My Photo Stream shuts down today
/You may have recently received an email from Apple stating that My Photo Stream is shutting down as of today.
I have had lots of inquiries as to what this means. Well, My Photos Stream is the original method of getting photos from your iPhone to your other Apple devices. It started in 2011 and was kind of complicated to describe. Since it is shutting down I won’t bother describing it.
In 2014, just 3 years later, Apple created iCloud Photos that is a very straightforward way of syncing all of your photos between your Apple devices. It also syncs your edits, albums and much more so that your Photos apps on all your devices are virtually identical. They thought this would obsolete My Photo Stream, but a lot of people hung onto the older method and some still do today. If you use iCloud Photos you do not need My Photo Stream. It is redundant.
You should check to see that you have iCloud Photos on all your devices. Here is how:
On your Mac: open Photos and go to Photos > Preferences (or Photos > Settings). Click the iCloud tab at the top and make sure iCloud Photos is checked.
On your iPhone and/or iPad: Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos. Make sure iCloud Photos is checked.
If everything is already on you are set and don’t have to be concerned about My Photo Stream being shut down.
If one of your devices is not part of your iCloud Photos, turning it on will upload all of the photos on that device’s library to iCloud and to all your other devices. This is probably OK because mobile devices have a way of managing the storage as to not fill them up with photos. You may be asked to buy more iCloud storage to hold the additional photos and, well, you don’t have a lot of choice if you want all your photos to be synced.
That is about it. Most of you will not have to concern yourselves with My Photo Stream being shut down, but a few of you will and I hope this helps you.