However, the photos all had the symbol of the exclamation point inside a circle, which I've learned means that those photos weren't the originals, but rather compressed versions (whereas the originals had uploaded to iCloud, per point #1).
    4. My goal was to get the photos off of the old phone, however I could not do so (clicking on "share photo" showed options, but when I clicked on any of options it said "can't share photo").
    5. I thought maybe this was because I was not signed into iCloud on the device, so I signed in. At this point all of the albums disappeared and I was just left with the photo stream. All of the default collections had become empty.
    6. I then plugged the phone into my computer. My options were to restore from an old backup that didn't have the photos or wipe the phone to factory settings. Didn't want to do that!
    7. I then clicked "upload photos to icloud", after which point all of the photos disappeared.

    This is crazy and infuriating. Is it really possible that clicking "upload to icloud" wiped the compressed photos from my phone? That would seem like a glaring and egregious oversight for Apple to make, but it's the only explanation I'm left with.

    Any ideas?

  • I actually have a slightly different problem, and I haven't found a solution to it. I have an Uploads folder on my PC mapped to my iCloud photos. Some of the photos sync, but some don't. For example, I drop a folder into Uploads that has 18 photos, but only 11 actually upload. I tried a larger amount last night; there had to be well over 500 photos in several folders and I placed in Uploads. Overnight only 126 photos actually uploaded. It doesn't appear to be an issue with a specific subfolder since some photos from each are uploading.

  • same thing happened to me just 30 minutes ago i watched them vanish. i was looking at a picture and then i backed out and they shuffled as if i was deleting some of them and it deleted all but 25 out of 1700 pics and videos.. if anyone knows how to get them back please lmk..

  • i just purchased the IPhone 12 and some of my photos disapeared into thin air! They are not in the deleted photos, icloud photos is on. Where are they? I really want them back!

    • Did you find out how to recover you pics I saw this forum I have iPhone 11 and my pics are gone not on iCloud I don’t have iTunes they’re nowhere to be found just wondering if you found yours and how?

      sharon

  • Had over 4000 photos and check earlier and most if not all is not there except 900 could you please help me out

  • I went to Delete photos and videos I don’t need because my storage ran out. I had over 10000 photos and videos and all of them disappeared I only have 164 now from 2017. What the hell happened none of this helps how can I get them back???

    • Hi, ive had the exact same problem just now, so far apple support haven't found any solution. Did u manage to retrieve the photos back, if so could you please let me know what u did.

      • Same exact issue here. I had full storage and deleted about 5 gb of images/videos to try and free space with no change. Next morning I check my photos and 75% of them just disappeared. Storage still shows the same amount (full) so I think they're still on the phone, they're just not showing in the app. I need to get this fixed.

        • has anyone found a fix and this just happened to me as well i have 999 instead 4000 and i got extra storage and soon as i backed it up they all disappeared ..Not happy and worried i wont get them back

      • Same exact issue here, seems like and iOS 14 bug. I had full storage and deleted about 5 gb of images/videos to try and free space with no change. Next morning I check my photos and 75% of them just disappeared. Storage still shows the same amount (full) so I think they're on the phone, they're just not showing in the app.

  • I went looking for a video I took and photos that were taken at the same event. The video was still there but with no audio. And most of the pictures were gone, iCloud storage is on and I pay Apple for extra storage and now pictures are gone. ?

  • Weird, but all my photos appear in my Photos app on my laptop, but the majority of them are gone from my phone. None of the above suggestions worked and this morning I just did the most recent update. Not sure if that's what screwed it up.

  • my phone had a problem and i ahve to restore it. but im scared by doing so i will lose my data more precisely my photos. i checked i cloud and not all photos are on there.

  • I lost a lot of fotos and videos, when I reach the free limit, I received warnings, then I sucribed, but old fotos are not appearing in my gallery, just form 2007, WHY?? Is it possible to revoer them?
     

  • None of the above worked for me... I lost a lot of my pictures on my iPhone... We should report this to Apple

    • I just spoke to Apple Support. Since the 13 IOS update, 50 photos are missing. The rep told me that I must have accidentally deleted then, (my fault), bull. Cant get them back.

  • i literally just signed out of my apple id and signed back in and just lost all my photos. i don’t know what happened but i checked all the folders and they aren’t there. what am i supposed to do now?

    • I'm wondering if your photos are missing on your iPhone because when you signed out of Apple ID, it removed all the photos that were on your iCloud. Now that you're signed in again, try checking your photos settings to make sure iCloud Photo Library is turned on. I hope that helps.

  • i woke up and saw that all my photos were missing, they were on iCloud.com but not in my gallery. Does anybody know how to transfer all photos from iCloud.com to the gallery???

    • I have the SAME problem I logged out of icloud id and when I signed in again a lot of photos were missing but they are in iCloud and now I don’t know how to return them to the album can someone please help me if they know?

  • i cant bring back my photos, i charged in 50gb and im not still paid for 2months is it the reason why my photos in my icloud are not in my phone?

  • So I wanted my pictures from my IPhone 4 so I don’t want those pictures to erase so I went on iCloud clicked photo library and everything disappeared I had around 1600 pictures and now it only has 179? I want all my pictures back

  • I can't remember my password. Someone was supposed to fix my screen, ended up tearing apart my whole phone! I brought it to the professionals to fix it and they said my whole memory board was missing. Idk what to do. All the pictures of my kids births through ages4-5 we're on that phone. I'm beyond sad, upset, distraught and many other things. I don't even remember if I was smart enough to turn on the cloud or sync at the time I got the phone. This was the 4S. I hope you can help me somehow. I do have an iPhone 6 but is not in service. I can use it for other stuff in WiFi but I changed my iCloud email/ username. I really messed up didn't I? Please help me....

    • Omg this is my exact problem. All of my child's pictures from date of birth to 6 months are gone and I can't understand what happened.

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David Lynch: David Lynch is an expert on cell phones, cell phone plans, and other tech. After using a flip phone into his early 20s, he learned the ropes about iPhones and Androids from a former Apple employee. Today, his articles and videos are read and viewed by millions, and he has been cited by major publications including Reader's Digest, Wired, CMSWire, Consumers Advocate, and more.