What's the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream?
With iCloud Photo Library, you can store all your photos in iCloud with no limits, unlike the traditional Photo Stream we've been accustomed to for the past few years. As long as you have enough iCloud storage, iCloud Photo Library will save all your photos. But what happens to your regular Photo Stream when you enable iCloud Photo Library? And more importantly, where did all your synced albums go? We've got the answers to these questions and more!
An overview of the differences between iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream
There are a few key differences between iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream that you need to remember. Before we start: It's important to note that at this time iCloud Photo Library is still in beta form; as such, we recommend always backing up any photos you plan to store on the service. That caveat over with, it's time to break down what each service offers and how they differ. Here's a brief overview:
Regular Photo Stream:
- Only stores your most recent 1000 photos or the last 30 days of images, whichever is greater
- Does not use your iCloud storage allotment
- Compatible across all devices including iPhone, iPad, Mac, and PC
- Stores web-optimized versions of your photos, which may degrade quality
- Does not upload and sync videos
- You can still sync photos and albums from your Mac or PC via iTunes when Photo Stream is enabled
iCloud Photo Library:
- Stores all your photos and personal video and has no limits as long as you have the iCloud storage space to support it
- Uses your iCloud storage allotment
- Accessible on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and online via iCloud.com
- Stores full-resolution photos on the server and on your devices and supports many file formats including JPG, RAW, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and others
- Uploads and syncs videos as well as photos
- You can not sync albums and photos from your Mac or PC via iTunes when using iCloud Photo Library, and any existing albums will be removed when you enable the service
I've enabled iCloud Photo Library, my Photo Stream is completely gone! Why?!

Your Photo Stream isn't technically gone. Since iCloud Photo Library now stores all your photos instead of just the most recent 1000 or last 30 days, it'd be confusing to divide up your Photo Stream and Camera Roll. As such, anything that appears in All Photos is backed up to iCloud Photo Library and available on any iOS device with iCloud Photo Library enabled.
If you switch on the "Upload to My Photo Stream" option in Settings > Photos & Camera, your last 1000 photos/last 30 days of images will still get uploaded to Photo Stream, and will display on a Mac, PC, or iOS device (with iCloud Photo Library enabled). Note: If you have multiple iOS devices, make sure to turn iCloud Photo Library on for all of them or none of them — if you have one device with iCloud Photo Library enabled, but another with just Photo Stream enabled, those devices won't talk to each other, and you won't see photos from one on the other.
You can tweak a few settings as to how your iPhone or iPad handles your iCloud Photo Library images on device. Currently, you can choose to either store web-optimized versions (thus saving storage space), or download and save high-resolution copies to your device. If you aren't sure where to find this setting, you can follow our guide:
Can I still access photos on my Mac or PC if I enable iCloud Photo Library?

Yup! You can access your entire iCloud Photo Library on the new Photos for OS X if you're running OS X 10.10.3 or later, or via iCloud.com. As with your iOS deices, if you're going to use iCloud Photo Library, the best way to keep your images in sync across platforms is to make sure you have both iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream enabled on all your devices.
So how do I get the photos on my Mac or PC to iCloud Photo Library?

You can use Apple's Photos for OS X app, if you're running OS X 10.10.3 or later. You can read more information about this in our Photos for OS X Ultimate Guide, linked below.
Updated at 4/8/15 to address Photos for OS X's release.
Reader comments
iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream: What's the difference?
So how do you get photos off your iPhone so that it keeps original photo date/time stamp? If I use web iCloud.com, it saves the photos with the date/time of when you downloaded photo. Before iCloud, you could connect iPhone to PC as attached device and just copy/paste photos to desktop. Now the photos are in many different sub-folders. :-(
Ok, I've been using both iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream. The promise that iCloud Photo Library will store ALL of your photos is promising, but what happens when your iDevice gets FULL, and you don't want to lose any photos?
From what I understand, when you delete photos from your phone, iCloud Photo Library removes it from ALL associated devices. I'm concerned that the new Photos for Mac will want to remove the photos, whereas with iPhoto and Aperture can currently import and keep all photos you import from both the iDevice and Photo Stream.
Not only that, how do I "bulk" delete, say, my oldest 100+ photos from the iPhone.?
Oh, and, if you have turned on "Optimize iPhone Storage", how do you ensure that you have the full resolution photo to print or archive?
This is exactly why I don't use it. When I first heard it announced I thought it would be true cloud storage for my photos and videos - and when my phone gets full, just delete everything off of it and everything is still safely stored up in the cloud. But nope, delete it from your phone, and it gets deleted from the cloud. Pointless for me, and really doesn't make any sense.
Google + photos and web albums is a better option. You can select 2048 photos and you'll get unlimited storage. Also videos under 15 minutes get unlimited storage.
Cool I'll check it out, thanks!
Yep, that really makes that person feel better about ensuring the full versions are available to print or archive, right?
Enjoy Google+, anyways.
I still have an Android phone, but I'm deleting my Google account as soon as I'm done getting all of my stuff transferred over. I just don't feel comfortable backing up my photos to a Social Network, which is what you're doing. It's the equivalent to backing up your photos to Facebook, just at a higher resolution with less/no compression and some auto-tools to woo you in.
I like using iCloud to sync with my Mac, Windows and iPad, so it's easy for my family.
But for backing up in the cloud, I also use a Flickr account with the mobile app, since they provide 1TB of free storage for full-resolution photos and videos up to 1GB in size (although you can only playback 3 minutes online, otherwise you have to download it). They also seem to have a good privacy agreement.
Some people don't like it because it forces you to create a Yahoo account to use it.
Correct. They made a big mistake by removing Google/Facebook Logins and not Adding Microsoft Account Logins. I really just don't need another "Account" at this point. I'm actually killing services/subscriptions and having companies kill accounts on my behalf. Why do I want another "everything and the kitchen sink" account like Yahoo! on top of everything else I *already* have?
Flickr really should have its own Account system, like Tumblr.
I won't use it unless that happens, and yes I've tried it. Getting yoru photos and videos off of it after you're uploaded them is a massive PITA without resorting to 3rd party tools (which aren't all that great on Windows, at least). They desperately need to add in Bulk Downloading.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Apple should make it where iCloud is a true cloud for our photos. It shouldn't be storing copies of the photos on the devices (unless we choose that) and they should be viewed from the web. Even low res images will eat up our storage. And we should have to log in to iCloud to actually delete the photos there. This is how PictureLife works and I think for this reason alone is worth me going forward with it over iCloud photos. Plus, I like the cool email every day with "memories" of previous years. Let's not forget it's a more affordable solution as well.
I've got a theory that Apple thinks of ways to put profit over usability. They know that when our devices are full we need more space which means that we need new a device. But for many of us are going to use other services and they are going to lose out on lots of revenue in that regard.
As soon as you select what photo you want to view it will download the full res copy on your device to view or print than after you view it it will go back to a low res pic
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That's great to know.
For bulk deletion from the iPhone, I found you can use the Image Capture application to <shift>-Select multiple photos for deletion. Not as easy as performing the task right on the phone, though.
I just thought of another question. If i have Optimize on, iCloud Photos on, and open Aperture or iPhoto on the Mac -
- will I (eventually) be getting the Full resolution photo through iCloud Photos? (I do with Photo Steam
- If I manually download the photos from the iPhone through USB (because photos haven't had time to sync via iCloud Photos), will it be copying the optimized photos, or will it reach out to iCloud Photos to get full resolution?
This is important, because I want to use my Mac to edit/archive the full-resolution photos and remove old photos from the iPhone.
Did all of your photos from your previous photo stream transfer to the "all photos" when you switched to iCloud Photo Library beta? Mine disappeared?(most disappeared) can you clue me in on this?
I love this article. Yet another imformative one from imore. It just assured me of what I figured to be true with the two services. With 5gb of icloud storage, how am I expected to upload photos, videos and perform backups?!
Guess you'd have to buy more data!
I'll stick to using photo stream. I'm still an itunes wire-sync guy, so my albums are linked to my iPhone, my photo stream works and my iPhone is backed up to my laptop. Things are so simple this way.
Excellent post, though I've come to expect nothing less of you, iMuggle!
I have held off until that Photo's app for Mac is out. But that is more my OCD (which you would think would push me to sync to iPhoto/Aperture regularly, but alas, time never seems there). I do, however, have the following apps on my iPhone backing up my photos and videos.
OneDrive
Flickr
Amazon Cloud
So hopefully I don't lose any memories, as I really want to see what this new Photos app has to offer before I jump to Lightroom.
EDIT: Post Submit I thought of a question for you, Ally. Basically, will iCloud Photo Library act as a network storage device? Meaning, could it replace me storing all the files on my iMac and just rely primarily (with backups, of course) on iCloud Photo Library? I thought about moving my iPhoto Library to a NAS, but I have no issues paying Apple a few bucks a month to increase my 25 GB iCloud drive to 200 GB or more if it seems as though it will be a viable solution
Screw apple's proprietary photo solution. Just use google+ photos with web albums.
yes, screw the one built in to your OS for a different vendor proprietary solution...
I can access google + photos on iOS, android, windows, Mac, and Linux. I shouldn't have said proprietary, I should have said cross platform. I can take all my photos out of google+ photos by using Google take out. Now tell me which solution is better, google + or iCloud photos?
Not sure about checkout, since I don't use it, and not saying the Google + option isn't a nice option, but the cross platform aspect? From the article "Accessible on iPhone, iPad, and online via iCloud.com;"
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iCloud Photos is available everywhere via the Web, like Google+ Photos. The Only place where it fails is in Mobile Browser support.
Where it wins is in not forcing you to join another Social Network to access it. Apple did what Google should have (and should) do with their photo tools. That should be a component of Google Drive, not Google+.
I use google + and upload all my photos as private. I do not use any of the social networking features. Using web albums I get the best of both worlds, the organization of Apple photos and the unlimited space of google+.
Facebook uploads them as Private as well, and they don't force you to use the Social Networking features. They also allow you to share by link.
What's your point?
And Google+ doesn't have unlimited storage, not if you don't want to destroy your original images by downsizing them to max 2048px on the longest edge...
If you want to upload Full Sized images, as iCloud Photo Library does, you're going to need to pay for some storage eventually.
All of the new apple changes have been disappointing. iPL requires you to buy space if your gonna sync full res photos and upload videos. Not knowing anything about the photos app leaves you wondering if its even gonna work for your needs. iCloud drive you can't even share a folder with anyone. Now I have apple hardware using flickr and google+for my photo backups, dropbox and google drive for my files, gmail for email because icloud in the browser at work is so so slow, and adobe premiere and lightroom for video and RAW file editing. i want my good user experience apple software back.
I'll take a look at it when it is out of beta. No point in risking my photo library at this point.
Exactly. I still don't really understand where the photo master files are held either. Is the cloud version the master or the Mac's own library? I'm not trusting any cloud service with 15 years of digital and digitised photos until I am 100% sure. This isn't like iTunes Match; it's way more personal.
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+10. Years of precious family memories on a beta cloud service... Me thinketh that stinketh. While I'd love to free up 250GB of space on my MBP, I'll wait until the bugs are sorted out before even considering this option.
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After reading this post I went on exploring iCloud photo lib, Photo Stream , sharing photo stream and enabling iCloud photo sharing. Finally I was insane by reading these topics more than an hour. In specific I stayed on this page almost for a long time reading back to back ufffff. Painful but TG I've got something on my head.
At some point not every one using iPhone may not be aware and mastered of this complex areas.
Great Posts Ally (including the topics I've mentioned) !
Umm... That was a fast explanation. Thanks Ally!
I'm confused by iCloud Photo Library. So it's only really good to back up photos from iDevices? What about all the photos already on my PC?
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Upload them through the Web Interface @ iCloud.com
Thanks so much for this Ally!!!
"if you have one device with iCloud Photo Library enabled, but another with just Photo Stream enabled, those devices won't talk to each other, and you won't see photos from one on the other."
The above statement is not entirely true... Currently I have iCloud Photo Library turned on my iPhone but not on my iPad. The new pictures taken on my iPhone are still added to my Photo Stream, which can be viewed on my iPad. But any new pictures taken on my iPad now cannot be viewed on my iPhone since turning on iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone eliminated my Photo Stream on my iPhone. BTW, when I turned on iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone, the 1000 photos in my Photo Stream were deleted, and this is one of the reasons I haven't turned on iCloud Photo Library on my iPad. So be careful.
This transition is mess. Surely they could have done something to keep albums as well as an option to upload a large but still reduced resolution photo to limit space.
It just ends up being way to expensive. Apple is penalizing users for happening multiple devices. Why is it 5GB free per account? At the very least it should be 5GB per device on your account.
Yea, 5GB free is okay if you i.e. ONLY own an iPhone as I do. I just pay $0.99/mo for 20GB and I should be set, personally.
The thing I do find offensive is that when you PAY for 20GB, you only really get 15 because they change your 5 to 20 instead of adding 20 to your 5.
You end up with 20GB Storage, instead of 25 GB (which is what most people would have assumed when upgrading). It's a cheap price, so I cannot complain much. I have unlimited storage on OneDrive, but only because I subscribe to Office 365 Personal (cause I need actual Desktop Office apps - I don't have Office on my iPhone... yet, at least).
So if I have my iPhone to "store optimized photos & videos" on my device can some one explain exactly whats going on here?
So when I go to view a picture it will show blurry at first and there is a little download circle in the bottom showing me its downloading. Once its done(usually2-3 seconds)the picture is clear and looks great. So what exactly is it downloading? the original picture? Isn't it already storing the "optimized version" why is it re-downloading? I'm a bit confused
It's not that complicated. It's only storing low quality, tiny thumbnail previews no the actual device. Just like an online photo album. When you open the photo, it actually downloads the full quality file. When you exit, it presumely deletes this data again, or caches it for X amt of time before deleting.
I think it's pretty brilliant, in terms of optimizing storage. This way, the photo probably takes up around 10% of the space it otherwise would have, removing any need to actually delete photos from the device.
After waiting few days (so those photos I uploaded would appear on iOS) I'm surprised to see that iTunes still shows that they are taking storage space on the device when I sync it. It says that iCloud Photo Library is turned on and I cannot manage the files but at the bottom they take the same amount of my colourful bar as before.
So it says that the Photo Stream photos are not technically gone.... So where are they because I can't find them?? I see some of them in All Photos but not all of them. Are they accessible or not? If so, how do I get to them? All photos is not showing them all, just some. If you look at the two pictures posted you notice the numbers don't reflect the transfer of the 1000+ photos that were in the Photo Stream. Did I miss something here??
I have a question. I have iCloud Drive enabled for backup, but I like the idea of my iPhone photos showing up on the Apple TVs in our home. If I disable Photo Stream, will these photos still show up on my Apple TVs? In other words, will iCloud Drive allow visibility of my photos on my Apple TVs?
So I've uploaded all my photos to the iCloud Photo Library, is there a way to now delete the photos on my phone so I can clear up some space and it not delete them in iCloud? Each time I delete something on my phone, it will delete it on iCloud too
This mess just made it easy for me to use OneDrive as my preferred photo transfer and backup option. It's free with more storage with more devices supported (ie Windows).
"So how do I get the photos on my Mac or PC to iCloud Photo Library?" You explained how to do it on a Mac, but not on a PC.
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You have to upload them via iCloud.com from your PC. You have to use the new Photos app on a Mac. Update on your Mac to OS X 10.10.3, via the Mac App Store, to get the new Photos app.
It seems that even I've updated AppleTV today, there is still no way to see iCloud Photos. It allows to see only PhotoStream photos that contain also deleted ones and not all photos are there. I really don't understand that. Damn!
How do I get iCloud Photo Library photos onto my Mac in the photos app?
I do not use Photo Stream or iCloud currently. Instead, I share my photos from my Mac to my ATV via iTunes Home Sharing. I really only use iPhoto to organize photos to share to my tv. I doubt I'll be using the new Photos app at all, as long as iPhoto remains functional.
I have not yet updated to 10.10.3 so I don't yet have Photos. I've been hearing conflicting things about whether it will be possible to share my iPhoto library from my Mac to my ATV via Home Sharing after updating to 10.10.3/Photos. Some say that sharing is ONLY via iCloud and that Home Sharing is gone; others say they are able to share their iPhoto library from their Mac, same as before. My library is 57 Gb; I would be forced to purchase more storage or spend a lot of time culling my library to fit. I really do not want to do either.
I'm hoping someone can tell me definitively whether or not Home Sharing of my iPhoto library to my ATV will work after updating to 10.10.3.
Photo stream does NOT degrade quality when photos get transferred to your MAC over wifi. You get the same quality on your Mac as the photos in the Camera Roll. The standard iCloud Photo Stream feature uploads your original photos as-is, in their original resolution with all metadata intact. This means that your photos as transferred to your Mac or Windows PC will be the original photos from your device.
CAUTION TO ENABLE THIS OPTION ICLOUD PHOTO LIBRARY
Anyone who has old photos in album My Photo stream, make a copy before these pictures to your camera roll. Because after activating this option My Photo stream is deleted without warning.
My sister had the Iphone stolen. However when he went to check on the Ipad, the photos were all on the My Photo stream.
For added security it bought the 20 GB Icloud plan to keep the photos in the cloud. After the purchase was enable the "Photo Library of icloud" and after turning on this feature it automatically disables the "My Photo stream" and deletes the album My Photo stream without notice and does not back up to the cloud as it says on the Apple website (https://support.apple.com/pt-br/HT203511).
In short, my sister lost all the old pictures that were on the album "My share".
Disabling the photo library option and enabling the My Photo Stream returned a few pictures (only the last 30 days) but the older photos are gone ... :(
So folks, care to enable Photo Library option.
*Sorry but I do not speak English and used Google translator
I didn't even realise this was part of the update until now, I am not the best at devices I just know the basics, however I am not looking through my Photos and I seem to be missing over 1000 photos, of my sisters wedding and other special occasions. I did upload of my photos from my phone and ipod to my mac last month because i was running out of storage, I double checked that the photos were on my mac then deleted them ALL of my phone and ipod, to now find that they are no longer on my Mac, I cloud or anywhere. I only have photos form this month. Please can someone help me ??
So, I used iCloud Library on all my devices but I don't like it and I'm hoping I can go back to the good old days! Is there any way to turn it off and keep what was originally on each device or are all the individual libraries now combined forever? In other words, I don't need thousands of photos for work mixed in with hundreds of pictures of puppies (my daughter) mixed in with hundreds of screenshots of superheroes (my son) mixed in with 10,000 family pictures on my phone, iPads and computers. I guess I didn't understand that I wouldn't be able to get back to where I started? Help!?
I've finally discovered the easiest way to use this bull crap iCloud photo garbage. These are the steps if you use a MAC:
1. Disable ALL iCloud Photos from all portable devices. Especially if they are all under one account.
2. On every mobile device, ENABLE MY PHOTO STREAM
3. Go to PHOTOS on your mac and open preferences.
4. Enable iCloud photo library, enable download to this mac, enable my photo stream.
5. Upgrade your iCloud photo storage to whatever you think is best and what you can afford.
6. Let computer sync to iCloud photo.
7. Start using time machine with a separate drive as another "failsafe backup"
Here is how everything will work if you did all the steps above (arrows are how the your photo data travels):
1. Take a photo -> camera roll & photo stream
You now have two copies, one that is on your phone and one in photo stream. This will show up on all devices that are under the same account that have photo stream turned on. Anyone can now delete these photos from photo stream if they are on the same account. The photo will still be on your camera roll. If you delete it from camera roll it will delete it from photo stream.
2. Photo stream -> computer
At home, turn on computer and your photo in photo stream will show up in Photos. If you have deleted it from your photo stream before turning on your computer it will NOT show up in photos.. but it will still be physically on your iPhone camera roll. Think of Photo Stream as a wireless "quick sync" to your computer. If you have deleted the photo from photo stream and it's still in your camera roll, you can just plug in your phone and sync it that way. ALL VIDEO must be synced via a wire separately.
3. Computer -> iCloud photo library
If you have your mac enabled with iCloud Photo Library and you have chosen enough storage, all your photos in your library will now be backed up. You should be able to delete from your computer library OR from cloud.com and it will erase it on both. IT WILL NOT AFFECT YOUR PHONE if you have everything setup this way.
Now you can happily mess with your photos and have plenty of backups. Basically I am using iCloud photo as a cloud backup service and not a service to backup my phones photos. If you don't want to use iCloud photos as a backup, just don't enable it on any device, use Time Machine like I suggested and you will be fine. I am using both as a super failsafe. Another suggestion is if you see something from another family members phone, you can save that photo into your camera roll from photo stream and now you have another backup of that photo (just in case you are on vacation, etc..) You can also use the "Family Sharing" album as well to do kind of the same thing. But since everyone in my family is all under one account, this feature is useless.
Once again:
Take a photo -> Camera roll -> Photo stream -> Computer -> iCloud Library
Now I have plenty of storage space on my iPhone!!! YAY!!! No more stupid messages saying my phone is full!!
DISADVANTAGE = I still have to manually sync videos and there is no backup of my videos until I have put them on my computer.
I hope this has helped people out there cus this service is really frustrating and it could have been setup like iTunes Match where you have a cloud photo and you can download it if you want. iCloud photos does this but not really as it's forcing you to see everything as one unit. In iTunes Match, I am able to still delete a song from my phone and it asks "delete from iCloud?". WHY CAN'T PHOTOS DO THE SAME THING??
Thank you for this.
What the heck is the point of iCloud if they're still stored on my phone and if I delete them from my phone it also deletes them from iCloud is what I was wondering ... and it seemed super complicated and I want to free up phone space but still have a back up. So thank you, your solution is perfect. I'm also going to use Google's photos app for a secondary back up.
i had 700 photos and videos on my iphone, when i insert my icloud , all my photos and videos are gone
how can i solve this ?