Temporarily resolving an issue with My Photo Stream on my iPhone 13

I have managed to resolve an issue having taken photographs with my iPhone that My Photo Stream was not then updating across my devices.

It was in the past week that I noticed that photographs I had taken with my iPhone 13 were not being uploaded to My Photo Stream and shared across my other devices.

I first did the usual trick of going into settings for the Photos app and turning My Photo Stream off and then back on again, however this made no difference.

What was weird was that the photograph I had taken weren’t been uploaded, but the edited versions from Snapseed or Instagram were being added to My Photo Stream.

This photo of the Bristol Harbourside didn’t upload.

This version I edited with Snapseed did.

I checked back through my iPhone camera roll and there was a range of photographs missing from My Photo Stream.

It was working fine on the 16th April, but had stopped updating on the 17th April.

Doing an initial Google search didn’t help, with most references referring to turning My Photo Stream off and back on again, which I knew didn’t work. I powered off the iPhone and back on again, that didn’t resolve the issue either.

My Photo Stream was working fine on other devices. Took a photo with the iPad and it was uploaded to My Photo Stream. On the iPhone if I created an image with Snapseed it was uploaded to My Photo Stream. 

That got me thinking that the issue wasn’t with My Photo Stream or the Photos app, but was with the Camera app.

Now doing a Google search I found that others were having a similar issue. It appeared to be related to the 15.4 iOS update.

Going through the settings for the Camera app I checked the formats setting.

Settings > Camera > Formats

To reduce file size, capture photos and videos in the High Efficiency HEIF/HEVC format. Most Compatible will always use JPEG/H.264. Cinematic video, 4K at 60 fps, 1080p at 240 fps and HDR video require High Efficiency.

This was set to High Efficiency, so I switched to Most Compatible.

As a result the next photograph I took was uploaded to My Photo Stream.

I switched back to High Efficiency and the problem came back. It was apparent that the HEIC images were not being uploaded to My Photo Stream, though they were with iOS 15.3 and earlier.

So for the moment I have a temporary fix, so when I take photographs with the iPhone 13 they will upload to My Photo Stream.