Yoodley is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Apple has shut down its My Photo Stream feature this week. With this, your media will no longer be uploaded automatically to the My Photo Stream folder. And a month later, the album containing the media entries will disappear.
My Photo Stream started in 2011 as part of iCloud. However, what made it distinct is its free-of-charge service. The feature used to upload the user’s most recent photos (up to 1000 images), allowing them to view and import them to another device. It would then keep them for 30 days but later delete them from iCloud after the said period. This allowed the users to choose the photos they wanted to keep without consuming their free 5GB iCloud storage limit.
Unfortunately, last month, Apple announced that it would be shutting down the feature. “As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023,” Apple announced in May. “Any photos uploaded to the service 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 My Photo Stream, and the service will be shut down.”
The shutdown of the free feature is part of Apple’s move to promote its iCloud Photos sync service, which needs an iCloud subscription beyond the 5GB iCloud storage limit. Nonetheless, users who used to rely on My Photo Stream still have the option to save their remaining media in the folder. Here are the ways you can save the images on your devices:
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
- Open Photos and tap Albums.
- Tap My Photo Stream > Select.
- Tap the photos you want to save, then tap the Share button > Save Image.
Mac
- Open the Photos app, then open the My Photo Stream album.
- Select any photos you want to save that aren’t currently in your photo library.
- Drag them from the My Photo Stream album to your Library.
