Apple will permanently delete photos in July — how to keep yours safe

A picture is worth a thousand words — as long as it doesn’t get deleted.

Apple announced it will permanently do away with the My Photo Stream album next month. The feature automatically stores pictures taken in the last 30 days.

Due to the impending shutdown, My Photo Stream stopped uploading snaps on June 26 — and everything in the album will be deleted when the service ceases July 26. 

However, any pics that were uploaded to My Photo Stream before June 26 will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available on devices where My Photo Stream is enabled.

To ensure you do not lose any pictures, go into the My Photo Stream album in your camera roll and save your pictures to your device or to iCloud.

“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,” Apple notes on its support page.

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

If you already use iCloud, you do not need to do anything else.

Saying bye bye to My Photo Stream means that iCloud is Apple’s “best option” for keeping all your photos and videos across all devices safe and in one place.

But there are still outside options, as one money expert on TikTok recently shared with her viewers.

She advises Apple users to never pay for additional iCloud storage once they hit their allotted free 5 gigabytes.

iCloud costs 99 cents for 50 GB of storage, $2.99 for 200 GB, and $9.99 for 2 terabytes.

Instead, the expert recommends users back their photos up on the Amazon Photos app or through their Google accounts.