Hey guys! I really hope you smart folks can help me in this situation I am in. I recently got a new iPhone and I'm trading in my old one. I transferred everything from my old iPhone to my new iPhone, and the transfer completed successfully. I have my photos, messages, apps, and other data on the new phone.

The only issue is that during setup, my new iPhone asked for my Apple ID password. I thought I knew it, but it kept saying it was incorrect. I used the "Forgot Password" option, verified my information, and Apple started the Account Recovery process.

Apple gave me a date/time when I would be able to reset my password, but that time has passed and I still haven't received the text or phone call. When I check iforgot.apple.com, it still says I need to wait.

I still have my old iPhone signed into the same Apple ID, but I need to send it back for trade-in by August 6.

I'm considering creating a new Apple ID and switching to it permanently, but I have some questions:

1. Since my photos, messages, and data have already transferred to my new iPhone, will they stay there if I sign out of my current Apple ID and use a new one?
2. What data would I lose access to by switching Apple IDs? (Photos, messages, app data, purchases, etc.)
3. Is it better to keep waiting for Apple Account Recovery since I still have access to my old iPhone?
4. If I switch to a new Apple ID, will I run into problems later with apps that were downloaded using my old Apple ID?

I don't want to make the wrong decision before sending my old phone back. Any advice from someone who has dealt with this would be appreciated.

I genuinely can't figure out if the problem I'm having is an iCloud issue or a PC issue. My PC storage was full (30 MB of storage left), and after lots of investigating, I figured out that my iCloud photos were taking up 50 GB of space (I had assumed that the sync between PC and iCloud meant I could access my iCloud photos on my PC, not that my PC would store those photos locally). I stopped the sync between iCloud and my PC, and then I clicked "Free Up Space" on iCloud to get rid of the photos. The photos are gone from my icloud folder on my PC, but my computer has only freed up an extra 1 GB of space, even after multiple restarts. I checked my recycle bin and there's nothing in there. So why is my computer not registering an extra 50GB of storage? Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if there has been any recent news or official word from Apple regarding the long-term status of legacy ⁠@mac.com⁠ and ⁠@me.com⁠ email addresses.
As far as I know, existing users who secured these addresses way back in the day can still use them (and they automatically got ⁠@icloud.com⁠ equivalents too), but Apple stopped creating new ones a very long time ago.
Does anyone know if Apple has a policy on whether these old domains/usernames will ever be permanently decommissioned and potentially recycled or released for general availability? Or are they essentially locked forever tied to those legacy accounts?
Just curious if there's any technical or policy insight on this from past documentation or support leaks. Thanks!

I recently synced my iPhone photos to my Mac through iCloud with Optimize Mac Storage enabled.

I later turned off iCloud Photos in both the Photos app and System Settings and chose Remove Photos from This Mac. Most of my photos disappeared, but some are still there.
They no longer have the iCloud icon and are taking up local storage.

How did this happen when I didn’t manually imported, copied, or downloaded these photos? Is there a way to remove the remaining photos without deleting them manually?

Alrighty so I have been trying to get old messages back from a number that’s now deactivated not sure why I even lost them with the person however the phone that had the number on it is now my mom’s current phone, with her number so she has the phone that had the number I’m trying to get messages back with and well I don’t have any messages from the deactivated phone number but I’m not sure why I don’t and if there’s a way to get them back, if I need to do more explaining I will. The messages are old about 6 years old, therefore that phone is at least 6 years old, my mom switched to that phone to get rid of hers so we only have the 2 phones and I’m just not sure why I lost messages with that deactivated number and such and if there a way to get them back at all, or if it’s just lost in the void forever…anyway any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, Thank you for taking the time to read this and if you do reply again thank you.

I ll try my best to explain the situation.
In 2018 I bought iCloud storage. I was on holiday in a “high risk” zone and feared getting robbed and lose everything (it happened around me with other tourists).
Okay so everything got uploaded on iCloud.
Then years later I didn’t feel like paying for it and decided to stop iCloud. I tried to upload everything on my iPhone then but due to not enough storage it failed.
Then somehow some photos were on my Macbook but they all had a little cloud with exclamation mark in the corner.
Now I have 45K photos on my MacBook, dating from 2013. The oldest ones have the cloud with the exclamation mark in the corner of the photo.

I bought iCloud again, 200GB storage.
I ve successfully uploaded my photos on my ipad and iphone to iCloud but on my macbook it’s not working. It keeps saying it’s “putting back” (not syncing) but nothing really happens.

Can someone please help me restore? Even the low resolution photos I am happy with.
I tried to send by Airdrop and it’s not responsive.

Please send help.

I've found several guides on how to transfer those files, and none of them worked. I've bunch of stuff I want to migrate to iCloud. I've managed to move photos to iPhone using LocalSend and now they're sent to iCloud, which is fine, but it couldn't sent mp4 files. I want those videos to be visible in Photos app. What I did so far:

- tried to use iCloud app, but the upload time is so horrendous it's basically useless,

- tried to use iTunes, but it couldn't detect my iPhone,

- iCloud website nor Apple Devices app didn't allow me to send mp4,

- connected iPhone through USB, but it seems it's only in read mode, as I couldn't copy anything there.

I use Windows 11 and iPhone 17, 26.5.2 version.

A few years back I had my phone stolen and reluctantly ended up getting an iPhone, since then, I have had multiple problems with exporting photos (In big chunks) from the gallery and doing phone backups. Upon googling it, I have found out that many people are suffering with it as well, and many solutions require you to download a 3rd party app, many times a subscription-based one, in order to be able to have a backup of your iPhone.

Today, while browsing on YouTube, I found out about a Google service called Google Takeout.

It is a backup service in which you can "order" your ENTIRE Google data (Photos, Calendar, Emails, etcetera) to be exported in chunks of up to 50GB to wherever you'd like. You have to firstly make a takeout request and in 10 minutes or so you should get a link in your email that takes you to a page where you can download all your photos (Or whatever you requested to takeout).

Now, I had 40gb worth of data in my Google Photos app, and ordered to takeout all of it in chunks of 10gb. For me, the link was ready in about 10 minutes. I firmly believe that if you have more storage usage the wait time will vary, so don't give up if the link isn't ready in exactly 10 minutes.

Now, for the actual solution.

Download Google Photos on your iPhone, log in with your Google account. (Create one if you don't have one). Go inside the Google Photos app and turn on the backup option so that your iPhone's photos are backed up in the Google Photos app.

When the backup/syncing is done, simply check if everything seems fine and the photos match, and go to the service I mentioned previously and simply takeout the photos.

The service even has an extra set of options that will allow you to choose what albums from what dates are to be downloaded along with the extension in which they'll be downloaded, in case you only want to download a specific set of photos from a specific timespan.

I believe it is a good idea to share here, maybe it's been shared before, maybe not. If so, please don't be rude, I want nothing else but to help!