Want to get back to the 5GB iCloud Free Storage account after you have upgraded to the 20GB Price Tier?

iCloud write up

Want to get back to the 5GB iCloud Free Storage account after you have upgraded to the 20GB Price Tier?

on the Phone go to settings

choose iCloud

choose change storage plan

choose downgrade 

choose 5gb Free

choose to Delete Photo Library (this is a big mistake and will disallow you from being able to purge your library and start over)

receive warnings about how long your photos will be available for I think it's 25days from your downgrade date.

go to your OS X Computer, with Safari, log into iCloud.com and go to Photos. Select a photo and try to delete it, impossible the Trash Can will be greyed out.

Also of note there will be a yellow error message at the top of this page telling you about your 20 something day timer. You are essentially in a black hole. With the exception that you can download photos if you have to.

Help!? How do I purge?

On the Phone, because Deleting Photo Library is a mistake and sends you into a 25 day waiting period in which you can’t purge your Photo Library…

Call Apple Tech Support, it took me 7 times to get through.

Explain a bunch of things to them and that you want to purge your Photo Library. Have them tell you the following:

go to iCloud Settings

go to Storage (okay, whatever)

go to Manage Storage (yes manage storage)

click on iCloud Photo Library

click re-enable photo library (its way down at the bottom a text link)

Now log into iCloud.com from a computer running Safari, NOT Chrome, and go to Photos.

Click-select one photo to check if the Trash Can Symbol will no longer be greyed out? If it is able to Delete, you can proceed.

Try to click-select delete all 7,000 something photos. I don’t suggest this seemed like overkill and the web app did not like this. Refresh the page, see all the photos still there.

So, try to find the sweet spot of photos to select that will actually delete. For me it was around 600.

Click-select photos. Click a photo at the start of a selection zone, hold shift and click one roughly 400-700 photos away, you can repeat without using your selection and get a proper updated status of number of photos selected. Click the “trash can” and wait until the bottom of the screen reads that there are x number of fewer photos. Very important to keep your eye focused at the bottom of the page where you will see some javascript-status-type notification about how many photos are in there, and if it’s working on deleting or finished, or what.

Reload the page after each try to make sure your deletes are actually deleted. A good way to get your bearings is to see what the total number of photos is in the repo.

Now that your iCloud.com Photos are set go ahead and purge out your settings on your devices.

Grab your Phone

iCloud settings again, enable everything BUT keychain

Switch to the computer

go to Internet accounts

enable all options in iCloud (except keychain back to my mac find my mac)

speaking of iCloud settings, go to Photos section. Tick iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream.

open Photos.app

quit Photos.app

diable all Photos settings

open Photos.app

quit Photos.app

go to settings in Photos.app tick off iCloud Photo Library sub of Optimise Mac Storage and My Photo Stream

try not to be concerned with the Downloading 6,254 items statement

Quit Photos.app

Run disk permissions

Disable all Photos Items in iCloud and in settings within Photos.app

Quit Photos.app

Quit Internet Accounts

Delete actual Photo Library found in ~/Pictures/Photos Library

Enable the aforementioned settings in Internet Accounts settings

Run Photos.app, and create a new photo library (since you erased the former one) and in Photos.app settings use the aforementioned settings.

Check sync settings on iPhone. Untick all photo related settings on iPhone. Watch photo library number of items return to the actual number of photos on the device.

Now turn on all proper iCloud Photo settings on your device.

Now everything is working as expected however in the Photos.app settings pane the iCloud Photo Library is still reporting a massive download of 6,253 items when iCloud.com/photos is correctly reporting there are 83 photos.

Hoping a restart fixes this. Actually a restart doesn't fix this. The issue is all of the photos in the Trash bin are still there because you have not chose to Empty Trash from iCloud.com Photos in your browser. Do this. 

Then run Photos.app on your MacBook. Click over to Preferences and now it will report a proper amount of photos needed to sync.