Apple announced it will soon remove a photo album service across all iPhones and advised users on how to save their favorite images.
My Photo Stream, an iCloud service that launched in 2011, allowed users to temporarily upload photos that could be seen across multiple Apple devices for 30 days before being removed, The Epoch Times reported. During the one-month period, up to 1,000 images could be accessed on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Microsoft PC with My Photo Stream enabled.
The free service will be permanently deleted on July 26, after which iCloud Photos will replace it.
In the meantime, users are not able to upload any more pictures to the soon-to-be-discontinued service.
If you’re an iPhone owner, here’s how to save your photos.
For recovering any remaining images on My Photo Stream, users should go to Photos and tap the Albums section, Apple advised on its support page. Then, they should tap My Photo Stream and click Select.
Users can select the photos they want to save and tap the Share button before hitting Save Image. If you’re using a Mac during this process, your photos will be automatically imported into the device’s photo library.
“The photos in My Photo Stream are already stored on at least one of your devices, so as long as you have the device with your originals, you won’t lose any photos as part of this process,” said Apple.
The support page then recommends users enable iCloud Photos if they want their pictures to be saved and accessible across multiple devices.
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However, iCloud only offers five gigabytes of free space before users have to pay a monthly fee for additional storage.
According to Apple’s website, iCloud costs 99 cents for 50 gigabytes of storage, $2.99 for 200 gigabytes and $9.99 for 2 terabytes in the U.S.
“My Photo Stream is a separate service from iCloud Photos. Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud,” Apple said.
“If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don’t need to do anything else—your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud.”
Tech reporter Rich DeMuro of KTLA-TV Channel 5 in Los Angeles, California, offered additional advice to iPhone owners on how to back up their pictures before the Wednesday deadline.
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Apple did not provide a reason for why it is shutting down the photo album.
For more information on how to set up iCloud Photos on all of your devices, click here or contact Apple Support for further help.
