Here's how we can replace My Photo Stream with iCloud Photos

July 26, 2023 will be the last day of My Photo Stream (An Obituary of My Photo Stream - Apple Community). Then at the latest we will need a plan how we can transfer the new images to our other devices in the years to come.

Although my photo stream was getting long in the teeth and could do less than iCloud photos, it had a decisive advantage: it was free and required little additional memory on our devices, since a maximum of a thousand photos had to be stored and only the new photos from the last thirty days.

Apple recommends switching to iCloud Photos as a replacement for My Photo Straem. iCloud Photos can do a lot more and offers a real synchronization of the media libraries, not just the one-way transfer of new photos, and supports more formats, especially videos and live photos. Here's a comparison of the two services: iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream

However, iCloud Photos is an all or nothing solution. When we use it, the complete photos library is transferred to the cloud. We probably won't get by with the free 5GB iCloud storage, and the media library on our computer could be too large to transfer it completely to mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.).

If we just want to recreate the Photo Stream to sync our latest photos from iPhone or iPad to Mac, here's how we can do it:

• We set up a small, almost empty additional photo library on our Mac just for syncing with iCloud Photos. To create a new library, exit Photos if it's still running. Restart Photos while holding the Option ⌥ key. Only release the button when the dialog for selecting the library appears and choose to create a new library. (Create another photo library in Photos on Mac)
• When Photos opens, go to "Photos > Preferences > General" and click "Use as system photo library". Only the system photo library can be synced to iCloud. (System Photo Library in Photos on Mac - Overview - Apple Support (UK))
• Then go to the "iCloud" tab and turn on iCloud Photos. Also turn on iCloud Photos on the other devices you want to sync pictures from to Mac. But if you want to make do with the free 5GB of free iCloud storage, first delete all photos on the mobile devices that you don't absolutely need there, make sure that you only have the absolute favorites there that you always want to have with you.
• In addition to this new media library for iCloud photos, keep all photos in one or more other media libraries as an archive of all your photos. When new photos from the other libraries appear in iCloud Photos Library, copy them to Archive Library and delete them from iCloud Photos Library if you don't want to keep them across devices.

The problem will be, that the System Photos Library is very special and has two different purposes (System Photo Library overview in Photos on Mac – Apple Support (UK)):

1. First of all, it is the only library that can be accessed from other application, when you want to share photos or use them in another app- a web browser, Mail, or want to save photos to your Photo Library. All this depends on the System Photos Library.
2. Second, it is the only library that can sync with iCloud - iCloud Photos, the Shared iCloud Photos Library, Shared albums.
3. And on our mobile devices we can only have one library.

If you want to use a small library to sync the new photos, this small library will be your System Photos Library. It needs to contain all photos we want to access from other apps, and all photos we want to have on our mobile devices at well. It needs a lot of planning to get it right, so our system photoss library will be suitable for all purposes.

My iCloud Photos library also started small, but has now grown to 60,000 photos and videos as I want to have more and more photos across devices, especially the newer photos that I still want to organize and edit. It's very convenient to be able to do this from whatever device I have handy and then continue later on another device.