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Apple’s My Photo Stream is set to shut down in less than a month, on July 26, 2023, so you don’t have much time left if you want to save any images from the service locally.
My Photo Stream was a limited-space cloud storage system that could give you a free taste of what iCloud had to offer. Your 1,000 latest Snaps will be stored in the cloud for 30 days, allowing you to easily transfer them between your Apple gadgets. You need to set up and use iCloud Photos to keep them for a long time. Because iCloud Photos also has its own free trial that lets you store 5GB of images for free, Apple likely thinks My Photo Stream is unnecessary — which is probably why it’s shutting down.
Thankfully, depending on how the service works, we’d be surprised if you have any pictures stored only in My Photo Stream – so you should still have your favorite snaps stored on one of your devices when the service is turned off. But if you haven’t saved them anywhere locally, or if you want to make sure they’re stored on a specific device, we’ve got a guide to help you out. Whether you use an iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Mac, here’s how you can save your My Photo Stream photos.
How to save your photos from My Photo Stream
on iPhone and iPod Touch
- Start by opening your Photos app and tap on Albums at the bottom of your screen.
- Here you’re looking for the My Photo Stream album. As a default iOS album it should be one of the first options, but you may have to scroll a bit to find it if you have a lot of albums.
- Once in the My Photo Stream album, tap the Select button in the top-right corner of the screen, then scroll through the album and tap each image you want to keep.
- With all the images you want to save selected, tap the Share button (the square with an arrow in the lower right corner), then tap Save Image.
on ipad
- Open your Photos app, then tap the icon in the top left of your screen to open the sidebar. Here you should see my albums. Tap on it.
- Find the My Photo Stream album. This is a default iOS album so it should appear at the beginning of the list. Scroll down to Albums and tap it if you see it, but if you don’t you won’t have any My Photo Stream pictures to worry about.
- Once you have the My Photo Stream album, press Select in the upper right corner. You can then go into the album and select all the individual images you want to save.
- Now that you have all the images you want to save selected, tap the Share button (the square with an arrow in the lower right corner), then press Save Image.
on mac
- Begin by booting up your Mac and opening the Photos app. Then you have to go to Albums and open the My Photo Stream album.
- Go ahead and select the images you want to save on your device.
- Using your mouse, drag selected images from the My Photo Stream album to your library and they will be stored locally.
