What to Do When Photos Synced from iTunes Will Be Removed

iTunes is convenient to sync photos between PC and iPhone, but when you want to enable iCloud backup on iPhone, you will be warned that Photos synced from iTunes will be removed. How to make all your photos safe on iPhone? You need the help of this passage.

Dylan

By Dylan / Updated on May 30, 2023

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I got the warning that Photos synced from iTunes will be removed

Hi guys, I got into a problem when using iCloud photos. Once I tried enabling iCloud photos on my iPhone X, it said iCloud would delete iTunes photos. I have a lot of photos from iTunes and I don't want them to be deleted, so how can I make them stay?

- Question from Apple Community

Photos are very important. People take pictures and save memes on their iPhones. And to better manage photos, you may want to transfer photos and videos to another device with iTunes.

However, when you perform such a task, you may receive a message saying "Photos and Videos Synced from iTunes will be removed". or similar prompt like "Are you sure you want to remove existing photos and sync photos from this computer". If you use macOS Catalina, the message should be Photos synced from Finder will be removed.

You may wonder why you got this message and what does it mean. Next, we will explain this prompt, and help you safely share photos between your device without deleting them.

Photos Synced from iTunes Will Be Removed

Part 1. What does it mean when it says photos synced from iTunes will be removed?

You might have piles of pictures on your computer and want to conveniently view them on your iPhone, so you use iTunes to sync photos. If you have turned on iCloud photos, you would get the removing message in iTunes, because iCloud photos and iTunes photos will not coexist on the same iPhone. So it means you have to turn off the iCloud photos if you need to sync photos and videos via iTunes.

For some reason, you need to turn on iCloud Photos again, but receive an iCloud photos warning. It means iTunes photos will be totally replaced with iCloud photos. The whole folder you sync from iTunes will be deleted and there is no way to retrieve it.

iPhone thought that there are the original photos on computer and you’d better make sure there are. If you can’t find them on computer but don’t want to see iTunes photos disappearing from iPhone, you could read the next section to easily save your photos.

Part 2. How to share pictures between iPhone and PC without deleting them

You might find no ways to directly save these photos on iPhone, because when you select iTunes photos in Album, there are no options for you to save or delete them. What to do when your photos seem fixed on iPhone? You need a professional tool.

FoneTool is an excellent iPhone photos transfer tool and iTunes alternative allowing you to transfer photos from iPhone to PC, or from PC to iPhone with no photos/videos deleted. You could use it to export all the iTunes photos to computer. It is the fastest iPhone data transfer so far and you can complete the process with one click. Next, we will guide you on how to use this tool.

Step 1. Download FoneTool and connect iPhone to PC with USB cable.

Download Freeware Win 11/10/8.1/8/7
Secure Download

Step 2. To move data from iPhone to a computer, please select Phone Transfer on the home screen. Go to iPhone to PC and click Start Transfer.

Transfer to Computer

Step 3. Click the plus icon to select photos on your iPhone.

Select Files

Step 4. Select iPhone photos and click OK.

Choose Photos

Step 5. Click Start Transfer > Select the storage path and click Transfer to export the selected photos.

Transfer

FoneTool is very professional. If you transfer photos from PC to iPhone later, these photos could be edited, shared, deleted like the photos taken by the camera.

Part 3. Upload original iTunes photos to iCloud

Original photos are always the best insurance. If you could find them on your computer, you could import these photos to iPhone at any time.

To avoid these photos being overwritten by iCloud Photos again, you don’t need iTunes anymore. You could upload photos to iCloud on the computer or download iCloud backup to computer.

Step 1. Open your browser, go to icloud.com, sign in your Apple ID.

Step 2. Click the Photos icon and upload photos from computer to iCloud.

View Photos on iCloud

Bonus Tips: How to delete photos synced from iTunes library on iPhone?

iTunes photos and videos are only allowed to be viewed on iPhone, so what if you don’t need some of them? Turning on iCloud Photos will remove all the iTunes photos. To delete some of them, you still need the help of iTunes.

You just need to find the original folder on computer, remove the unneeded photos in it, and sync the folder with iTunes.

If you want to delete all the iTunes photos, you just need to sync an empty folder to iPhone, or you could turn on iCloud Photos and then turn it off.

Conclusion

iTunes makes you quickly sync photos to iPhone, but they not so secure on iPhone. If you turn on iCloud photos, you would be warned that Photos synced from iTunes will be removed.

You could use the 2 methods above to make sure your photos are always safe, even when you can’t find the original photos on computer.

Using FoneTool would be the best solution because you could edit, share, or delete photos like the photos taken by iPhone camera. Besides it is more than a transfer tool, FoneTool also helps you convert HEIC to JPG/PNG.