How to Download Photos from iCloud to iPhone [2025 Guide]

As an official cloud service offered by Apple, users can rely on iCloud to sync data like photos. As long as you have enabled iCloud Photos on your device, any new photos you take will be automatically uploaded to iCloud and synced across all your devices. Sometimes when you switch to a new iPhone or for other reasons, you may need to get all your pictures back on your iPhone from iCloud.

This passage will tell you how to get these photos to your iPhone directly. If necessary, you can use the professional iCloud manager mentioned in Part 4 to help you speed up the process.

How to download photos from iCloud to iPhone via Settings

You can easily finish the process on iPhone directly. Just need to enable the iCloud Photos feature on your device and then you can choose to download iCloud photos to iPhone. And this way only allows you to transfer all photos and videos from iCloud to your iPhone at once. You can't selectively download them.

If you just need to download some specific items from iCloud, turn to other ways. Before the actions, you must ensure that there is enough space on your iPhone to store the photos and videos (Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to check it). Now you can follow the steps to make it.

Step 1.  Launch the Settings app on your iPhone > Tap [your name] > Click iCloud and choose Photos.

Step 2. Turn on iCloud Photos (or iCloud Photo Library) and choose Download and Keep Originals.

Once the download process is finished, you can go to the Photos app to check your data.

How to get photos from iCloud to iPhone via Shared Album

To get photos directly from your iPhone, you can download them from Shared Albums, provided that the photos you need are stored there.

Step 1. Go to the Photos app on iPhone and tap Albums > Find the Shared Albums section and click your targeted album to download.

Step 2. Click the photos or videos you want to transfer and tap the Share button > Select Save Image or Save Video to export them from iCloud to iPhone.

How to download iCloud photos to iPhone via iCloud.com

To selectively get iCloud photos, you can rely on the iCloud website. You can visit the website from iPhone directly, or finish the process on Mac and PC. Here we give you the steps about how to make it on iPhone.

Step 1. Open Safari on iPhone and go to iCloud.com > Log in with your Apple ID and click Photos.

Step 2. Select the photos and videos you need > Click the More button > Tap Download and confirm the option to begin the task.

How to download photos from iCloud faster [Proven iCloud manager]

If you need to selectively download iCloud photos or you want to speed up the picture download process, a professional iCloud data management & iPhone data transfer tool named FoneTool will be your good helper.

With its powerful features, you can download multiple iCloud photos to PC, then move them from PC to iPhone in 3 steps. With FoneTool’s SSL encryption, all your iCloud data will be protected and it will never access any information in your iCloud account.

Now just click the download button to get FoneTool on Windows PC and follow the guidance below to accomplish the task.

Step 1. Launch FoneTool > Go to My iCloud > Log in with your Apple ID > Choose Manage iCloud to continue.

Step 2. Click the Photos icon > Choose targeted photos > Tap the Download button.

Step 3. Change the download settings as you like within the pop-up window > Click Download to begin the task.

Step 4. Once all iCloud photos are downloaded to your PC, now you can go to Phone Transfer and choose PC to iPhone to transfer photos from PC to iPhone without iTunes.

FAQs on how to move photos from iCloud to iPhone storage

1. How to download more than 1,000 photos from iCloud?

You can download more than 1,000 photos from iCloud via iCloud.com. But this way will take lots of time. You can use FoneTool mentioned above to make it efficiently!

2. How to recover photos from iCloud on iPhone?

You can go to icloud.com/photos, then sign in to your Apple Account (if necessary). Click the Recently Deleted album in the sidebar. Select the photos or videos you want to recover, then click Recover and you can easily get your deleted photos.

3. Why can't I download photos from iCloud to my iPhone?

It may caused by low iPhone/iCloud storage space, poor internet connection, misconfigured iCloud settings or an outdated iOS system.

Conclusion

How to download photos from iCloud to iPhone? This post gives you 4 ways to achieve the goal and you can make it on iPhone directly. To save multiple iCloud photos to iPhone, you can use FoneTool to download faster.