How can I restore photos from an iCloud backup to a new iPhone?
Photo Stream and iCloud Backup are separate — your photos are stored in your iCloud Backup and many of them are duplicated and stored in Photo Stream (unless you deleted them from your camera roll in which case they're not duplicates).
The iCloud backup can be restored whole to your device. You can't restore parts of it — it's all or nothing.
However, there is a workaround:
- Make a backup of your new device to iTunes.
- Reset your device to factory settings and restore the iCloud backup.
- Use Image Capture or iPhoto/Aperture to import the photos.
- Reset your device to factory settings and restore the iTunes backup.
- Copy the photos back to your device.
Thing I tried that DID work
1) Did not plug the phone into my MacBook, I used the wall charger only to prevent any iTunes sync activity
2) Erase all settings and data, restore from the iCloud backup and input passwords in all the pop up windows once it reboots.
2) Open photos app gallery to see photos downloading and show the progress message "downloading xx of x,xxx"
3) Left it on this photo screen and did not touch the phone at all for the entire restore. I did not close the photo galley/camera roll app once, open any other apps.
Finally this time round it work and all my photos and apps restored in full. I am going to go back to syncing with iTunes as I don't trust iCloud for restores. It seems that iCloud does not handle photo restores that well, especially if the gallery is large. In short: Wall charger only, restore from iCloud, open Photos app, don't touch. Really hope this works for you too if you've had the same issue.
I guess this is what you could do if someone you know could spare you an iPhone for a day or so:-
- Get an iPhone and take a backup of the same on your system - use iTunes to do that
Now (this is really critical and follow it at your own risk) log into your iCloud account on the phone and restore that phone while pointing to the iCloud backup. In this was you will have all of the iCloud data in that phone
Mail the photos from the restored iPhone to yourself; or use Dropbox (or similar) to sync them off the system
Restore iPhone from backup taken in step 1