My Photo Stream was Apple ’s first passing play at permit you synchronise photos ( not video recording ) across all your devices tie in to a single iCloud news report . The avail , whichstarted with a different name , have you stream the last 30 days of photo you ’ve taken or added to a Photos library on any gadget ( including Apple TV ) on which you ’ve enable My Photo Stream . Only the most recent 1,000 ikon within 30 days seem on iOS and iPadOS devices .
But some Mac user have noticed that My Photo Stream seems to have disappeared for them , myself let in . you may find posts on Apple and third - party forums dating back as long as a few age ask why it went off without explanation from their scene .
Apple has not made any formal announcement about terminate My Photo Stream but it has efficaciously limited its role in ways that make it available only to a shrinking subset of iCloud substance abuser .
iCloud Photos : If you have iCloud pic on , Apple move out My Photo Stream options from iOS / iPadOS configurations and the Photos app in macOS . The album also disappears from all your Photos apps and you’re able to no longer utilize it with an Apple TV logged into your iCloud account . It ’s undecipherable when this change happened , but I ca n’t find that Apple alerted user to the alteration .
Newer Apple ID : Apple observe on theMy Photo Stream how - to page , “ If you recently created your Apple ID , My Photo Stream might not be usable . ” It does n’t define “ recently ” but a search of the Internet Archive ’s WayBack Machine reveals that speech communication first appear inAugust 18 , 2018 . That ’s a unspecific definition of latterly .
As a result of those changes , you may not have access to My Photo Stream . Some multitude on forums do n’t fulfill those two tests — they have an old Apple ID and are n’t using iCloud Photos — but still do n’t see My Photo Stream configurations or record album on their twist . Apple may be killing the service more subtly than it has document .
This is n’t surprising as Apple never kept My Photo Stream stream with newer features . It could never swarm video recording and the working version of it still ca n’t . But it also never gained support for Live Photos — if you have Live photograph enabled on your iPhone or iPad , a nonremittal alternative , none of those images come along in the stream .
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iCloud Photos is far good than My Photo Stream . It keep all your media ( photos , video , and Live Photos ) , not just recent image , and give you the option to store optimized thumbnail or full - resolution images while also having the full - resolution versions backed up to your iCloud memory board .
But iCloud Photos also drive tax income . Where My Photo Stream was let in as just another feature available to anyone with a free or ante up iCloud history and did n’t count against storage , every byte synced with iCloud Photos does count against your computer storage tier . Almost everyone will have to kick upstairs from the free 5 GB tier and pay for at least the 50 GB flavor of iCloud+ to use iCloud Photos .
Google Photos — which synchronise fairly well across iOS , iPadOS , and macOS — once tender a form of halfway earth between My Photo Stream and paying for additional iCloud storage . You could opt into a free Google Photos grade for photo and video recording syncing and repositing that had a terminus ad quem on the maximal photo resolution and video sizing ; it downsampled anything above those demarcation line . However , while the apps and service of process still live , Google discontinued its option for unlimited complimentary capped - resolution storage . You have to pay Google for a storage architectural plan for more than 15 GB total across all their linked services , including Photos , Google Drive , and Gmail .
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