News

Apple has announced that it is shutting down “My Photo Stream,” the company’s original cloud-based photo syncing service launched alongside iCloud in 2011. My Photo Stream will go offline on July 26th, but according to Apple, users’ images will remain available in the cloud for a month after that.

Apple sent an email out to users still using the service, writing: “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.” Users will not be permitted to upload any new images to My Photo Stream from June 26th until the service ends 30 days later. “The photos in My Photo Stream are already stored on at least one of your devices,” Apple writes. “So as long as you have the device with your originals, you won’t lose any photos as part of this process.”

When Apple launched iCloud Photo Library in 2015, My Photo Stream was effectively sidelined, but the service remained despite only permitting users to sync a maximum of 1,000 images and videos, and not syncing high-quality photos in their full resolution—which iCloud allows.