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My Photo Stream Shutdown - is my stuff gone?

Hello, I had my iCloud turned on but when My Photo Stream shutdown occurred on July 26th it’s appears that I lost my photos and videos older than 2018. Is there any way to retrieve my old photos and videos? Please help!!

iPhone 13, iOS 15

Posted on Jul 28, 2023 6:00 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 28, 2023 6:10 PM

Hi JBMower,


You should be able to access those photos from the device where you took them. Apple recommends iCloud Photos as an alternative (which indefinitely stores photos; however using iCloud storage.) Also My Photo Stream only stored pictures temporarily for 30 days, so pictures after 30 days are available on where you took the pictures.

Note that this only affects the My Photo Stream service and album. If it's about iCloud Photos, let me know.


See here: Information about the My Photo Stream shutdown

Hope that helps!

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 28, 2023 6:10 PM in response to JBMower

Hi JBMower,


You should be able to access those photos from the device where you took them. Apple recommends iCloud Photos as an alternative (which indefinitely stores photos; however using iCloud storage.) Also My Photo Stream only stored pictures temporarily for 30 days, so pictures after 30 days are available on where you took the pictures.

Note that this only affects the My Photo Stream service and album. If it's about iCloud Photos, let me know.


See here: Information about the My Photo Stream shutdown

Hope that helps!

Jul 30, 2023 5:16 PM in response to 2NumForIce

Thank you for responding. I took various photos over the past 15-20 years of owning various iPhones. All of these photos, I assumed were on my iCloud account (in the cloud that I pay a monthly fee for) and that they should be accessible from any of my Apple devices (which they were prior to July 26th)… now I see a bunch of empty folder under My Albums. About 20 years of photos and video, family memories have vanished. I’m completely at a loss to understand what happened and how if if I can retrieve my memories.

Jul 30, 2023 6:46 PM in response to JBMower

if you had iCloud Photos enabled your images would sync to iCloud, that hasn’t changed. My photo stream would not have any bearing on the iCloud Photos sync. It’s likely that the images were deleted or not synced at some point. But, you can restore from your backups or original sources if necessary.

My Photo Stream Shutdown - is my stuff gone?

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