The iCloud Photos feature on iPhone allows you to directly upload photos from your device to Apple’s cloud storage service. You can find below the steps to Enable iCloud Photos on iPhone and iPad.
Use iCloud Photos on iPhone and iPad
The idea behind “iCloud Photos” feature on iPhone is to allow Apple device users to store photos on Apple’s iCloud servers and be able to access them on any device, from anywhere in the World.
Once iCloud Photos is enabled, all photos that you take using the Camera App on your iPhone or iPad get automatically uploaded to your Photo Library on Apple’s iCloud storage service.
If iCloud Photos is also enabled on other devices, any change that you make to your iCloud Photo Library on iPhone gets synced across all your devices sharing the same Apple ID.
For example, if you take a new photo on iPhone, the photo will be immediately available on your other Apple devices (iPad, iPod, Mac).
Advantages of Enabling iCloud Photos
The main advantage of enabling iCloud Photos on iPhone is that a copy of all your iPhone photos will be available on iCloud, even if your device is lost or stolen.
Another advantage of iCloud Photos is that it allows you to bypass the limited storage capacity of your device by saving Photos directly to iCloud.
For example, you can take as many photos as you want on iPhone, upload them to iCloud and delete them from your device to create storage space for more Photos. This allows you to go past the storage limits of your device and take any number of Photos that you want.
Enable iCloud Photos on iPhone or iPad
Since, Apple provides all iPhone users with 5 GB of free iCloud storage, you already have an iCloud Account and it gets linked to your Apple ID.
Hence, all that is required to enable iCloud Photos on iPhone is to Sign-in to your device and follow the steps below.
1. Open Settings on your iPhone > scroll down and tap on Photos.
2. On the next screen, enable iCloud Photos by moving the toggle to ON position.
3. On the same screen, you can select Optimize iPhone Storage or “Download and Keep Originals” option.
Optimize iPhone Storage: If iPhone has less storage space, this default option replaces the full resolution original Photos on your device with compressed versions, optimized for storage.
Download and Keep Originals: When this option is selected, the original full resolution photos will be stored on iCloud and also on the internal storage of your iPhone.
After iCloud Photos is enabled on iPhone, your device will start uploading Photos to iCloud, whenever it is connected to Wi-Fi and the Photos App is not being used.
Use Cellular Data to Upload Photos to iCloud
While the default option on iPhone is to use the Wi-Fi Network to upload Photos to iCloud, you can setup your device to use Cellular Data to Upload Photos to iCloud, when Wi-Fi Network is not available.
Go to Settings > Cellular Data > move the toggle next to Cellular Data to ON position.
After this iPhone will be able to use Cellular Data to upload photos to iPhone, whenever Wi-Fi Network is not available.
Note: If you are on a Limited Data Plan, enabling Cellular Data for Photos App can end up being expensive.