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01st Jul 2023

Apple to permanently delete photos from people’s iPhones this month

Kat O'Connor

By Charlie Herbert

Apple is set to remove an entire photo album section from people’s iPhones this month.

The company announced it was getting rid of My Photo Stream, an album that automatically stores all your pictures from the last 30 days.

Introduced in 2011, My Photo Stream uploaded up to 1,000 photos from the last 30 days across all of a user’s devices.

But, snaps stopped being uploaded to the album on June 26 and it will be deleted permanently on July 26.

So if you took a picture on your phone for example, and want it saved onto your Mac or iPad, you’ll need to go on My Photo Stream in the Photos app and save the contents on that device to make sure the snap in question is not permanently deleted.

The Apple online support page says: “My Photo Stream is scheduled to be shut down on July 26, 2023.”

“As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023.

“If a photo you want isn’t already in your library on a particular iPhone, iPad, or Mac, make sure that you save it to your library on that device.”

The move to delete My Photo Stream won’t be an issue for those who pay for Apple’s iCloud+ as this should provide plenty of storage space to keep photos in the cloud.

But those using the free version are more likely to be affected and run out of memory.

Apple advises: “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.

“If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don’t need to do anything else — your photos already sync to iCloud.

“To check, on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > your name > iCloud. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, click your name, then click iCloud. Make sure that it says ‘On’ next to Photos on each of your devices.”

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