Over time my iCloud interface has become something of a jumble and I’d like to get it sorted out. What I want is to use iCloud only to have synchronization between iMac, iPhone and iPad for such things as Mail, Message, Contacts, et cetera.

We have two new iPads, still in the boxes, because I don’t want them to start life with a bunch of unnecessary stuff that needs to be cleaned up. I’d rather do the cleanup first.

How do I undo what’s been done and start from scratch?


The Storage Hiccup

I don’t want anything backed up to iCloud (including the iPhones and the iPads) but the Photos might be an exception, depending on the answer to the following:

Any attempt to remove photos gets this scary message: “If you want to stop using iCloud Photos and recover your iCloud storage, you can disable it on all your devices. You then have 30 days to download your photos and videos."

In another thread, joemike has explained: “….if you have Optimize storage turned ON, the full resolution images are on iCloud and the images on your iMac have been optimized (reduced in size and resolution) for display on your Mac.”

Question: On my iMac, 'Optimize Storage' is on. So, if I opt for removing photos from iCloud and download all the full resolution copies, what happens to them when they arrive on my iMac drive? Do they automatically replace the optimized images, or have I lost all the album filing that I have on the iMac and just have a bunch of un-filed images?

It appears this is only half correct. I went looking around to see if "Optimize Mac Storage" could just be turned off, and learned the instruction is in two places - in Photo Preferences and in iCloud Preferences. On my machine it is not checked in Photo preferences but is checked in iCloud Drive options. So, should I be able to turn it off in iCloud Drive?

Test it. Download a small batch of full resolution photos from iCloud that are optimized on your iMac and see how it turns out.

Thanks Ira, but any testing on Photos will have to wait, because things keep changing. For example, all the photos are now on my iPhone (which I've never had before) and these photos include a bunch that I removed. The photos on iCloud can be the last thing dealt with, so perhaps I was wrong to identify the issue. My priority is to get my iCloud mess sorted out before commissioning new iPads.