Photo Stream Not Updating on Mac/PC? 7 Fast Solutions

Photo Stream is a powerful and nice photo feature offered by Apple. Photo Stream works with iCloud to help you sync photos from your iPhone to other devices such as iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, or Windows PC. Thus, you can get photos from iCloud to new iPhone easily. But many users have reported the same problem as that in the user case above: Photo Stream not updating.

“Why is my Photo Stream not updating on my Mac?" This may be because of Wi-Fi connection, iPhone battery power, state of the Camera, etc. You may not see photos from Photo Stream on your Apple device, see different photos in the Photo Stream album on each of your devices, or not see your imported photos in Photo Stream. For this, we prepared 7 useful solutions to fix such a problem here, and you can try using them to fix the error you met.

How to fix Photo Stream not updating: 7 fast solutions

If you encounter the “shared Photo Stream not updating” issue and want to fix it quickly, please continue reading to get detailed instructions.

Fix 1. Check your Internet connection

The first and most important thing you need to do is to check your Internet connection. Please make your Wi-Fi on and connect to the Internet stably, which is significant for your Photo Stream. Otherwise, your iCloud and Photo Stream will not work properly.

Fix 2. Turn on Upload to My Photo Stream

Then you need to check if your Photos Stream feature is ON. Just go to Settings, and choose iCloud > Photos. Make sure the Upload to My Photo Stream is on, then your iPhone will upload new photos and send them to all of your iCloud devices automatically when connected to Wi-Fi.

Fix 3. Check the battery power of your device

One more cause of “Photostream not updating on my iPhone” is your iPhone's battery level. Photo Stream will not work if the iPhone battery is below 20%. This is an inherent feature of it, so you can only ensure that the battery is fully charged.

Fix 4. Log in to iCloud with the same Apple ID

If you want to transfer iPhone photos to your computer using Photo Stream and iCloud, then you need to make sure you have signed into iCloud with the same Apple ID on your iPhone and computer. Otherwise, you will meet the “Photostream not updating on PC” error.

Fix 5. Turn off the Camera

Photo Stream will start working after you have turned off the camera. So remember to check that your camera is switched off.

Fix 6. Check the format of your photos

Photo Stream supports the following photos formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PNG, so Live Photos that were taken on the iPhone cannot be uploaded to Photo Stream. If you find that your Photo Stream is not updating your photos, it may be that your photos were taken in Live Photos mode.

For this, you can go to Camera on iPhone, and find the Live Photos icon on the top menu. Make sure it is OFF.

Fix 7. Check system problems on your computer

If you meet “Photostream not updating on Mac or PC”, you need to check if there is a problem on your computer. If you are using a Mac, it should be on the system OS X Lion 10.7.5 or later. If you are using a Windows PC, you need to install iCloud for Windows on your Windows 7 or later system.

Tip: Switch to a photo transfer tool without error

If you want to transfer your iPhone photos to your computer, but often meet errors in Photo Stream, we recommend a professional photo transfer tool to you - FoneTool. You will encounter no more errors using it.

FoneTool supports all iOS devices including the newest iPhone 13/SE 2022, iPad Pro/Air/Mini, etc. With the help of this tool, you can transfer photos from iPhone to your PC easily. Besides, it allows you to transfer photos from iPhone to iPhone without iCloud as well.

Compared with Photo Stream, FoneTool has lots of advantages like:

● Flexible transfer: Instead of transferring all photos to PC, you can transfer only selected photos from iPhone to PC via FoneTool.
● Preview photos: It allows you to preview photos on a PC and has a clear interface.
● Fast transfer: Your 100 photos can be transferred in 2 seconds.
● Data security: FoneTool will never erase any photo or other data on your iPhone.

Now, let’s see how to transfer photos from iPhone to PC via FoneTool:

1. Download and install FoneTool on your PC. Run it and connect your iPhone to the computer.

2. Choose iPhone to PC in the Phone Transfer tab.

3. Select the Photos option in this window. And you can select the photos that you want to transfer to PC.

4. Select a storage path for your iPhone photos, then click on Start Transfer to begin the transfer task easily.

Conclusion

Hope this post will be helpful to the “Photo Stream not updating” error you met. If you feel it is difficult to fix such a problem and prefer an alternative for phone transfer, you can switch to FoneTool for free. It can help you transfer photos, contacts, messages, music, etc to a PC easily. Why not have a try?