Apple is shutting down its cloud-based service My Photo Stream on July 26th. This means that if you use this service to store or share images on any of your Apple products, you cannot rely on your photos being saved. Although the switch-off is set for late July, images will not be saved from the 30 days before this date.
My Photo Stream has been around since 2011, which is admittedly a long time in technological terms. However, there are people who rely on this service still to share photos between devices (my mother, for example!).
“As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023”, Apple says.
“Any photos uploaded to My Photo Stream before June 26th will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available to any of your devices where My Photo Stream is currently enabled,” Apple states. “By July 26th, there will be no photos remaining in iCloud, and the service will be shut down.”
Your photos won’t be deleted from the original device that they were taken on. Technically, you shouldn’t lose them completely. However, you probably want to make sure that they are backed up to some sort of physical storage device (like an external SSD or hard drive), just in case. Additionally, you can save the image to the library on any device.
Apple is not the only company closing down various cloud accounts. Google announced earlier this month that it would be closing any dormant accounts, including its cloud-based photo storage, if an account hasn’t been accessed for two years. This is apparently due to security concerns. Apple’s decision to close, on the other hand, is merely a strategic business decision to lure more people into paying for iCloud services.
Once again, this serves as a great reminder not to completely trust our photo files with 3rd companies. It’s always good practice to have your own backup or two (or three!).
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