The same dozen or so photos keep returning to my iPad Photos app and I keep deleting them. I googled it and the solution seems to be to login to iCloud from a browser and delete them there. So, I logged in and none of those photos are in any iCloud album because I’ve, um, deleted them.
They were all in various Messages conversations but I never saved or downloaded any of them. I don’t have any sharing settings enabled. I am on the most current iPad 18. Does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing some other basic setting?
I think Photos may just be presenting what’s in your Messages, and hasn’t actually added them to any album.
I see this on my iPhone. When I view such a message:
On the top-level grid screen, there’s a white outline chat-bubble icon on the thumbnail.
There’s a small “From name” at the top, and tapping on it will let you send a reply to whoever was in that Messages thread.
The bottom of the screen has a button for “Save Shared Photo”
If I drag the picture up, and scroll to the bottom of the info, I see a box that says “Shared with you by Name in Messages >”. Tapping on it goes to the same send-reply box I mentioned above.
As for how to get Photos to not show pictures from Messages, I don’t know if it’s possible or not.
You could, of course, delete the image-message from the Messages thread, but that’s probably not what you want, or you would have already done it.
This is (I think) the Shared with You feature. It is possible to turn it off if you don’t like it; see the Remove shared content section of this Apple support article for iOS / iPadOS, and this one for macOS.