My Photo Stream alternative

SweetFlappie wrote:

Is there any other free option to synch the last pics, if My Photo Stream is being discontinued?

On iCloud Photos you can only synch "all pics", meaning you will need to pay for extra iCloud-storage :-(

Thank you!

You can use iCloud Photos, just the free 5GB, without having to sync all your photos you are having on your Mac. Keep the Photos Library on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch very small, just the new photos and your absolute favorites, and create an your Mac a new, empty Photos Library to sync the new photos between your devices. Call this Photos Library "My New Photo Stream" or similar.

• To create an additional Photos Library, see: Create additional libraries
• And see this on how to set up iCloud Photos: Use iCloud Photos on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

I described this in this User Tip: Here's how we can replace My Photo Stream with iCloud Photos… - Apple Community

One draw-back will be, that only our System Photos Library can sync with iCloud. You will need to keep all photos you want to be able to access from other apps in your iCloud Photos Library "My New Photo Stream". And we cannot import the photos directly from an iCloud Photos Library into our bigger archive Library. Directly importing from one Photos Library into another Photos Library is only possible from libraries, that are not syncing with iCloud. You would have to duplicate your "My New Photo Stream" before importing from it to have a copy, that is not syncing with iCloud. Or use the paid, full version of Power Photos to import the new pitems from your "My New Photo Stream" into the archive.

You can always connect your iPhone and store your photos on your computer hard drive. Which is free. If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can sync all your photos there as well which is included in Prime membership. Google Photos lets you sync photos for free as well.

But honestly, while Apple gives you 5GB of free storage, going to the next level, which is 50GB of storage in iCloud, it will only cost you $1/month. That's $12 per year. You likely pay more for a lunch in most restaurants in one fell swoop.

SweetFlappie wrote:

Is there any other free option to synch the last pics, if My Photo Stream is being discontinued?

On iCloud Photos you can only synch "all pics", meaning you will need to pay for extra iCloud-storage :-(

Thank you!

A Mac can have multiple Photos Libraries.

Hold down the Option key when launching Photos, and you will get a dialog to let you create and move between libraries. If you are using iCloud Photos, then

• Your system Photos Library will synchronize with iCloud Photos
• All of your other Photos Libraries will be local

Although Photos does not offer the ability to open two libraries at the same time, and easily move stuff between them, you can Export photos (edited files, or originals) from your system Photos Library, putting copies of those photos out in the user-visible part of the filesystem.

You could then store those photos somewhere else (e.g., loose; importing them into Lightroom Classic; importing them into one of your local Photos Libaries), and delete the originals from the system Photos Library.

Photosync is pretty nice. I used it BEFORE Apple's Photostream existed. When I was using it, you had to be connected to wifi for it to transfer to your Mac.

Once Apple's PhotoStream shut down, I decided to create my own photo stream using the free tools on the Mac and iPhone. My goal was to create a system that would check my iPhone once per day (around 11:55 PM) for any photos taken during that day. If any are found, the iPhone then copies all of those photos from that one day to a folder in iCloud. The Mac monitors that iCloud folder for any new files 24/7, and if it finds any photos it then imports them into my Photos app on my Mac, and deletes the files from the iCloud folder. All of this occurs automatically without pressing any button or paying attention to it in any way, and it happens over cellular or whatever network connection the iPhone happens to have at the time.

To do this, you need to create a Siri Shortcut Automation on your iPhone. And an Automator Folder Action on your Mac. I'm assuming you know how to use Siri Shortcuts and Automator, but if not just google how use them. Below are pics of my Siri Shortcut actions and my Automator actions for you to follow:

Of course, this method only allows photos to be viewed on your iPhone and Mac, and not across all devices. To do that using the above method, you'd need an app to remotely access your photos on your Mac.

You'll just have to choose an option which most closely meets your storage needs. Personally, I haven't used My Photo Stream in years and moved over to iCloud completely and yes, I pay for more iCloud Storage. I also automatically save my photos to Amazon and Google photo, plus I still have a One Drive account with Microsoft, so my photos are synced there as well. What's most important for me is to never lose photos and using multiple storage options ensures that.

I have the same issue and concerns with this and it is not the $$ paying for extra storage. I don't want all photos on all 15 Apple devices and I certainly do NOT want edits on one device going to all. PhotoStream was a simple way of getting new photos to other devices and then choose if you wanted them stored permanently on the other devices. I see this current move as a huge backwards step and no other solution going forward other than to manually sync each device to my Mac where I have all my photos for editing. I can't wait to see the Apple support messages for this once people start turning on iCloud Photos with people deleting photos from their phone to save space and have them wiped from their main storage as well.

Maybe a setting in iCloud Photos to limit the photos on that device to the "last x number of photos" so all devices will have those last photos and whatever else is shown based on the device setting (this would be like PhotoStream). Also an option to "keep edits local" on each device would solve the edit sync issues I see coming with the change. If they want to force people to use iCloud Photos they need to make it a little more intelligent for those that really use it for multiple device sync rather than a simple backup tool for a single iOS device user that can't be bothered thinking about photo content security.

When I saw this I switched on iCloud for photos both on my iPhone and my Mac. Four days later my Mac photos, of which there are 17k, are still synching to iCloud!!

As my main use of Photostream was to get photos simply and quickly from my iPhone to my Mac, I was thinking about just turning on iCloud for Photos on the phone. Then I could access the photos in iCloud from my Mac. As I have an Apple one subscription I have 200 Gb so storage is not an issue but i don't really need all my Mac photos on iCloud.

OTOH i could just import photos on a regular basis from my Iphone to my Mac.

I guess the main decision people need to make apart from cost of storage, is how import is it to have access to photos on any device through iCloud or is having them all locally available sufficient? As usual there are too many ways to skin this particular cat.

Has anyone tried this app for syncing photos? If yes, please let us know how to works

https://www.photosync-app.com/home

Came looking for a thread like this, for those of us who DO still use Photo Stream, and are looking for a replacement. Thanks for starting the thread.

I have 160k digital photos, over 352GB of storage required. Photo Stream has always kept my pictures the way I want - up-to-date on my iMac, which is where I keep everything, and then backed up via Time Machine. Don't want this much data, nor all these pictures, in Apple's cloud space.

Clearly they just want to have everyone renting space, rather than owning your own data. It's their software, and they can eliminate features, but this is yet another instance of how they are no longer providing me with what I need.

So currently my option is to go back to downloading the pictures with a cable to the iMac, since I don't think they have more than 50gb/month, nor would I pay what they'd ask for it.

If someone does find a useful alternative, I'd love to hear about it. Would punt Photos app as well , if new service was integrated into something else.

Agree very much on this. PS is a great way to let me have access to some number of recent photos on several devices, and bring them down automatically to the iMac. I'm trying to think how long ago I had to actually think about moving my pictures manually... As always, for those who don't use it, it's no loss. For those of us who do, it's a nightmare.

I did. I downloaded an app called Transfer. Had to pay $39 (one time) for the Pro version. It's not PhotoStream but it works and has to be done manually. Just disheartening that Apple has gone backwards in the apparent search of profits. I have to replace my 10 year old iMac this year, cant believe i am typing this but Im going to look at a PC. I have parallels on my MacBook Pro, have a Windows based log book program that was written over 20 years ago and it still works. If it had been an Apple program it would have been obsolescent with the transition from G4 chips to Intel.

Yes. Apple shut down my Photo Stream a month early, so I've been looking into this for a while. I took the 14 day trial of their (premium?) software, the one that allows you to autotransfer with a geofence or an iBeacon. The geofencing won't work for me (too broad) but I got the usb beacon, and configured it today.

With that dongle-beacon plugged into my iMac, when I walk into my office the program will automagically transfer all NEW photos from my iPhone to Photos. It wasn't too hard to set up, although seems just a bit quirky so far.

This is what I needed out of Photo Stream, so this may not help others who want their photos on all of their devices. But it did what I require. Good luck to everyone, and a big raspberry to Apple.

It's not about the payment for storage. Many of us do NOT want every photo we have on EVERY device. With Photo Stream my Mac Mini server had all of my photos and at times I would clean out my phone to only those I wanted to keep with me. Photo Stream allowed recent photos to be accessible to all devices and you could keep them or let them expire. I have over 300GB and don't want that filling up my phone as well as my other 10 devices (some which don't have enough storage for that many photos). iCloud photos is great for family snapshots but not for people with lots of photos. Apple doesn't seem to care about this class of people any more. They stopped working on the best Photo processing software when they killed Aperture and now they want to stop those that moved to other software (reluctantly) from using Apple standard tools to move photos between devices. I just had a neighbor who lost all their photos because of iCloud Photos. He just retired and someone from his former employer deleted all the photos from his old work phone and guess what, all his photos were deleted from all his other personal devices, and since he did not realize for 30 days (not tech savvy and did not understand how it worked) they were lost forever. It is NOT a good solution unless you fully understand how it works.

kwmorrow wrote:

It's not about the payment for storage. Many of us do NOT want every photo we have on EVERY device. With Photo Stream my Mac Mini server had all of my photos and at times I would clean out my phone to only those I wanted to keep with me. Photo Stream allowed recent photos to be accessible to all devices and you could keep them or let them expire.

My Photo Stream allowed low-resolution copies of your photos to be available to iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches). Apparently only computers got to see copies of full-size originals.

https://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/icloud-photo-stream-and-image-quality

now they want to stop those that moved to other software (reluctantly) from using Apple standard tools to move photos between devices.

I don't think that's it at all. MacWorld's take, for instance, is that My Photo Stream's main advantage was that it was free – and that otherwise, it had serious drawbacks. The automatic deletion of photos after 30 days being one of them.

https://www.macworld.com/article/1935691/my-photo-stream-shutting-down-july-26-2023-icloud-photos.html

I just had a neighbor who lost all their photos because of iCloud Photos. He just retired and someone from his former employer deleted all the photos from his old work phone and guess what, all his photos were deleted from all his other personal devices, and since he did not realize for 30 days (not tech savvy and did not understand how it worked) they were lost forever. It is NOT a good solution unless you fully understand how it works.

If you treated My Photo Stream as a backup service – deleted originals, then waited 30 days, because you had no understanding of how it worked, you would have lost your photos forever.

My Photo Stream deletes photos in your photo stream on its own. iCloud Photos deletes photos after the user requests that deletion on a device.