How Do I Delete Photos From My iCloud Stream?

Managing images in your iCloud Photo Stream made easy.

by Pu on May 12, 2012

To delete photos from your iCloud stream, you can choose among two different methods, depending on whether you want to delete all the content of your stream or just individual items contained in it.

The first method will let you delete all your photos by resetting your whole iCloud stream. To achieve this, you have to follow these simple instructions.

Resetting iCloud Stream

01. Log in at iCloud.com

  1. Log in to your iCloud control panel by going to iCloud.com and entering your Apple ID and password
  2. After you are successfully logged in, click on your name at the topmost right of the page
  3. When the popup window with your account overview appears, click on the “Advanced” panel

    Resetting iCloud Stream

    03. Select "Advanced"

  4. Click on the large “Reset Photo Stream” button

    Resetting iCloud Stream

    04. Click "Reset Photo Stream"

  5. When prompted again, simply click on the “Reset” button
    Resetting iCloud Stream

    05. Click on "Reset"

Be aware that, even if you reset your stream, photos stored in your device will not be deleted as well, unless you turn the Photo Stream option off from Settings in your device (Settings->iCloud->Photo Stream).

Resetting iCloud Stream

Resetting from iPhone Settings.

Even if resetting the stream might be desirable in a few instances, it’s more likely that you just have a handful of photos that you think you don’t want to keep in there. Having to reset everything just to get rid of them is definitely not very convenient. If what you want is just to delete specific items, there is another route you can take that allows to choose which images in the stream to delete while keeping all the rest.

You can both delete individual photos or multiple photos at the same time from your iCloud stream. To do either, access your Photo Stream from Photos in your device (Photos->Photo Stream) and do the following:

  • To delete one photo at a time, tap on the chosen photo and then tap on the trash bin icon at the bottom, as for deleting photos in your Camera Roll
  • To delete multiple photos at the same time, tap and hold the curved arrow icon on the topmost bar, then:
    1. Select all the photos you want to delete from the stream by tapping on them
    2. Confirm your choice by tapping on the “Delete” button
      Deleting Photos from iCloud Stream

      Deleting multiple photos

As you can see, this works exactly in the same manner as with deleting photos from your iPhone albums that we described in depth in a previous post. Note that this second method was added more recently and thus it is only available to those users that have updated their iOS to version 5.1 or later.

ILAR May 14, 2012 at 2:29 am

Welcome back! Hope things are back to normalcy.

Pu May 14, 2012 at 3:28 am

Yep, it’s been ages… good to “see” you =)

squishybrain May 16, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Good tip! Great to see you back!

Ron Franks May 21, 2012 at 12:29 pm

Thanks for the article. Great to see something new!

Alan Kastner (aka tabiwallah) July 1, 2012 at 2:48 am

Welcome back. Glad to see you posting new content!

Tim Lee August 6, 2012 at 3:03 am

This was useful, thank you. But how do I create an album that is not the camera roll or the photo stream on the iPhone? I don’t wanna use iTunes to do it… I can’t seem to find a way?

Claire August 7, 2012 at 6:00 pm

this did not help!! i restem my photo stream and it still says it full and i cant back up any of my pics……HELP PLZ!!!!!!

Fayaz Baloch December 14, 2013 at 6:30 pm

please help me if any one saw my text.
i have some picture in my iphone 4 (iOS7) icloud photo album so i want to delete icloud album from my iPhone. i tried more and more but couldn’t fine any result.
i connected my laptop(hp probook (4530s) with icloud but all in vain i am waiting for help please any one who can solve my problem then please please help me.
thanks a lot.

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