iCloud

<p>I recently uploaded my photos of a trip to Europe from my iPhone 6 to iCloud. When I open the iCloud app on the phone, all I see are two folders for Pages and Keynote. When I open iCloud on my iMac, all the photos are there. Before I delete all these to gain some storage on the phone, I want to be sure everything is saved. Shouldn't the photos show up in both places?</p>

<p>The iCloud app is for iCloud Drive; assuming you shot these photos using the iPhone, they'd be in the Photos app on both your phone and your Mac, <em>not</em> in iCloud Drive.</p>

<p>That being said, let's take a time out here and discuss something very important: If you're using iCloud Photo Library, which it sounds like you may be, you have <strong>one universal photo library</strong>. There is no "on my phone" and "on my Mac", only "in my library". That library lives in iCloud, and the Photos app on either device is only an interface to it, not a copy of it. If you delete it from your phone, it will be deleted everywhere. (This is why the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option is available when using iCloud Photo Library—it'll swap out your full-size photos for much, much smaller phone-specific versions as your other apps need more space.)</p>

<p>If you're not using iCloud Photo Library on your phone (i.e. you pulled them in from your Photo Stream instead), you can safely delete the images from your phone as long as you can see them on your Mac.</p>

<p>You can double-check whether your iPhone's using iCloud Photo Library from the Settings app; scroll down to the "Photos" item and tap on that.</p>

<p>Thanks, Colin for that concise explanation. Scores of forays into just what this is about only led me to have to buy something. Seems this information is sort of hidden. But actually, my question remains. 'Why can't I see my photos when I open iCloud app on my phone? I see all the photos when I open the very same app on my iMac, that seems to be the interface that recognizes them, the iCloud drive on my phone does not. I'm still a bit weak on this.</p>