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Apple will permanently delete an entire photo album from your iPhone next month, but luckily there’s an easy way to prevent the contents from being lost forever.
The tech giant has announced that it is discontinuing My Photo Stream, an album that automatically saves your photos from the past 30 days.
As part of the shutdown, My Photo Stream stopped uploading photos on June 26, and everything in it will be lost when the album is taken down on July 26.
If you are an iPhone user, you are urged to go to My Photo Stream – which can be accessed through the Photos app – and save the content to your device.
My Photo Stream has been offering free storage for over a decade and is an alternative to iCloud Photos, which has only gotten more expensive in the UK and other countries.
Users are urged to go to My Photo Stream – which can be accessed through Apple’s Photos app – and save the content to their device
“My Photo Stream is scheduled to close on July 26, 2023,” Apple explains on its online support page.
As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will cease one month early, on June 26, 2023.
“If a photo you want isn’t already in your library on a particular iPhone, iPad, or Mac, make sure you save it to your library on that device.”
Users took to Twitter to share their concerns about the disappearance of the decade-old feature, with one calling it “actually sad.”
“I used it to get photos between my iPhone 6 on iOS 12, iPhone 4 on iOS 6 and macOS,” they tweeted.
Another said, “Think my Apple Photo Stream is just gone. Lost a lot of photos.’
Yet another threatened to turn its back on Apple and switch to a Google phone.
‘Lost many photos:’ Users took to Twitter to share their concerns about the disappearance of the decade-old feature
Not happy: Yet another threatened to turn its back on Apple and switch to a Google phone
Introduced by Steve Jobs in 2011, My Photo Stream is a free service that automatically uploads up to 1,000 photos from the last 30 days.
For more than a decade, it’s allowed users to access photos on a variety of Apple devices – so if they’ve taken a photo on one device, like their iPhone, they can find and download it on another device, like an iPad or Mac.
If you pay for iCloud+ and always have enough storage space for your photos, you don’t have to worry too much about Apple’s new decision.
However, if you’re using the free version of iCloud and always seem to run out of space for new photos, you’re more likely to be affected.
To access My Photo Stream and save the content, go to the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad and tap Albums at the bottom.
My Photo Stream appears as one of the albums, in Recents, WhatsApp, Instagram, among others.
Tap the My Photo Stream album, then tap Select in the top-right corner of the screen.
Next, tap to select all the images you want to keep, then tap Share (a square with an arrow pointing up from the top) before hitting Save Image to save these photos to your device.
As Apple explains on its support pagethis process is slightly different if you save the contents of My Photo Stream to a Mac computer.
My Photos Stream is an album that automatically saves your photos from the last 30 days
My Photo Stream has always been free, so it gives users a place in the cloud to safely store their most recent photos at no cost (although photos taken more than 30 days ago would disappear from My Photo Stream).
My Photo Stream offers a taste of iCloud, which offers much more storage and keeps photos no matter how old they are.
iCloud offers a free 5 GB storage tier, which is enough to store about 3,500 photos, but if you want more storage, you’ll have to pay.
One problem with iCloud is that it stops storing your photos when you reach its maximum capacity, and this is where the My Photos Stream advantage always came into play.
My Photo Stream has always had room for new photos because those that reach 30 days are automatically deleted.
Introduced by Steve Jobs (pictured) in 2011, My Photo Stream is a free service that automatically uploads up to 1000 photos from the last 30 days
Photos taken on an iPhone or iPad are, of course, saved to the camera roll (the Recents folder), meaning they are stored locally on the phone itself rather than in the cloud.
But the storage space on your phone is limited and you cannot access these files from your other Apple devices unless they are stored in the cloud.
Many of us also delete photos from the Recents folder to free up space on the phone itself, knowing that they’ll automatically appear in My Photo Stream – but this is all changing now.
The reason why Apple discontinued My Photo Stream is unclear, although the decision could prompt users to sign up for the paid version of iCloud.
Apple users have received emails about the shutdown, telling them that iCloud is the best way to “safely store” photos taken on all devices.
MailOnline has reached out to Apple for comment.