After 11 years in business, Apple says goodbye to My Photo Stream. The service for storing photos and having them available on the different Apple devices has an end date of July 26th. It will not be replaced by a new application, but users can have their information available in iCloud Photos, after the service’s closure date.
Amazon and major announcements at its annual event
My Photo Stream was launched in 2011 along with iCloud and allowed synchronization of photos on Apple devices such as iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. It was totally free and allowed to store up to 1000 images for 30 days. It was Wi-fi based and was a temporary alternative for image storage.
One of the advantages of using it was that its storage was independent from iCloud, so it did not depend on the space available to the user. However, the service has become obsolete due to Apple’s updates for services of this type. My Photo Stream also did not back up files, which is essential in this day and age.
In addition, images were stored in lower quality to reduce space and only a few image formats were supported. Surely many of these reasons led to Apple’s decision to discontinue it. People will be invited to use iCloud Photos instead to store images. While the user’s storage space is used, this is its only limitation, as images and videos can be synchronized between different devices. In addition, images are stored in full resolution and do not need to be moved to other locations.
New Apple slate aims for “infinite canvas”
When will My Photo Stream stop synchronizing and what should I do to avoid losing files?
According to Apple, as of June 26, new photos will no longer be uploaded to My Photo Stream. Images and videos uploaded up to that date will be available for 30 days. Users will be able to access them during that time from devices with the My Photo Stream service. As of July 26, it will be closed. Apple clarifies to users who are still using this option, that My Photo Stream images are stored on at least one of Apple’s devices, i.e. on the device from which the image or video was taken. This means that users will not have to do anything extra to avoid losing any files. Only those who want to have the images available on a particular device should save them in the photo library.
Apple reported shipment delays due to Covid restrictions
To save images to a specific device, follow the steps below:
- Go to Photos, Albums, My Photo Stream, and Select.
- Select the photos to be stored on the device
- Choose the Share-Save Image option.
In this way, the images will be available directly from the library of the device.
As a final recommendation, Apple informs users that they should set up iCloud Photos so that images and videos can be synced between different Apple devices.
