1. Folks, there still isn't a thread dedicated to this absolutely excellent tweak. That is, feel free to discuss it in here.
2. the following article is loooong because it's written for beginners. If you only want to know how the tweak can configured, scroll down to the mini-tutorial.
I love using my iPhone 5 for taking quick HDR and panorama shots. While the image quality of the phone, in general, doesn't come close to that of dedicated enthusiast point-and-shoot cameras like the Sony RX100 or the Panasonic LX-7, both HDR and particularly the panorama mode of the iPhone 5 is stunning. Actually, I, while having several other panorama-enabled cameras, only use the iPhone 5 for shooting quick panoramas: in practice, it has turned out to be delivering the most consistent, artifact-free panoramas. Just for a comparison: not even the latest-and-greatest Panasonic ZS-30 (an, otherwise, excellent travel zoom) can deliver panoramas of comparable quality and dependability.
After returning home, I love reviewing my shots on my large-screen Retina iPads, preferably before going to sleep, together with my wife, without having to explicitly synchronize them from the iPhone 5 to my iPad. They're just there on the iPad when they need to be there, thanks to the Photo Stream.
The same stands for screenshots. For this article, I've taken, in rapid succession, shots on three of my different iDevices. First, on my iPhone 5, to provide you with a Cydia screenshot. Then, on my iPad 2, to show you how the tweak needs to be enabled and configured in the system-wide Settings app. Finally, after cleaning up these two iDevices and, then, finding out I would still need a screenshot showing you how easy it is to have a photo stream using pretty much storage, I needed to make a screenshot on a third device I haven't cleaned up before (in this case, a fourth-gen iPod touch) still showing the size of the (locally) mirrored Photo Stream.
Without the Photo Stream, this would have resulted in having to connect every single of these iDevices to my Mac and drag the screenshot from the stock Image Capture app. With Photo Stream, all I had to fire up Aperture on my Mac and move to the end of the current month's photo stream to access all the three shots at once. Much-much easier than the pre-Photo Stream way of transferring photos.
Keeping storage free
I, generally, choose not to delete old photos from the stream so that they remain accessible on my large-storage, high resolution devices like my Retina iPads for bedtime browsing. In addition, I do want all my iDevices to automatically upload my new images, both traditional shots like the HDR / pano shots taken on my iPhone 5 and plain screenshots taken on all my iDevices.
Enabling Photo Stream, however, means all my iDevices will also download every single of my Photo Stream images to every single of my devices, taking up a lot of storage. This, with the majority of my iDevices being “just” test / teaching / compatibility testing ones not used as actively as my primary ones (iPhone 5 and a Retina iPad), isn't a problem in most cases. However, when I need the last bit of storage on some of the less-used ones, it is. For example, today, while working on a huge chart of TV out compatibility (I'll publish it very soon in THIS TouchArcade thread – and will come out with a full article very soon afterwards), I needed to transfer as many TV out-enabled apps to several of my iDevices as possible. To avoid minimizing the number of manual cleanup and, then, installation cycles, I needed as much free storage as possible on all those iDevices so that I could transfer as many apps as possible to an iDevice in one step. Then, even the 600-700 MBytes occupied by my local copy did count. After all, given that I needed to install 20-30 Gbytes of apps on each device, it was preferable to do this in about, on average four rather than five complete deletion / installation steps.
(A screenshot showing my stream's taking up 655 MBytes of storage on my iPod touch 4)
Privacy concerns
Another common scenario is that of privacy. You don't want to synchronize all your cloud images to all your iDevices so that, should you load / lose them, no one will be able to access them? Still, you do want to automatically upload the shots you shoot on the same iDevice? Then, you'll find my article and mini-tutorial really useful.
Saving on 3G costs
Note that some related articles (for example, that of Redmond Pie) mistakenly state this tweak can also help in reducing 3G costs. This isn't the case: even with stock iOS, there won't be any Photo Stream up/downloads while you're on 3G.
Using stock iOS...
Unfortunately, you can't just disable downloading from the cloud on iDevices. This is, as has been explained above, a problem on iDevices where you don't need to be able to access images in the cloud but from where you still want to upload images (e.g., new screenshots) from.
Apple, in order to keep things (overly) simple, just doesn't offer this setting in stock iOS under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream. It can only completely disable both up- and downloading. That is, there is absolutely no way of selectively disabling downloading to the local iDevice.
As in most cases, you can't do this on non-jailbroken devices with third-party apps either. That is, you do need to jailbreak. (Given the other, huge advantages of jailbreaking when done properly – the most important, in my opinion, being f.lux, something absolutely essential when using the iPad in bed, before falling asleep -, you probably already have.)
Tutorial: setup and configuration
Just purchase iControlPhoto from Cydia. It's $2 and a safe install on both iOS 5 and 6 devices. (I've tested it on several of them, both 5.1.1 and 6.1.2 ones.)
(Cydia main page of the tweak on my iPhone 5)
After installing, go to Settings > iControlPhoto.
Enable the main, uppermost “Enable” switch (disabled by default), along with the Upload and Screenshot switches below that. (Should you want to keep screenshots local, you can leave the Screenshot switch disabled, of course.) Of course you don't want to enable the “Download” switch – after all, then, you wouldn't need this tweak at all. This is shown in the next screenshot:
![]()
(click for original-sized image)
Deleting previously synchronized local copies
After configuring the tweak as explained above, you may also want to get rid of the previously synchronized pictures from your iDevice. To do this, you'll need to temporarily disable Photo Stream altogether, instructing the device to do the cleanup and, then, re-enabling it again so that uploading will still work.
Go to the standard Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream and disable the “My Photo Stream” switch. You'll be shown the following dialog:
![]()
(click for original-sized image)
Select “Delete Photos”. It won't delete them from the stream, only from your local device.
After this, you can re-enable the stream by re-enabling the same switch.
After doing this, uploading will be done as previously but no precious local storage will be used on the iDevice in question.
Note 1: under iOS versions prior to 6.0, there is no “Shared Photo Streams” switch in this dialog. (Nevertheless, you woulnd't need to touch it at all in the above process – as has been explained, you only need to dis-, and, then, after the cleanup, re-enabling the uppermost switch.)
Note 2: exactly the same switch can be found under Settings > Photos & Camera (under iOS 5, Settings > Photos):
(iOS 6; annotated by me)
(iOS 5; annotated by me)
It does the same as the one under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream. The switch is just duplicated, which is pretty rare in stock iOS. That is, if you disable the switch under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream, the one at Settings > Photos [& Camera] will also become disabled and vice versa. This also means you can also disable and, then, re-enable the switch to clean up storage occupied by previously synchronized (downloaded) remote images.
2. the following article is loooong because it's written for beginners. If you only want to know how the tweak can configured, scroll down to the mini-tutorial.
I love using my iPhone 5 for taking quick HDR and panorama shots. While the image quality of the phone, in general, doesn't come close to that of dedicated enthusiast point-and-shoot cameras like the Sony RX100 or the Panasonic LX-7, both HDR and particularly the panorama mode of the iPhone 5 is stunning. Actually, I, while having several other panorama-enabled cameras, only use the iPhone 5 for shooting quick panoramas: in practice, it has turned out to be delivering the most consistent, artifact-free panoramas. Just for a comparison: not even the latest-and-greatest Panasonic ZS-30 (an, otherwise, excellent travel zoom) can deliver panoramas of comparable quality and dependability.
After returning home, I love reviewing my shots on my large-screen Retina iPads, preferably before going to sleep, together with my wife, without having to explicitly synchronize them from the iPhone 5 to my iPad. They're just there on the iPad when they need to be there, thanks to the Photo Stream.
The same stands for screenshots. For this article, I've taken, in rapid succession, shots on three of my different iDevices. First, on my iPhone 5, to provide you with a Cydia screenshot. Then, on my iPad 2, to show you how the tweak needs to be enabled and configured in the system-wide Settings app. Finally, after cleaning up these two iDevices and, then, finding out I would still need a screenshot showing you how easy it is to have a photo stream using pretty much storage, I needed to make a screenshot on a third device I haven't cleaned up before (in this case, a fourth-gen iPod touch) still showing the size of the (locally) mirrored Photo Stream.
Without the Photo Stream, this would have resulted in having to connect every single of these iDevices to my Mac and drag the screenshot from the stock Image Capture app. With Photo Stream, all I had to fire up Aperture on my Mac and move to the end of the current month's photo stream to access all the three shots at once. Much-much easier than the pre-Photo Stream way of transferring photos.
Keeping storage free
I, generally, choose not to delete old photos from the stream so that they remain accessible on my large-storage, high resolution devices like my Retina iPads for bedtime browsing. In addition, I do want all my iDevices to automatically upload my new images, both traditional shots like the HDR / pano shots taken on my iPhone 5 and plain screenshots taken on all my iDevices.
Enabling Photo Stream, however, means all my iDevices will also download every single of my Photo Stream images to every single of my devices, taking up a lot of storage. This, with the majority of my iDevices being “just” test / teaching / compatibility testing ones not used as actively as my primary ones (iPhone 5 and a Retina iPad), isn't a problem in most cases. However, when I need the last bit of storage on some of the less-used ones, it is. For example, today, while working on a huge chart of TV out compatibility (I'll publish it very soon in THIS TouchArcade thread – and will come out with a full article very soon afterwards), I needed to transfer as many TV out-enabled apps to several of my iDevices as possible. To avoid minimizing the number of manual cleanup and, then, installation cycles, I needed as much free storage as possible on all those iDevices so that I could transfer as many apps as possible to an iDevice in one step. Then, even the 600-700 MBytes occupied by my local copy did count. After all, given that I needed to install 20-30 Gbytes of apps on each device, it was preferable to do this in about, on average four rather than five complete deletion / installation steps.
(A screenshot showing my stream's taking up 655 MBytes of storage on my iPod touch 4)
Privacy concerns
Another common scenario is that of privacy. You don't want to synchronize all your cloud images to all your iDevices so that, should you load / lose them, no one will be able to access them? Still, you do want to automatically upload the shots you shoot on the same iDevice? Then, you'll find my article and mini-tutorial really useful.
Saving on 3G costs
Note that some related articles (for example, that of Redmond Pie) mistakenly state this tweak can also help in reducing 3G costs. This isn't the case: even with stock iOS, there won't be any Photo Stream up/downloads while you're on 3G.
Using stock iOS...
Unfortunately, you can't just disable downloading from the cloud on iDevices. This is, as has been explained above, a problem on iDevices where you don't need to be able to access images in the cloud but from where you still want to upload images (e.g., new screenshots) from.
Apple, in order to keep things (overly) simple, just doesn't offer this setting in stock iOS under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream. It can only completely disable both up- and downloading. That is, there is absolutely no way of selectively disabling downloading to the local iDevice.
As in most cases, you can't do this on non-jailbroken devices with third-party apps either. That is, you do need to jailbreak. (Given the other, huge advantages of jailbreaking when done properly – the most important, in my opinion, being f.lux, something absolutely essential when using the iPad in bed, before falling asleep -, you probably already have.)
Tutorial: setup and configuration
Just purchase iControlPhoto from Cydia. It's $2 and a safe install on both iOS 5 and 6 devices. (I've tested it on several of them, both 5.1.1 and 6.1.2 ones.)
(Cydia main page of the tweak on my iPhone 5)
After installing, go to Settings > iControlPhoto.
Enable the main, uppermost “Enable” switch (disabled by default), along with the Upload and Screenshot switches below that. (Should you want to keep screenshots local, you can leave the Screenshot switch disabled, of course.) Of course you don't want to enable the “Download” switch – after all, then, you wouldn't need this tweak at all. This is shown in the next screenshot:
(click for original-sized image)
Deleting previously synchronized local copies
After configuring the tweak as explained above, you may also want to get rid of the previously synchronized pictures from your iDevice. To do this, you'll need to temporarily disable Photo Stream altogether, instructing the device to do the cleanup and, then, re-enabling it again so that uploading will still work.
Go to the standard Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream and disable the “My Photo Stream” switch. You'll be shown the following dialog:
(click for original-sized image)
Select “Delete Photos”. It won't delete them from the stream, only from your local device.
After this, you can re-enable the stream by re-enabling the same switch.
After doing this, uploading will be done as previously but no precious local storage will be used on the iDevice in question.
Note 1: under iOS versions prior to 6.0, there is no “Shared Photo Streams” switch in this dialog. (Nevertheless, you woulnd't need to touch it at all in the above process – as has been explained, you only need to dis-, and, then, after the cleanup, re-enabling the uppermost switch.)
Note 2: exactly the same switch can be found under Settings > Photos & Camera (under iOS 5, Settings > Photos):
(iOS 6; annotated by me)
(iOS 5; annotated by me)
It does the same as the one under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream. The switch is just duplicated, which is pretty rare in stock iOS. That is, if you disable the switch under Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream, the one at Settings > Photos [& Camera] will also become disabled and vice versa. This also means you can also disable and, then, re-enable the switch to clean up storage occupied by previously synchronized (downloaded) remote images.
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