My Photo Stream

Cougurr

Well-Known Member
Both my wife and I have iPhone 7's 128 gb running the current IOS.
I have iCloud turned on ONLY for "My Photo Stream" which nicely sync's between devices gives me monthly folders in iPhoto 9.5 on both my older 2011 27" iMac and 2010 - 15" MacBook Pro, both running OS 9.5.
My wife does NOT have this option on her iphone to select.
Her previous iphone 4S-64gb was backed up by plugging in to her much older 27" 2010 iMac with 1 TB HD , still running OS 10.7.5 and iphoto 09 v8. Her newer iphone 7 would not connect and talk to the 2010 iMac when plugged in. I managed to finally get her phone data and pictures onto her iPhone 7 by third party software using my iMac. Her iPhone 7 is up and running fine. We then turned on iCloud for her iPhone 7 and purchased the first level of extra storage to cover its content to back up to.
I acquired a newer 2015 - 27" iMac SSD 500GB for my wife as an upgrade for her desktop. Managed a migration just fine from her 2010 to the 2015 by selecting only certain content to make it fit correctly on the smaller SSD. It is running OS 10.14.6 and Photo.
The problems are:
•when
I go on the 2015 iMac to iCloud , it shows iCloud Drive selection as Off (which I think I want). Then when I select Photos the only two option are for iCloud Photos and Shared Albums. NO "my photo stream".??
•when
I plug in her iPhone 7 to this newer iMac it says "this is a new iPhone and do I want to set it up". PANIC POINT. No I don't want to set it up I just want to have everything on it backed up now on the her new iMac like we used to. What am I doing wrong here? If I remember correctly (just to add to the anxiety level) it also says, if I turn off iCloud on it, eveyyrthing on icoud will be lost. Just for clarification all the photos from the iPhone are on the iMac as I have used air drop to get them into Photos on the iMac.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated to help me get her iphone 7 working with My Photo Stream. She just wants it like mine, to automatically sync her iPhone 7 photos with her newer iMac desktop (which she currently isn't using until I sort thing out). She does have her own iTunes/Apple account so no issues of conflict there with mine.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
There isn't any such thing as "OS 9.5," so I'm not sure what's meant by that.

My iPhone 8 doesn't have "My Photo Stream" either, but my iPhone XR does. My working theory on this is that one must have created an iCloud email address that is active on the device, since that is the only difference I can think of between the iCloud implementations on my work phone (iPhone 8) and personal phone (iPhone XR).

iCloud Drive and iCloud Photo Library are two different things, but use the same storage space.

The reason you don't see My Photo Stream on your Mac is because it only shares photos FROM iOS devices TO the Mac, not the other way around (at least, this is how I have always used it).

You are getting the "this is a new iPhone" message because you are plugging in an iPhone that has never been backed up onto that Mac before. Once you set it up it will offer to either restore from a backup (presumably on iCloud) or set up as new. Make certain you have a backup of that iPhone before proceeding.
 

Cougurr

Well-Known Member
I have iCloud turned on ONLY for "My Photo Stream" which nicely sync's between devices gives me monthly folders in iPhoto 9.5 on both my older 2011 27" iMac and 2010 - 15" MacBook Pro, both running OS 9.5.

Sorry left off the "10" Meant to say OS 10.9.5 (Mavericks).

We both have a gmail accounts listed under icloud but neither of us have an "apple icloud email account" on our iphones if that makes sense.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
While you may not be using it, I suspect that you may have created an @icloud.com or @me.com email address when you created your Apple ID, which would explain the discrepancy.
 
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