Apple is closing the My Photo Stream service on July 26

Apple confirmed on Friday that the My Photo Stream service will be discontinued on July 26, 2023. The company also announced that My Photo Stream uploads will end one month early, on June 26, 2023.

Launched in 2011 along with iCloud, My Photo Stream has been showing its age for quite some time now. Saving photos is cumbersome and forces users to select photos from their stream and manually save them to their library or camera roll.

The worst part of the service is the inability to save full resolution photos. This degradation in quality is one of the reasons Apple left the service in 2015 and moved to iCloud Photos.

iCloud Photos is the superior option for its simplicity alone, but also because it stores high-quality, full-resolution photos and videos. The only potential downside to the feature is the availability of iCloud storage.

My Photo Stream automatically uploads the last 30 days’ worth of photos and videos, up to 1,000, to iCloud. However, it is a feature that must be enabled.

In the support document Apple released on May 26, the company says no photo loss should occur with this transition. Users just need to make sure they have the device with the original photos on it.

“The 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. If a photo you want isn’t already in your library on a particular iPhone, iPad or Mac, make sure you save it to your library on that device.”

Apple notes that all photos uploaded before June 26 will remain available in iCloud for up to 30 days after the upload date and will be available from any device that currently has My Photo Stream enabled. However, when the service shuts down, those photos won’t be available in iCloud through My Photo Stream.

Apple recommends switching to iCloud Photos from now on to ensure that your photos and videos are properly stored in the future.

Apple outlines how to save photos currently in a user’s My Photo Stream:

• Open Photos and tap Albums.
• Tap My Photo Stream > Select.
• Tap the photos you want to save, then tap the Share button > Save image.

• Open the Photos app, then open the My Photo Stream album.
• Select all the photos you want to save that aren’t currently in your photo library.
• Drag them from the My Photo Stream album to your library.

iCloud Photos already makes it easy to store your photos and videos in the cloud. It’s also easy to share that content with others, especially with Shared iCloud Photo Library launched with iOS 16.1.