'My Photo Stream' album vanished from 10.11.5

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Level 2

225 points

'My Photo Stream' album vanished from 10.11.5

I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to 10.11.5. After doing so, the My Photo Stream album in Apple Photos has disappeared. It used to be listed as one of the albums in the sidebar; now it's gone.

The My Photo Stream album still exists on my iPhone. Today I took a couple of pictures on the iPhone, and they were synced to the MacBook (they appeared in the Photos gallery in Apple Photos). This indicates that photo stream is working its magic between the iPhone, the iCloud, and the MacBook.

Of course, I have My Photo Stream enabled in Photos. I do not have iCloud Library enabled.

What's happened to the My Photo Stream on the MacBook? And how do I get it back?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Jun 16, 2016 6:09 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jun 16, 2016 7:27 PM in response to D.R.C.

What are your iCloud settings on each device? It sounds like your are using iCloud Photo Library rather than MyPhotoStream

LB

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Answer 2

D.R.C. Author

Level 2

225 points

Jun 17, 2016 3:16 AM in response to LarryHN

Yes, it does sound like I might be using iCloud Photo Library.

But I'm not. As I indicated in my inital post, "I do not have iCloud Library enabled". Never have.

The iCloud settings on my iPhone shows My Photo Stream enabled. Ditto on my MacBook.

iCloud Photo Sharing is also on. I have a few albums that are shared with friends/family.

I've double-checked that iCloud Photo Library is off, just in case cosmic rays had mysteriously flipped that bit in memory.

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2016 3:24 AM in response to D.R.C.

Have you tried disabling photo stream and then enabling it again.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 17, 2016 3:49 AM in response to D.R.C.

Import some new photo on your Mac and test, if this photo will activate My Photo Stream on the Mac.

my Photo Stream should be visible in the Albums section of the Sidebar.

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Answer 5

D.R.C. Author

Level 2

225 points

Jun 17, 2016 6:32 AM in response to léonie

léonie wrote:

Import some new photo on your Mac and test, if this photo will activate My Photo Stream on the Mac.

my Photo Stream should be visible in the Albums section of the Sidebar.

I did try as you suggested. The My Photo Stream album did not appear. But thanks for the suggestion.

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Answer 6

Jun 17, 2016 6:37 AM in response to D.R.C.

Try repairing the library by holding down ⌥ and ⌘ while launching the app.

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Answer 7

D.R.C. Author

Level 2

225 points

Jun 17, 2016 6:42 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill wrote:

Have you tried disabling photo stream and then enabling it again.

@ Winston,

That fixed it! (sort of). After disabling My Photo Stream (in Photos/Preferences) and then re-enabling it, the My Photo Stream folder re-appeared in Photos. After a few seconds, 14 photos appeared in it. This despite the fact that the My Photo Stream folder on my iPhone contains 967 photos.

Thanks!

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Answer 8

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 17, 2016 6:48 AM in response to D.R.C.

Make a current backup copy of your Photos Library before you repair the library. Apple recommends to have a backup in such cases.

https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.0/index.html#/pht6be18f93

Important: You should back up your photo library before repairing your library.

I am not sure, this is a problem with your Photos Library Photos is behaving like the iCloud Photo Library were enabled, when it isn't.

It might be problem of corrupted preference files.

If Winston Churchill's advice to repair the library did not fix the problem, try to remove Photo's preferences files.

They are stored in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/

Quit Photos, then drag the complete folder ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos/ to the Desktop and restart the Mac, then try again.

Your user library may still be hidden.To reveal the hidden User Library:

Quit Photos, if it is running.
Bring the Finder forward by clicking on the Desktop or the Finder icon in the Dock.
Select your user/home folder (with the house icon in the Finder sidebar)
With that Finder window as the front window, press the key combination ⌘J to bring up the View options.
In the View options panel enable ’Show Library Folder’. That will make your user library folder visible in your Home folder.
Open your Home folder, then the Library folder, then Containers.
Move the complete folder ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Photos to your desktop. Move the entire folder, not just the contents.

Now restart the Mac and try again. If all is well, delete the folder from the Desktop.

You may also want to remove the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Photos.plist

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Answer 9

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 17, 2016 6:51 AM in response to D.R.C.

After disabling My Photo Stream (in Photos/Preferences) and then re-enabling it, the My Photo Stream folder re-appeared in Photos. After a few seconds, 14 photos appeared in it. This despite the fact that the My Photo Stream folder on my iPhone contains 967 photos.

The numbers of photos in My Photo stream do not necessarily be identical. If you togle My Photo STream on and off, it can only download what is currentlyin iCloud, and that is what has been added during the last 30 days. The iPhone may have older photos in My Photo Stream.

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Answer 10

D.R.C. Author

Level 2

225 points

Jun 18, 2016 4:24 AM in response to léonie

It does appear that the iPhone has 'older' photos in its version of the My Photo Stream album (i.e., older than 30 days). Which is unexpected: I pay Apple $1/month for 50 GB of extra iCloud space so there is space to back up both my iPhone and iPad. I have oodles of unused iCloud space. So why aren't all 967 photo stream photos that are seen in the iPhone's album stored there? (It's a rhetorical question - they're not there because Apple decided not to store them there).

Regardless, my problem is now to extract the missing 953 photos from the My Photo Stream album in my iPhone and get them back into my Mac. Some of them are in the iPhone's Camera Roll, but most are not. I know that I can connect the iPhone to my Mac with a USB cable; that will import what's in the Camera Roll. How does one recover what's in the My Photo Stream album in the iPhone?

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Answer 11

Jun 18, 2016 4:33 AM in response to D.R.C.

You should be able to copy photos from photo stream to your camera roll.

photostream doesn't use your icloud space, the space is provided free on top of the 5GB iCloud allowance.

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Answer 12

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 18, 2016 5:16 AM in response to D.R.C.

Because My Photo Stream and Shared Albums are free, they are limited, both the amount of photos stored and the upload rates, see this list:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299

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Answer 13

D.R.C. Author

Level 2

225 points

Jun 19, 2016 1:33 PM in response to Winston Churchill

@Winston,

If there's a way to copy photos from My Photo Stream album on iPhone over to the Camera Roll, I can't locate it😟

I've tried selecting a photo in My Photo Stream ( on iPhone). At the bottom of the screen, there's a button Add To. Tapping that brings up a list of possible destination albums, but the Camera Roll is greyed out and inactive. iOS9 doesn't seem to consider Camera Roll as a valid destination for adding.

I've also tried tapping the iOS sharing button. Among the many options offered is Copy. I can thus copy the selected photo(s), but I can't find a way to paste them into the Camera Roll.

Did you have a specific method in mind to copy photos from photo stream to camera roll?

I suppose I could select photos in My Photo Stream a few at a time, and e-mail them to myself. Then open the e-mails on my MacBook, and save the attached JPGs into Photos from there. But that's an awfully tedious and time-consuming process to migrate 100s of photos. There's gotta be a better (and bulk) way. I rather wish Apple hadn't disappeared the My Photo Stream album from my MacBook's Photos in the first place.

You'll recall that I started this thread asking why the My Photo Stream album had disappeared from the list of albums. The 'fix' was to disable My Photo Stream (in Photo's preferences) and then re-enable it. I rather suspect that the act of disabling it triggered Photos to delete the contents of the (hidden) folder where it kept all the local copies of the photo stream images previously synced from the cloud. When the feature was re-enabled, it then downloaded from the cloud the most recent (< 30-day-old) photo stream images. But the overall result was to delete from the Mac the 900+ photo stream images that had been previously synced.

Thanks for any suggestions you can offer.

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Answer 14

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 19, 2016 10:54 PM in response to D.R.C.

I've also tried tapping the iOS sharing button. Among the many options offered is Copy. I can thus copy the selected photo(s), but I can't find a way to paste them into the Camera Roll.

Did you have a specific method in mind to copy photos from photo stream to camera roll?

The "Copy" button is meant to copy to the paste buffer and use the photo in other applications.

I cannot test this on my iPhone, because I am using iCloud Photo Library on that device, My Photo Stream is not shown as a separate album. But on my iPad I can save photos from the My Photo Stream Album to the Camera Roll using the Share menu with "Share > Save". And for photos already in the Camera Roll I use "Share > Duplicate". That will add a copy of the current edited version to the Camera Roll. This way - by duplicating - I can add the edited versions of the photos to My Photo Stream, not only the originals. Check, if either "Save" or "Duplicate" will add the photo to your Camera Roll on the iPhone.

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Answer 15

léonie

Level 10

200,699 points

Jun 20, 2016 4:11 PM in response to léonie

On the iPad the "Save image" button is here in the Share menu:

And the "Duplicate" button has a "+" to indicate that it will create a new photo in the Camera Roll.

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