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We will show you how you can force download a single photo or video from iCloud Photo Library in full quality on your iPhone and iPad.

Say what you want, but cloud storage is super neat. Instead of running out of space all the time and deleting stuff to make room for more content, just offload your photos and videos to the cloud, and you don't ever have to worry about deleting an old photo or video (even a meme) to make room for more.

If you're in the Apple ecosystem, there's a high chance you're using iCloud Photo Library to keep your photos and videos backed up to the cloud. Keep on saving photos and videos, and they will get backed up. Your iPhone and iPad are smart enough to delete full-quality copies from your device in order to keep offline storage as free as possible. It's extremely well thought out, to say the least.

iCloud Photo Library gives you two options for your entire photo and video library. You can either optimize your storage - called 'Optimize iPhone Storage' in Settings > Photos - where a smaller version is kept on your device and the full quality one is pulled from the server (over the internet) whenever needed.

The second option - called 'Download and Keep Originals' - allows you to download your entire library onto your iPhone or iPad. This option is clearly not a good idea at all as it will eat away your storage space over time, or maybe even in one go if you a device that has base storage - 64 or 128GB. It's absolutely fine to enable the second option if you have an iPhone or iPad with more than 512GB of storage.

When going for the 'Optimize iPhone Storage' option, Apple's software trickery comes into play in the background. If you're dealing with a video, Apple will simply download a lower-quality video over the internet if the connection is poor, even though the video was shot in full 4K with 60 frames per second. The same goes for photos as well - the more you zoom in, only then it will download a higher resolution copy to reveal more details.

So, now that you know how iCloud Photo Library works in order to keep things storage-friendly, there will come a time when you might want to download a full-quality photo or video. Although Apple has no switch to let you do this, but you can still force download a full-quality version of the photo or video.

The way it works is actually quite simple. You need to be connected to the internet for this to work, and if for some reason it does not, probably because you're using cellular and have limitations set to how much data Photos can use. You can check this by going to Settings > Photos > Cellular Data and making sure the Cellular Data option is enabled, as shown in the screenshot below. It's best to keep the Unlimited Updates option turned off unless you have a truly unlimited data plan. If you're doing this on Wi-Fi, then you really don't have to do anything with this option.

Now, launch the Photos app and find the photo or video whose full copy you want to download to your device and tap on it. Once it is in view, tap on the Edit button on the top right. As soon as you do this, it will instantly download the original copy from Apple's server, and then you can make the edits. But of course, you're not here to make edits, so just close the editor by tapping on Cancel, and you have yourself a full copy of the photo or video that you wanted.

There's really nothing more to this at all. You now know how to download the original copy without dancing around the 'Download and Keep Originals' option in Settings. If you plan on using this feature a lot, and something tells me that you will, then make sure you limit it to your Wi-Fi connection only. Downloading 4K videos over cellular, that too in full quality, is going to drain your data plan faster than you can blink your eye.

At the time of writing, Apple sells an iPhone with up to 1TB of storage and an iPad with up to 2TB of storage. This much storage space is especially handy if you love to keep all your photos and videos offline so that you can get to them quickly when you're creating your next masterpiece on Final Cut, LumaFusion, or iMovie.

On the other hand, this amount of storage is also great to have when you don't believe in cloud storage at all. That's a super risky life to live unless you create your backups regularly on a laptop or desktop. Believe it or not, a lot of people aren't sold on the idea of cloud storage at all, as there's a potential risk of a privacy breach. But not so much if you have proper security measures in place, such as a 6-digit PIN code, 2-factor authentication, a feature like Find My enabled, and most importantly, an extremely strong password for your Apple ID. It's best to take all the measures available to you in order to keep your private life truly private.

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Force Download Full Quality Photo Or Video In Photos App On iPhone And iPad - Wccftech