Q: PhotoStream mostly disappears from Mac
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Jan 17, 2016 4:57 AMby lgcebuk,Hi and thanks for replying - the only PhotoStream photos on my desktop Mac are from the last week. The ones that have disappeared range from last year to December 2015. The photos have not really disappeared from PhotoStream because the 800+ all show on my iPad and phone's PhotoStream. They just don't show any more on my Mac!
Any ideas or suggestions on how to force my Mac to relied the PhotoStream would be very welcome.
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Jan 17, 2016 5:11 AMby léonie,My Photo Stream does not necessarily show the same photos on all devices. Your iPhone and iPad may have cached more photos.
My Photo Stream is only guaranteed to show what is currently buffered in iCloud, and iCloud will only keep at most the last 1000 photos, and only,the photos that have been added during the last month. So it is perfectly normal if photos older than a month do no longer show on your MAc. The photos may be vanishing from your other devices as well, if you disable My Photo Stream on the devices and turn it on again. Turning My Photo Stream off and on again, will remove all photos that are no longer stored in iCloud.
See this support document:
Get help using My Photo Stream - Apple Support
I see different photos in the My Photo Stream album on each of my devices
Your device will keep up to 1,000 photos, even if they're older than 30 days. Photos older than 30 days are removed from the iCloud server, so depending on when you enabled My Photo Stream, your devices might not have the same photos. Due to capacity, your Apple TV might display only your most recent photos.
Follow these steps to delete older photos from My Photo Stream and put your most current photos on all of your devices:
- If there are any photos in the My Photo Stream album you'd like to keep, save them to your device. Then, back up your photos and other data.
- From the Home screen on your iOS device, tap Settings > iCloud > Photos. Turn off My Photo Stream.
- Confirm that you want to Delete Photos.
- Turn on My Photo Stream again. iCloud will push your stored photos to your device.
- Repeat these steps for each device.
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Jan 17, 2016 5:31 AMby Winston Churchill,Photo stream in the cloud only keeps photos for 30 days. It sounds like you have turned photo stream off on your Mac and then turned it back on again, hence only the last 30 days worth of photos have downloaded again.
If the photos are still in the photo stream album on your phone, save them to your camera roll, connect the phone to your Mac and download them.
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Jan 17, 2016 9:42 AMby lgcebuk,Thanks to you both for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it. I think there must have bee some sort of glitch because one moment PhotoStream on the Mac had 800+ Images and within a few minutes (without switching anything off) they had disappeared. I think I'll just have to wait and see if it repopulates.
THanks again for sharing your experience.
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Jul 11, 2016 1:12 AMby lgcebuk,Thanks for all this input but the situation is more complex and not solved by these steps. Even Apple Support has seen this on screen share, taken various steps to solve it and they are puzzled. We've deleted libraries, reset everything and even done a clean install of the OS as they thought I might have a corrupted version of Photos.
Currently my Mac PhotoStream shows only 316 photos dating from the end of May this year.
I understand that all devices may not show the same PhotoStream but thought that PhotoStream would show 1,000 photos. My iPhone 6S and iPad Pro 9" both have 900+ photos in PhotoStream going back to October 2015.
This seems to indicate that older photos exist in the cloud but for some reason the Mac Photos app doesn't show them.
Before the Photos app it worked perfectly on the Mac. Anyway thanks for the input and I'll carry on importing photos to my mac via USB or email when I need to use them and they're not available..... not the maximal workflow Apple!
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Jul 11, 2016 2:36 AMby Winston Churchill,Photos older than 30 days do not exist in the cloud, if you turn photo stream off and on again on any device only those from the last 30 days will download again, this will well be less than 1,000 photos if you don't have 1,000 photos from the last 30 days and if you have more than 1,000 photos from the last 30 days you will only get the latest 1,000 back.
