An Ubituary of My Photo Stream
During the last few week many users have been notified by Apple that My Photo Stream will be shutting down on July 26, 2023. Information about the My Photo Stream shutdown - Apple Support
As this is a very old service, many users have been confused, as they did not know what this is about, and if the warning applied to their iCloud Photos Library, particularly, as the users with a recently created AppleID could not even enable My Photo Stream. Here is some background information.
What is My Photo Stream?
After Apple shut down the very popular Mobile Me in 2011, when OS X Lion has been released, and replaced it by iCloud, they introduced My Photo Stream as the very first iCloud service to sync our new photos seemlessly between all our Apple devices, independent of the model and the system version.
It was an impressively simple and ingenious innovation. Whenever we added a photo to the Photo Library (iPhoto '11, Photos iOS, or Aperture) from one of our Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac), it was uploaded from My Photo Stream to a cache in iCloud and stayed there available for 30 days so that the other devices could download it to their photo library. Up to a thousand photos from the last thirty days could be stored in iCloud free of charge. My Photo Stream uploaded the unmodified originals straight from the camera and has worked very robustly across many devices, models and system versions. Older photos were automatically deleted after thirty days or when the 1000 photo limit was reached to make room for new photos.
Back then, I really enjoyed having the latest photos appear automatically on my iPod touch, iPad, and all Macs.
With OS X Mountain Lion in 2012, shared photo streams (which have since been renamed shared albums) were added as another iCloud service, so we could then share photos with friends and family in the cloud; the shared photo streams were a precursor to the picture chats we can do in the news today.
Because My Photo Stream has been so popular and has been used by many people, the restrictions soon became noticeable. Only the original photos have been synced, not the edited versions. Videos were not transferred at all, no albums or changed metadata and adjustments. We just wanted more. And using this service required Aperture or iPhoto, which were also getting on in years and didn't fit in well with the new world of mobile devices.
Apple introduced a completely new world for photos in iCloud with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite in autumn 2014: iCloud photos library with a new program "Photos" as the successor to iPhoto, which is available on all Apple devices across all platforms with a uniform look and feel. iCloud Photos became available on both Mac and iOS devices in early 2015, but not for for Aperture and iPhoto users, only for the new Photos.app.
Apple kept My Photo Stream, Aperture, and iPhoto still running, so that those with older devices and programs that couldn't upgrade to iOS 8 or OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite and iCloud Photos could keep their devices running, but My Photo Stream, Aperture, and iPhoto were no longer updated for the new image formats. People with a new AppleID were not given access to My Photo Stream, but were immediately referred to iCloud Photos. On October 7, 2019, with the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina, Aperture and iPhoto finally came to an end, and with it, a major reason to keep My Photo Stream alive was gone. And as of June 26, 2023, Photo Stream stopped syncing. After 26.7. then the last data photo stream data will be deleted from iCloud. Rest In Peace, My Photo Stream.
Who is affected by the change?
All users who are still running older devices that cannot be upgraded to system versions that support iCloud Photos will now have to manually sync their photos again. Aperture and iPhoto will also no longer be able to access My Photo Stream. I would definitely turn off my photo stream in Aperture or iPhoto before July 27, otherwise these programs might crash when trying to access My Photo Stream, as it happened with the "Places" in iPhoto and Aperture back in 2012 when Apple canceled the contract with Google for the maps and iPhoto and aperture could no longer access the server for the maps.
If you have used My Photo Stream in Photos, you should download the most recent photos from My Photo Stream on devices that do not automatically download from My Photo Stream (iPod, iPod touch, iPad) asap. A Mac downloads the photos automatically if My Photo Stream is turned on, but not the mobile iOS devices.
How can we tell if we have turned on My Photo Stream?
If we have enabled My Photo Stream, we will see a separate My Photo Stream album. On a Mac, where we can have many photo libraries, only one photo library can sync with iCloud at a time; so we need to check the correct library to see if there is My Photo Stream. If we use Photos for Mac, we need to check for My Photo Stream in our system photos library, when we use iPhoto or Aperture, we have to check the iCloud settings for all the libraries. How to check My Photo Stream in Aperture … - Apple Community
On devices where it's possible to turn on both My Photo Stream and iCloud Photos at the same time, you may not see a My Photo Stream album, but the My Photo Stream photos will appear under "All Photos". There we can only see in the Settings whether we are using My Photo Stream or not.
Can images from our media libraries be lost if My Photo Stream is turned off?
If we haven't activated My Photo Stream in the last thirty days, there can't be any photos that need to be rescued from the stream, since only the photos from the last 30 days have been buffered in iCloud. All photos in My Photo Stream are copies of photos that we had in a library on one of our devices when the photos were uploaded. Even if we don't salvage the photos in time, all photos should still be in the original library we uploaded them from, unless we've since then deleted them from that library. Photo Stream doesn't delete photos from libraries, only their own copies in iCloud.
The photos in Shared Albums and in iCloud Photos Library will not be not affected by this change at all, as Shared albums are using a different iCloud Service and are storing their own copies of the shared photos.
Translated from my user tip in the german ASC: Ein Nachruf auf Mein Fotostream - Apple Community
