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Universal My Photo Stream, once again, not working...

T

toke lahti

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 23, 2007
3,293
509
Helsinki, Finland
I'm wondering, if there's anybody else that does NOT store photos to iCloud, but, and especially because of that, would like to use My Photo Stream, to distribute the photos taken with one Apple device to all one's Apple devices?

For years this has been a PITA and looks like it will always be that.New photos from my iphone just not get shared. From ipad they will. Been changing photostream setting on/off too many days and doing hard reboots to that iphone.

What I'm wondering is, that if My Photo Stream fails to send a photo from my iphone to other devices, will it try again if the setting is put off and then on again. Or will it try to send the unsent photos again or only the new photos taken after the setting was put on?

Once I got it working with the help of Apple's support by disabling all things in Screen Time, which, of course, makes no sense.
Anybody found any reliable way to reset this service?

Apple does not clearly make this service work, so people would buy iCloud instead.

I might consider that also, if there would be clear separation and control, which photos (and videos) were in iCloud and which stored locally. Not just some fuzzy
 
I use this feature all the time. I does crap out now and then but it's been pretty solid for some time now. I know if you use it on you Mac with Photos you must have a photos library in the default location for it to work. Also I am using this with various versions of iOS and MacOS Mojave so it's not like Apple disabled the feature for different versions.
 
I have a hard time believing that the path to Photo library in one of my macs would stop my iphone to photostream a photo to my ipad.

At the same time my ipad does photostream a photo taken with it to both mac's and iphone's Photostream folder.
 
I was about to grizzle about this before finding your thread.

On my iPhone 8, all was well. Occasionally a photo wouldn't appear on my Mac immediately, but it would eventually 'catch up'. But since swapping to a new SE a month ago, no photos have come across. I've turned "My Photo Stream" off and on multiple times, but the photos simply never make it onto the server in the first place (they don't show up on icloud.com). Naturally this means that my Mac has nothing to download.

The Mac hasn't changed, and the new phone was set up by restoring a backup from the old one (same OS version), so they should be configured identically. Apple's troubleshooting instructions didn't resolve anything.

My Mac Photos app is saving to the default path and I don't have Screen Time enabled. Any other ideas?

Edit: Just found another thread saying that you need to set Settings/Camera/Formats to "Most Compatible". This has successfully made photos appear in the "My Photo Stream" album in the iOS Photos app (toggling back to "High Efficiency" breaks it again). They're still not coming through to my Mac (at least not immediately) but it's a step closer.

Edit 2: Toggling My Photo Stream off and back on in Mac Photos has made the photos appear! Who knows how often I'll have to do this, but at least it's more convenient than plugging the phone in and manually copying...
 
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My mind is blown away.

Apple's support said, that if I take HEIF-photos, they are not sent to Photo Stream!
I've been taking .heif's for the last 2.5 years and now I should step back to legacy format?!?

The problem is, that Apple support at least says that they don't see the changelog of their documents, so they can't say how long this has been the case.

I remember that I once read, that espcially because I have also old iphone, ipad and mac, My Photo Stream will convert HEIFs to JPGs, so that those old devices have been able to show those pics.

Looks like Apple is undergoing sneaky silent operation to wipe My Photo Stream away, sinen "hardly no-one uses it"...
 
Nermal said:
Edit 2: Toggling My Photo Stream off and back on in Mac Photos has made the photos appear! Who knows how often I'll have to do this, but at least it's more convenient than plugging the phone in and manually copying...
Click to expand...
And the answer is apparently "frequently". New photos didn't show up on the Mac until I toggled My Photo Stream off and on again (and then they appeared immediately).

orionquest said:
This is why I am not on Apple's latest and greatest OS's (iOS or MacOS). Too much BS to deal with. Staying 1 version behind works for me.
Click to expand...
Being on a new SE I'm stuck with the current iOS. I kept my Mac on 11.6 until the release of 12.3; silly me thought that maybe the version shipped with the professional Mac Studio workstations would actually have more than two bugs fixed...
 
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Can anyone suggest to me what is "My Photo Stream option? Never heard or seen it on my iPhone! And my cloud is full! :/
 
The genius move for Apple was that they never officially supported heif in Photo Stream.

So it's easy to stop supporting it in real life, when you can say that it was never supported.

After hopping from Mojave to Monterey, I have noticed that Apple has made many "automatical" things manual again:
  1. Delivering my photos without terabytes of iCloud: manually copy them to shared album and copy again to devices local memory.
  2. Calendar invitations have to be manually digged out from Mail and clicked to Calendar.
  3. Can't check my external drives' s.m.a.r.t any more, have to boot to Mojave to do that. Meaning that there's no constant observation of health. First time for a decade...
  4. Can't restore individual mails with Time Machine anymore. Need for manual labout just turned hundred fold for this.
I wonder how many more of this surprises are still coming...
 
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Nermal said:
Edit: Just found another thread saying that you need to set Settings/Camera/Formats to "Most Compatible". This has successfully made photos appear in the "My Photo Stream" album in the iOS Photos app (toggling back to "High Efficiency" breaks it again). They're still not coming through to my Mac (at least not immediately) but it's a step closer.
Click to expand...
Been pulling my hair out on this. Glad i found this thread. My Photo Stream is working again.
 

My Photo Stream

With My Photo Stream, you can access recent photos that you took with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or that you uploaded from your Mac or PC.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
:"

Photo formats that you can use with My Photo Stream​

My Photo Stream supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW photo formats. My Photo Stream doesn't support video or Live Photos.
"

I'm not sure if this is intentional, but somehow Apple keeps forgetting to tell that default Camera file format is "High Efficiency" == heif == NO PHOTO STREAM !!

E.g. this fails to tell this:

Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices - Apple Support

Upgrade to iOS 11 or later or macOS High Sierra or later to view, edit, or duplicate HEIF or HEVC media captured with an iPhone or iPad.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

The only problem with "Most Comptaible" == jpg == bigger files !!
Meaning that the most expensive storage, which is inside apple's devices, just got even more expensive.
 
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Must be some sort of bug as I was having exactly the same issue but instead of trying to get it to sync the usual way that we all use 90%+ of the time from iOS to OS I just thought that I would drag a photo (just some image that I'd downloaded) into the Photos app on the Mac itself (Monterry 12.5) and all of a sudden everything came alive! I started seeing the photographs and images from my iOS devices appear in my Photos app on the mac!
 
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Bishta said:
Must be some sort of bug as I was having exactly the same issue but instead of trying to get it to sync the usual way that we all use 90%+ of the time from iOS to OS I just thought that I would drag a photo (just some image that I'd downloaded) into the Photos app on the Mac itself (Monterry 12.5) and all of a sudden everything came alive! I started seeing the photographs and images from my iOS devices appear in my Photos app on the mac!
Click to expand...
Strangest thing - Wife's iphone/imac photosream was working fine. My iphone/ipad/macbook pro was not. Photos taken on iphone or ipad would show up on the other device but nothing would show up on macbook. I had tried everything I could find and nothing worked UNTIL I read your post. Dragged a screen capture into the photos library and voila photo stream started working. WEIRD but thanks
 
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