Tech giant Apple has announced that it will shut down the ‘My Photo Stream’ feature for iPhones and other devices.
Recently, in a blog post the company said that, “My Photo Stream is scheduled to be shut down on July 26, 2023. Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud.”
My photo stream feature was introduced in 2011. With My Photo Stream, users’ photos and videos are automatically synced across Apple devices – iPhone, iPad and Mac. Apple is going will pull the plug on in July.
As part of the transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023.
Apple says that any photos uploaded to My Photo Stream before that date will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available to any of your devices where My Photo Stream is currently enabled. By July 26, 2023, there will be no photos remaining in iCloud, and the service will be shut down, it states.
Since, photos in My Photo Stream are already stored on at least one of your devices, so as long as you have the device with your originals, you won’t lose any photos as part of this process.
Because all of the images in My Photo Stream are stored in their original format on at least one Apple device, there isn’t a danger of photos being lost as part of the shutdown process. Apple recommends that users who want to have their images on a particular device save them to the Photo Library on that device prior to July 26.
Apple also suggests that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users turn on iCloud Photos to view their photos and videos across their devices. iCloud Photos is available on iPhones and iPads running iOS 8.3 or later and Macs running OS X Yosemite or later.
If your photos currently in My Photo Stream are not in your device’s library, you can save them. Here’s how:
- Open Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
- Tap Albums and then tap on My Photo Stream > Select
- Tap on the photo(s) that you want to save and then tap the Share button
- Here, tap on Save Image
