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A couple of photos gone after iPhone reboot/restart. Am I missing smth?

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So I had to restart my iPhone because of some weird bug in WhatsApp (wasn't able to upload any media in chats), after the reboot all images of the last ~36h are gone. I've already checked the deleted and hidden folders, nothing in there. Checked Photos app on my Mac and nothing there. Not sure why they weren't synced to iCloud, I'd assume terrible internet (currently on holiday), last "normal" iCloud backup from my iPhone was 3 days ago (last time I was at home).

Any idea what has happened and if there's any tool or smth else to recover the images? Nothing too important but a couple of the normal vacation snapshots are now gone.

Edit: Using iPhone 13 Pro, battery was replaced a couple of days ago, still on 17.3, 17.3.1 isn't installed yet

Edit: have a look at this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/s/angb4tzerf That could work for you

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This exact thing happened to me twice so far (the second time happened today)… A few photos from the last 12-24hrs are just gone from my phone and apparently were not backed up to iCloud? I am religiously backing up everything to iCloud on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone, but how do photos backed up to iCloud yet just go missing from the device’s physical storage? I thought I was going crazy but apparently it’s happening to a few other people.

Edit: On an iPhone 15 Pro Max with iOS 17.4 by the way. Just wiped and restored from a Mac and did a restore from iCloud to hopefully fix this issue from happening in the future…

u/bleachedupbartender avatar

I was never able to get the photos back. ONE of the photos i took i sent to a friend of mine which is how i knew for sure that photos were missing; it was still in our messages. i haven’t had this happen again, but, i do constantly have the “slow to wake” issue. it happens at least once a day, but usually more. basically, pick up my phone to check it (i keep raise to wake off), click lock button once. nothing happens. click again. the phone will turn on with no sort of dimming animation (like it was frozen and is catching up) and go straight to apple pay, even though i waited for the first lock button press and it didn’t do anything. it’s even more frustrating when i WANT apple pay, so i click the lock button twice, get nothing, click it again, phone finally opens apple pay - but! oh yeah! i clicked the button a total of three times! back to sleep the phone goes. extremely annoying. i update the phone every time an update is available. if anything this is getting worse. good luck to the people who are also having this problem.

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Apple is baking this into the firmware intentionally to nudge you into buying a new phone.

u/Homieto avatar

What about to the people with a 15 pro? What new Phone are they gonna buy? 

My iphone is only a year and a half old though

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I‘d guess the images weren’t uploaded to iCloud yet (saving battery, for better system performance or because of bad network). Haven’t had that issue again but it sucks nevertheless

EXACT problem I’m having right now. :( went to get my phone repaired and they even made me buy more iCloud data to make a backup. Sadly the photos missing are half of the ones from a birthday. Super distraught and all Apple did was recommend I use a data recovery service. What’s weird is that it saved the photos I deleted from that day still.

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u/bleachedupbartender avatar

iPhone 14 here, never had a battery replacement. Running 17.0.3. Phone was acting strange / hanging on random small animations / couldn’t send some photos. Restarted, phone wouldn’t turn back on. Had to force reboot, then the two photos I had taken that day were gone. I don’t know what causes this but I just wanted to let you know there are other people having the same issue, apparently :)

More or less awesome to hear. But I had basically the same issue. Took super long to restart, weird issues I haven’t had before. I’d assume the iCloud issues could’ve been related to this bug as well.

u/bleachedupbartender avatar

updated to 17.3.1, phone hasn’t been freaking out as much. i was having problem where id press the lock button to wake / unlock the phone and it would do nothing. I’d press the button again thinking i missed or something, still nothing. usually by the third time (this happened semi frequently) it would finally turn on with no animation. screen would be near max brightness and then open apple pay because i TECHNICALLY pressed the button twice… smh. i’ll update this thread if i run into these issues on the newer version of iOS

Same exact issues on my end. Weird stuff, haven’t heard anything in that direction from friends on iPhone

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The exact same thing also happened to me: WhatsApp not uploading files/doing weird things, restart, all pics from the last couple of hours were gone. Were you able to restore your photos?

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Happening to me. Seems to be an iOS bug in the latest iOS version. Lost many great vacation photos.

u/returncoolusername avatar

SAME, I had a ton of great photos of last 24 hours, all of them lost!

I noticed that not all photos are broken and not uploadable to iCloud. The first one out of a series works so far so this is just a hunch but disabling “Prioritise Faster Shooting” in the camera settings worked for me so far. Happy to anyone else to comment on this and see if this serious issue with iOS still persists with this setting turned off.

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u/No_Read_2831 avatar

Hi Everyone *Solution*

Apple confirms in 17.4 and 17.4.1 where iphone dismounts storage, (Other symptoms include the 'on my iphone' missing in the Files app and sluggish behavour).

The icloud photo library therefore cannot continue the process and import the file into Photos library, often showing 'restoring from icloud' after a reboot.

The photos are still on the phone, albiet not imported. Plug into a windows machine and browse the DCIM folder, or if you are on a mac, download iFunBox (free) and browse the DCIM folders and re-import into icloud.

My thread is here:
important photos gone forever? / iOS 17.4… - Apple Community

Apple engineers have launched an investigation and have collected diagnostic logs.

Hopefully this helps others out.

u/thehanss avatar

Hey guys! Updating to the 17.5 beta has solved this issue and brought the photos back to the gallery. Now let’s hope I don’t get new problems by using the beta

u/Cogliostrow avatar
Edited

Hey @No_Read_2831, posting just to tell you that you saved my day: first time at Disneyland with the kids yesterday, so many good memories... disappeared this morning. I managed to find everything back through iFunBox - Thanks a ton!

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Good to hear, it spooked me so much I actually switched to the 17.5 beta. I figured it was a 17.4 bug, and so far they seem to have fixed it in 17.5.

For me it happened with 17.3 so it’s just not a 17.4 error.

When I plugged my phone into my PC all the images (at least I think so, it was about 3 months ago that happened) were there but now comes the funny part: I’m 99% certain that a specific DNG/RAW was missing, which I imported into Lightroom and afterwards just had the edited image (because the RAW was one of the affected images that disappeared). When I saw the DNG in the dcim folder I double checked the photos app and the photo was there. I don’t know how and why, but it is lol

u/Twingo12 avatar

I was able to access them and store them in a safe place using iFunbox. Today I updated to the 17.5 beta and all the pics are back!

Hi,

I am experiencing the missing photos today. When I connect my phone to the PC I donot see the DCIM folder, instead I see date wise folders. Is there any setting in IPhone to trigger the DCIM folder to be visible on PC ?

Note: I did not get “trust this PC”, rather “Allow this device to access photos and videos”. I am on iOS 17.4.1.

In order to view the DCIM folder you need to use a tool like iexplorer

At least on Mac….

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u/Apprehensive_Leg7634 avatar

Saved my day buddy!!!

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Just had this happen. Shockingly bad bug.

u/wserbia avatar

Just happened to me. All photos and videos taken within the last 8 hours of our vacation in Seville, Spain gone! I'm on iOS 17.4.1 iPhone 14 Pro with well over 300GB of free space. Beyond MAD is an understatement and will not be taking anymore pics/vids with this POS for the remainder of our trip. BTW, Apple's support is just dumb. I had to repeat my self over a chat sessions more than once.

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u/Josternaut avatar

Just experienced this and lost all photos from solar eclipse today. Roughly everything from last 24H

17.3.1 iPhone 14 Pro Max with over 130GB storage available

u/StopDoingMath avatar

Me too. I lost everything from past 24 hours which isn’t a big deal for me. But I also lost a long total eclipse video which I am very upset about.

Edit: some sections of the screen wouldn’t respond to touch, only in a few certain apps. I restarted my phone with fixed the problem but now the photos and videos are gone.

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u/-protonsandneutrons- avatar

Just happened to me on an 256GB iPhone 12 Pro. How is this possible? My phone had over 140GB free.

iOS 17.4.1

u/davs34 avatar

Same thing just happened to me.

Annoying I restarted my phone BECAUSE icloud wasn't backing up the photos. How did the photos get deleted off my phone. It doesn't make any sense.

256 iPhone 13 Pro Plus. Have over 50GB of storage free. Also iOS 17.4.1.

Currently 17.4.1 as well with no issues in that direction again. When I was at the Apple Store a couple of days ago I asked them if they have had something like this happen, they said no

u/-protonsandneutrons- avatar

Hopefully, it is an ultra-rare bug that can't be trigger too easily. I'm a little hesitant to restart my iPhone now, but we'll see.

There seem to be too many reports for this to be unconnected to iOS 17, IMO.

I think that if your photos app says that everything‘s backed up to iCloud nothing should happen (in theory).

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Guess we better start backing up all photos before trying to restart

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u/planetf1a avatar

Had exactly this today. iPhone 13 Pro Max, though running 17.5b2.

Took around 40 photos on a lovely sunny walk. Photos should get backed up to iCloud even over mobile, and I had a good fast connection.

Sat down after a couple of hours and noticed the photos were blurry (thumbnail only?) And I could not share with WhatsApp. Decided to reboot as the phone was clearly misbehaving

After reboot they are all gone. Nothing. Not in iCloud. That kinda suggests they never got stored properly in the first place

So annoyed (lots of hills on the walk, I’m aching!) and now losing confidence

Wondering whether to do a full reset or if a he issue

u/noisy_memory avatar
Edited

It sucks! Anyone got any solutions for this?

Nope, sadly not (but didn’t happen to me since)

u/noisy_memory avatar

Fucking hell Apple! I took like hundreds of photos today and I lost all

That sucks a ton, can 100% relate. I don’t have any experience with data recovery softwares for iPhone, but it’s maybe worth giving it a try before saving a lot more data to your iPhone

u/noisy_memory avatar

Yeah, thanks for help mate

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u/Whole-Mountain-953 avatar

Same thing just happened to me. All photos from an entire afternoon in Paris museum just disappeared, when my battery died and phone rebooted. Phone took forever to restart and over 40 photos are gone. Last back up was at 1pm so nothing to revert to. Beyond frustrating.

u/bleachedupbartender avatar

My phone is acting the way it was the first time I commented on this thread. Random things don’t load. Random freezing. Mostly working right, but not quite. Restarting apps doesn’t actually restart the app. Going to take photos to see if they disappear.

u/bleachedupbartender avatar

Got worse, had to restart. Photos i took while it was acting strange are still present. After shutting down the phone it refused to turn on for a couple of minutes, I plugged it in and left it for about 20 seconds. It turned on and seems to be working normally. Battery is at 78% charge

From what I remember the restart behavior on my iPhone was super weird as well

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u/Available-Advice-294 avatar

Same thing happening to me. I think the memory has issues (14 Pro)

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u/Homieto avatar

I lost about 100 photos today because of this. Unresponsive phone all day, but I didn’t have the time to restart it. Took a bunch of photos throughout the day and restarted my phone in the evening after I couldn’t share them with anyone and the thumbnails looked blurry. When turning the iPhone 14 Pro back on, it took forever and I thought something had gone wrong as the screen was black for way longer than usuals. Now, there are no photos on my iPhone, or my iCloud. It’s as if they were never there. What the 💩 ??? Running iOS 17.4.1, but I don’t care what os I run, I want the photos I take to be on my phone, not gone into the apple walled garden void of disappointment.

u/Butterflyduke avatar

The same happened to me today on iPhone 15 pro, extremely frustrated.

u/No_Read_2831 avatar

Plug it into a computer and check the DCIM folder.. I found missing photos there.

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same for me. this is absurd

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u/peachkovit avatar

Same thing happened to me.

Just FYI, like some people figured out in the comments below, 17.5 beta fixed the issue and now with 17.5 final released, installing it on my phone brought all the "lost" photos back for me.

Howdy all, was able to find mine (didn’t reappear with 15.1) after going into DCIM with iExplorer and was able to transfer to computer and upload to google photos! Thank you u/RockingGamingDe and u/No_Read_2831 y’all are amazing.

iPhone 13 had the same issue last month on Eid. No parts replaced.

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/s/DVPclkMTOw

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u/thehanss avatar

Hii! Is there a way to access the dcim folder without a computer?

Unfortunately no

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u/Butterflyduke avatar

Great news, iOS 17.5 has brought back all the photos that had disappeared!

u/ARRIS19 avatar

Same exact thing happened to me (i dont use iCloud) Device took forever to boot back up too. I was able to find the missing photos in the .HEIC format in the DCIM Folder. On windows I downloaded iExplorer to access that folder. Then ran the photos through the converter. Hoping that the newest update fixes this.

u/RareCheddar avatar

I had this happen the other day. Was already running iOS 17.5, updating to 17.5.1 today did not make the missing photos reappear and they are not in any of the image folders when plugged into Windows. FWIW, I did a force restart.

u/aidosd avatar

This happened to me. iFunbox wouldn't launch for me. I used the app iMazing to recover the shots. You can navigate to them via File system icon then Media>DCIM>

The trial version allows 100 transfers.