I have Cloud access off of my cell phone and that upload photos and videos to my cloud automatically. That is an Android.
Mom has an iPad, which I’m generally not familiar with. She keeps getting a message saying X hundreds of days since the last Cloud upload. So I’m trying to upload her photos to the Cloud now while I’m somewhere with Wi-Fi (she doesn’t have that at her home) and I don’t see a way to do it manually.
All her settings say that cloud updates should occur regularly but they aren’t happening so I’m not sure if there’s a way to select all and then upload all so the upload that hasn’t been happening for months can happen now. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
When you click into Photos on her iPad, which version of the software are you going into? The iOS version of Photos recently changed. The new version is called “Photos” and has an icon that looks like a flower, sort of. When I click into it, the first thing it offers me is the option to use “iCloud Photo Library” in the middle of the page, with a Learn More link. There is a “Use iCloud Library” Button library across the bottom, and a “Not Now” link below that. Do you see any of these things, starting with the app?
Second place to look: Settings. Go to the settings icon and look for iCloud. Click on that. From there, you should see an option to turn on “Photos”. Click on that, even if it already says “on” and you should see all of the options on how to organize your photo sychronization with iCloud.
If you don’t want to use iCloud, there other options, such as Box or Google Drive.
Yes, I went into settings to check on just that, which is why it looks like everything is already on re: photo library auto upload. That’s why I don’t understand why it’s not doing that, because all the settings appear to be set that way.
As for the app itself, there are none of the prompts that you described, although I did do a software upgrade so I see the icon with the flower. But when I open it, it just goes to the album view where she last exited. The only options down below are Photos, Shared, and Albums.
Shared has an icon of a cloud but when I click it, it only invites me too create a shared album and then inquiries on other accounts with whom I want to share it. The iCloud sharing must be part of the larger cloud formulation, but I don’t see any way to access the cloud directly. Nor do I see any way to upload to the cloud manually, only the auto setting that doesn’t appear to be working.
Thanks, but I still appear to be stuck. Any other thoughts?
Once you turn iCloud Photo Library on, it should automatically start to upload your photos, so maybe it’s already on and you just don’t realize it.
In the Photos app, tap “Albums” at the bottom right. Then make sure you’re at the top level where you can see all your albums. Does the album at the top left say “Camera Roll” or “All Photos?” If it says “All Photos,” and all the photos are in there, then iCloud Photo Library is on and working. “Camera Roll” means your photos are still stored locally.
Some reasons iCloud Photo Library won’t start are if your local photo library is bigger than the free 5 gigabytes Apple gives you. In that case, you should have seen a warning that you’d have to pay for more storage space. Did you see that warning?
Another reason it won’t automatically start is if you aren’t connected to wifi. Are you sure the iPad is connected to the wifi? (Hopefully, you’re not doing this from like a Starbucks or public wifi area. Not only is that not safe, but a public wifi spot might not let you do all that uploading.)
It’s also possible your wifi has really really slow upload speed. In Settings > iCloud > Photos, what does it say immediately underneath “iCloud Photo Library?” Does it say when it was last updated?
