Apple’s My Photo Stream – Closing The Photobook

Apple has recently announced that its free photo syncing service, My Photo Stream, will be discontinued on July 26, 2023. If you’re an iPhone user who relies on this service to keep your photos up to date across your devices, you might be wondering what this means for you and how you can best prepare for the transition from old to new. Here are some answers to the most common questions you may ask!

What is My Photo Stream?

My Photo Stream is an Apple-owned service that automatically uploads your most recent photos (except Live Photos) to iCloud and makes them available on your other devices that have My Photo Stream turned on. To do this, you would have “My Photo Stream” enabled through the “Photos & Camera” option in your Settings app.

After that, any of your recent photos are stored in My Photo Stream for 30 days and then are deleted from iCloud. You can access your photos in My Photo Stream by going to the Photos app and looking for an album titled “My Photo Stream” on any available Apple devices you own, from iPhones to even your Mac!

Why is Apple shutting down My Photo Stream?

Apple has not given a specific reason for shutting down My Photo Stream, but it is likely that Apple have made this service redundant with the introduction of iCloud Photos, a more advanced and comprehensive photo storage and syncing service that Apple offers. iCloud Photos, as the name suggests, uploads all of your photos and videos to iCloud and keeps them up to date across your devices. Unlike My Photo Stream, iCloud Photos supports Live Photos, videos, edits, albums and shared albums. It may very well be that Apple want to encourage you to use this new service instead of My Photo Stream.

However, since iCloud Photos uses the iCloud service, it also consumes your iCloud storage amount, which means you might need to pay for more storage if you have a lot of photos and videos through Apple’s iCloud+ service.

What should I do to prepare for the shutdown of My Photo Stream?

If you’re an iPhone user who uses this free service, we would advise either switching to iCloud Photos or to download your photos from My Photo Stream before the deadline comes. This way, you can ensure that you don’t lose any of your precious memories. Alternatively, our technicians at ArmaFone can provide some helpful data transfer services, so you can easily backup your important files and photos to a memory stick or SD card – just ask us in-store!

Here are some options you can use to prepare for when My Photo Stream closes the photobook:

• Switch to iCloud Photos – This is the recommended option advised by Apple if you want to keep all of your photos and videos in iCloud and access them from any device. If you wanted to switch to iCloud Photos, you’d go to the Settings app,  select your personal Apple ID account, select the iCloud option, then Photos and turn on iCloud Photos. You might need to upgrade your iCloud storage plan if you don’t have enough space for all of your photos and videos with the iCloud+ subscription. You can choose from 50GB, 200GB or 2TB plans, with the 50GB plan starting at £0.99 per month.

• Download your photos from My Photo Stream – This is the option we would suggest if you don’t want to use iCloud Photos or pay for more storage. To download your photos from My Photo Stream, you can either import them to your Mac or PC using the Photos app or iCloud for Windows, or save them to your device’s camera roll by tapping each photo and choosing “Save Image”. We would advise doing this before July 26, 2023, otherwise you’ll lose access to the photos you have kept in My Photo Stream.

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