Do shared photo streams have a cache limit or revolving cache?

All photos that you want to share to a stream have to be kept on your device as well for syncing with iCloud. There are limits to how many photos you can share to the shared streams, however. See:

iCloud: Photo Stream limits

Hi Léonie

I have found this old thread. As of now this does not seem the case anymore, photos that are now in shared streams are not kept locally anymore (unfortunately for me, there is not even a choice). The thumbnails are there, but not the full sized photos.

I have a big problem with this because I like looking at photos all the time and cannot have them load again and again just because I want to look at them (imaging being on a plane, or abroad or in general on a capped data plan).

I hope Apple gives us the option (probably not) because since iOS9 they are cached (iOS8 did keep them on myphone). Will switch to google photos or something that allows me to have them locally and shared at the same time.

Cheers

As of now this does not seem the case anymore,

I don't think so. Look in your Users/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.cloudphotosd/Data/Library/Applications Support/com.apple.cloudphotosd/serviices/com.apple.photo.icloud.sharedstresam/a ssets folder.

Inside the assets folder will be a folder for each shared stream.

Hi Old Toad

You are talking about OSX! Please note we are talking about Phones, namely iOS.

You are correct that, as should be, Streams are downloaded fully on the OSX harddrive.

Silvanp wrote:

Hi Léonie

I have found this old thread. As of now this does not seem the case anymore, photos that are now in shared streams are not kept locally anymore (unfortunately for me, there is not even a choice). The thumbnails are there, but not the full sized photos.

I have a big problem with this because I like looking at photos all the time and cannot have them load again and again just because I want to look at them (imaging being on a plane, or abroad or in general on a capped data plan).

I hope Apple gives us the option (probably not) because since iOS9 they are cached (iOS8 did keep them on myphone). Will switch to google photos or something that allows me to have them locally and shared at the same time.

Cheers

I cannot test this on my devices any more, because I have iCloud Photo Library enabled with the "Optimize Storage" option active. So all my photos are only in iCloud, with thumbnails on my iPhone and iPad. Check your settings for iCloud Photo Library. Is it also enabled on your iPhone, and "Optimize Storage"? The photos in Shared albums will always be limited in size. When you add large photos to a shared album, only a smaller version will upload to iCloud. iCloud Photo Sharing FAQ - Apple Support

When shared, photos taken with standard point-and-shoot cameras, SLR cameras, or iOS devices will have up to 2048 pixels on the long edge. Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide.

Opps. I didn't notice your profile and that indicated you were still running iOS 6 which would support iPhoto on iPhones.

Hi Leonie. The iCloud Photo Library has nothing to do with Share Photo Streams (which this discussion is about). Hence you can test it by just creating some large shared photo streams, and then restart the photo app (to clear the cache). Then to confirm you should notice that photos have to be reloaded from apple's servers when you click them in the newly created shared photo stream.

Hi. Sorry I have not updated this in a while. In my actual post (which you did not read properly) I indicate that I am running iOS 9.

Again, the issue in this discussion is about iOS and not OSX, ie. it is not about iPhoto nor Photos which both keep the shared photo streams locally.

This discussion is about the fact that shared photo streams used to keep local copies on the iPhones internal storage (full sized).

My first comment here says that since iOS 9 this is not the case anymore. iPhone merely keeps the thumbnails and then "streams" full sized copies of the photos to a cached space for temporary viewing which is cleared after the app is being quit reopened (as is the case when the phone restarts or after a long period of inactivity I assume)

Hi Leonie. The iCloud Photo Library has nothing to do with Share Photo Streams (which this discussion is about).

I meant, that I cannot test this with iCloud Photo Library disabled, because I do not want to disable my iCloud Photo Library. All I can say currently is that each and every photo I want to view enlarged has to be downloaded from iCloud, also the photos im my shared albums. This used to be different, while did not have iCloud Photo Library with "Optimize Storage" enabled. The photos in the shared albums are cached locally, before I enabled iCloud Photo Library.