My Photo Stream overview

With My Photo Stream, the photos you take with your iOS devices or import to your computers appear automatically in the My Photo Stream album on all of your devices. It’s a great way to get all your latest shots on all your personal devices.

How it works

• Take a photo with your iOS device, or import photos from your digital camera to your Mac, iPad or Windows computer.

• iCloud automatically pushes copies of the photos over any available Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection to your other devices.

• The photos appear in My Photo Stream on each device:

  In the Photos app on your iOS devices

  In iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac

  Under iCloud Photos on your Apple TV

  In the Pictures Library on your Windows computer

To conserve storage space, My Photo Stream keeps only your latest 1000 photos on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. On your Mac and Windows computers, every picture from your photo stream can be automatically downloaded and kept permanently.

You can also set up your Mac and Windows computers so your new photos appear in a My Photo Stream album just as they do on your iOS devices. Your computer has more storage than your iOS device and can automatically import all photos from My Photo Stream to your photo library.

If you take photos with burst mode or image stabilisation on your iPhone 5s, only the photos you select as favourites when using burst mode and the final composite image shot with image stabilisation are added to My Photo Stream. If you want all burst-mode photos uploaded to My Photo Stream and your iPhone has iOS 7.1 or later, go to Settings > Photos & Camera and turn on Upload Burst Photos.