The Apple My Photo Stream cloud service has been discontinued on July 26, 2023, Wednesday. This feature was introduced in 2011 allowing up to 1000 photos on a user's device to be uploaded to iCloud for cross-device access between other Apple devices. After 30 days, these photos will be deleted.
Last month Apple announced that the My Photo Stream service will be discontinued. Users will need to use iCloud fully for more or less the same purpose, which will use up your iCloud storage quota. In this article I will share how to make sure your photos are safe and not deleted after this.
Have 30 Days To Download Everything
As I mentioned earlier, My Photo Stream will store user photos in iCloud for 30 days before they are deleted. So starting today, you have until August 26 to download the pictures you want to save.
These tips are for those who do not subscribe to iCloud cloud storage. If you don't subscribe, the 5GB free quota is still given. If it's full you have no choice either to transfer the photos to Google Photos or download one by one each photo to the device.
To save a picture from My Photo Stream to Photos you just need to open the Photos app, select Album, select My Photo Stream, press the share icon and select Save Image.
Use iCloud Photos
If you have an iCloud subscription you need to make sure that every image in the device is always uploaded to iCloud. This is a very simple step, first of all you need to have an iCloud subscription if 5GB is not enough (I use Apple One Family 200GB + iCloud subscription 200GB). The subscription price is as low as RM11.90 for iCloud 200GB or RM39.90 for Apple One 200GB.
Then you need to go to the device settings, press the username, select iCloud, find the section App Using iCloud, select Photos and make sure Sync this iPhone is turned on. You can manage storage in this section, see upload status, sync now and the most important feature if your iPhone storage is limited is turn on Optimize iPhone Storage.
Transfer To Google Photos
If you want a more user-friendly cloud platform such as easier sharing, collaboration with loved ones, interesting features such as magic eraser that can remove objects interfering with images, more user-friendly editing and more – Google Photos is a good choice.
Subscription prices start from RM8.49 per month for 100GB and can reach up to 30TB at a price of RM644.99 per month. To use Google Photos, after you download the photos from My Photo Stream or from iCloud earlier into the device, just open the Google Photos application.
In Google Photos press the profile picture, select Backup make sure all images are backed up. There is a choice of backup quality either Original quality which saves in the original size or Storage saver which compresses the image preserving the details.
To further save iPhone storage space, in the user's profile picture there is also Clear space which will only delete the image in the device if it is finished and safely backed up to Google Photos.