Apple Will Permanently Remove Your Photos in ‘My Photo Stream’; Here’s What You Can Do

Apple recently announced that it will shut down My Photo Stream on July 26, 2023. The Cupertino-based giant said that it would permanently remove the album in less than a month.

Back in the day, when an iCloud Photo library was not available to users for easy syncing and uploading or downloading their favorite memories, the company decided to offer them My Photo Stream which was their way to make the photos available on other devices via iCloud.

"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," Apple Inc. said.

Over the years, Apple has slowly sidelined My Photo Stream which started to get replaced by iCloud Photo Library and now they have decided to completely cease its services.

What Were The Limitations Of My Photo Stream?

My Photo Stream worked fine for a big base of users until it didn't. The company carried on with its pathbreaking innovations but My Photo Stream did not support many of these new technologies. It couldn't stream videos, didn't support live photos and GIFs and only showed the last 30 days or the last 1000 photos, whichever is greater. It's important to note that these drawbacks didn't make users hate My Photo Stream; they could still drop off their older photos and it was working fine for most of them. In simple words, if you have iCloud Photos, you don't really need My Photo Stream.

But did we mention that My Photo Stream is free while iCloud is not? So, it makes sense that many people were still counting on My Photo Stream to store their precious memories.

How To Move My Photos From My Photo Stream To iCloud Photos?

The no-cost tier of iCloud has always been 5GB of space for backing up your photos, notes, reminders, safari bookmarks and of course, photos and videos. This no-cost tier is sufficient for a very small group of people. However, for most people living in the age of the Internet, this storage option is simply not sufficient. 

The process of uploading your photos and video to iCloud is pretty simple as long as you have enough space in iCloud for the amount of media that you have on your iPhone or any other Apple device. In case you don't have enough space, all you need to do is pay the bucks! 

Go To Settings, Tap On iCloud and Tap Manage Account Storage. Here's where you can upgrade your iCloud plan with a credit card or by using PayPal. Once that's done, make sure that  "My Photo Stream" is turned on from settings. Allow iCloud to sync all the media and it's done. The changes should reflect in all your Apple devices after the sync is complete.

Some iCloud Alternatives

Dropbox: This is one of the popular storage platforms liked by both people and businesses offering 2GB of free storage which can be upgraded to a 2TB plan for $11.99 a month.

Google Photos: This storage and sharing platform is also packed with great editing tools and other features. The basic plan will cost $1.99 a month for 100 GB and $2.99 a month for 200 GB of storage.

Amazon Drive (Upcoming Amazon Photos): If you are an existing Prime member, then you can easily use Amazon Drive's no-cost 5GB and also upgrade to $1.99 a month for 100GB. 

Box: This platform gives you 10GB of free storage and you can always upgrade as per your requirements.