iCloud is a private cloud platform that Apple Incorporation provides for its users to store photos, videos, documents, memos, contacts or other information online. This design features in greatly freeing up device storage space and creating convenience for sharing personal data over different devices. Very often, we upload and back up a lot of photos in the iCloud.
However, lost iCloud photos unexpectedly is always annoying, especially we deleted them by mistake and it passed 30 days. Well, this post just comes in handy. It will detail 8 most effective ways to retrieve deleted photos from iCloud on Mac, also to restore iCloud photos to iPhone. Let’s have a look together.
Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later
This section covers restoring deleted iCloud photos after 30 days since the deletion.
If you have disabled the sync feature in iCloud across your devices, or you have a backup for the deleted iCloud photos, then you should be able to restore them easily in iCloud or from backup. If you don’t have a backup, you will need a professional data recovery program to getting them back.
Cisdem Data Recovery is an ultimate tool to recover iCloud photos, because it can recover under 2 different situation: with and without a iCloud backup.
If you’ve deleted the photos on your device, and want to recover them from iCloud backup, it is easy to restore them in Cisdem using its iCloud recovery mode.
If you’ve permanently deleted some photos in your iCloud account, it is tricky to recover them, but as long these deleted files are once stored on an internal or external hard drive, even they are gone now, we can still recover permanently deleted iCloud photos from previous storage device using Cisdem.
Notable advantages of Cisdem Data Recovery
Now let’s walk through the steps to recover permanently deleted photos from iCloud after 30 days.
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later 
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later 
If you deleted the iCloud photos on your Mac and disabled the sync, you can log into your iCloud account in a web browser, then download the photos to your Mac again.
If you permanently deleted the photos in iCloud Drive after 30 days, and there are back up files in your Photos app on Mac, you can re-upload the photos to your iCloud account again.
If you’ve set up Time Machine on your Mac to back up the deleted iCloud photos to an external storage device, then you can restore the deleted iCloud photos from the Time Machine backup.
Before you restore the deleted photos, connect the Time Machine backup drive to your Mac first, so it can show and load the data quickly on the Mac.
Recovering recently deleted photos from iCloud that within 30 days since the deletion is usually a straightforward process, much simpler than restoring a permanently deleted iCloud photo, and here are 2 ways.
Generally speaking, supposing your photos are wiped off in iCloud by accident, in the meanwhile they will disappear at other devices applying the same Apple ID. The good news is that the Recently Deleted folder of iCloud Photos still can be checked to regain photos deleted not long ago. This is the quickest method to recover deleted photos from iCloud that have been deleted within 30 days.
If you deleted the photos from iCloud Drive on Mac, this action will be synced to your iCloud account, and the deleted files will be moved to Recently Deleted folder in iCloud account, also to the Trash bin on your Mac, we can recover the deleted iCloud photos from trash bin then.
For those who upgrade their mobile to a new iPhone or whose iPhone is accidentally broken/damaged and then experience a factory reset, but plan to keep the original photos taken previously on the device, there is an urgent necessity to get photos from iCloud to iPhone directly. And we have 2 solutions for you:
Hopefully a feature called “Restore from iCloud Backup” on iPhone might be put to good use.
To be specific, this approach is feasible only when the iCloud Photos on iPhone is not enabled, that is, the photos are saved on the device rather than synced with iCloud.
Also bear in mind that it is a complete retrieval, which will overwrite all the current settings and data on your iPhone. So do remember to create a backup of your existing data before making decisions to try this option.
As follows are step-by-step guide on how to recover photos from iCloud to iPhone after factory reset. Keep Wi-Fi connected through the process.
In 2019, with the elimination of iTunes, Apple built the backup and sync feature into Finder app. In the case that you’ve backed up your iPhone data to a Mac using Finder, you may be able to restore the deleted iCloud photos from such a iPhone backup.
If you deleted photos in iCloud Photos or iCloud Drive, the photos will be moved to Recently Deleted folder for 30 days.
After 30 days, your photos will be permanently deleted. If you want to recover the recently deleted photos from iCloud Photos or iCloud Drive, you should check the Recently Deleted folder in iCloud or trash folder on your Mac. To recover permanently deleted photos from iCloud Photos after 30 days, a 3rd party data recovery program is the best solution.
Yes, we can. But why?
One of the reason is that all the iCloud photos are uploaded from our device, an iPhone or Mac. So we are much likely to have a backup, though not a complete one, we have partial copies of those important files. Once the iCloud backup photos are gone forever, we just need to re-upload the files from our backup folder or drive on our device to iCloud.
Even if we don’t have any backup any more, they once had presence on our device, as long as their traces are not overwritten by the newly added data, it is still possible to dig them out with a professional data recovery program like Cisdem.
Until a data loss happens indeed, we realize how important to have a backup it is. If we have a backup across different devices and cloud storage platforms, it is easy to recover deleted photos from iCloud, even after 30 days, but if we don’t have the backup on our device anymore, in a pinch, Cisdem will be the best option to recover permanently deleted photos from iCloud.
Connie has been writing for Mac productivity and utility apps since 2009. Each review and solution is based on her practical tests, she is aways energetic and trustworthy in this field.
