Apple’s My Photo Stream shuts down in a few days – how to save your snaps

Here’s how to save your My Photo Stream images

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Apple’s My Photo Stream is shutting down in just a few days – and if you aren’t familiar with the service, it’s worth checking to make sure you won’t lose any photos as part of its shuttering.

My Photo Stream arrived back in 2011 as a temporary place where 1,000 of your most recent photos would live, so you could view them on other Apple devices and decide to download them there. These photos would live in My Photo Stream, so you could easily move them between Apple gadgets.

But withiCloudPhotos, which has a free trial, now the main way to transfer snaps to other devices using the cloud, My Photo Stream is beingshut down on July 26, 2023. So what does this mean? For most people, probably not a lot – but it’s certainly worth checking just in case you have photos stored in the service that aren’t also on any physical devices.

AsApple’s support page for the My Photo Stream shutdownnotes, if you have the device that shot the original images “you won’t lose any photos as part of this process.” Also, if you have iCloud Photos (which is a paid service above the free 5GB allowance) enabled on all of your devices, you also don’t need to worry.

But just in case you don’t have the photos saved locally anywhere, 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 a Mac here’s how to save your My Photo Stream pictures.

Apple My Photo Stream: how to save photos on iPhone and iPod Touch

Apple My Photo Stream: how to save photos on iPad

Apple My Photo Stream: how to save photos on Mac

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Mark is TechRadar’s Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at both TechRadar and Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he’s contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph’s Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London’s Square Mile.

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