Apple Photo Stream: iPhone users urged to check their library before photos are permanently deleted

Tool is disappearing – and could take important memories with it

Apple is in the processing of shutting down its “Photo Stream” offering – and could be removing people’s important memories with it.

As such, users of any Apple devices such as iPhones that are still using the old system have been urged to check they have saved all of their latest images to ensure that they are not lost.

Apple announced recently that it would stop taking new photo uploads on 26 June. But any of the images that were uploaded before then would stick around for a further month, meaning that the images will finish on 26 July, when the system will be shut down.

The images will not be removed from the original devices that took the image, and so should be safe as long as that is the case. But various people use the Photo Stream tool to move pictures between devices, meaning that they could potentially get lost.

Photo Stream was launched as an early way to synchronise photos across devices. It was launched in 2011, and has been operated as part of iCloud since.

It allowed iPhone users to upload their most recent 1,000 photos, taken in the last 30 days, for free. Users on Mac or Windows could have those photos then automatically download to their device, meaning that those libraries would be easily kept up to date, even with photos that were taken on another device.

In the time since, however, Apple has moved towards a new offering called iCloud Photos, which uploads all pictures automatically and then keeps them in sync across any devices that are logged in. While that means there are not the same kind of limits as with the Photo Stream, it also means that users are likely to need to pay for storage and need to set up the service.

As such, many people may still be using that old Photo Stream service, even as it comes to be shut down. Anyone who is might in turn lose access to those photos that are still stored in Photo Stream and are yet to be saved.

Thankfully, saving them is relatively easy. Users can head into the Photos app, click on “My Photo Stream” and then choose the images that need saving and add them into the library.

If users already have iCloud Photos switched on, this will be unnecessary, and photos are already being kept in sync. If not, then the feature can be turned on from within the Photos settings on recent Apple devices, which will then ensure that those photos are kept in sync across any device with the setting switched on.