Make a Photo Stream into a Public Website Easily, Anytime from iOS #Mac

Now that the simple photo sharing service Photo Stream is an integral part of the camera experience in iOS, you’re probably aware there’s an option to create a public website during the process of creating a new shared photo stream. But you also turn any existing photo stream into a public website too, so if you missed out on creating one through the initial sharing setup there’s no need to create a new stream, just toggle a setting to instantly make a public website out of a photo stream.

The auto-generated photo websites are excellent ways to share your iPhone pictures with someone who doesn’t have iOS and Photo Stream support, since the photo website can get sent to any Windows PC, Mac, Android device, literally anything with a web browser will be able to view the result.

Turn Any Photo Stream into a Photo Website

You can do this on any iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with Photo Stream support. Photo Stream requires iCloud.

• Open “Photos” and tap the “Photo Stream” button at the bottom


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• Tap the blue (>) arrow button next to the name of the Photo Stream


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• Flip the switch next to “Public Website” to ON


• Optionally, tap the “Share Link” button and send theURL for the newly crafted photo stream website through email, iMessages, Twitter, or Facebook

You’ll briefly see a spinning wait cursor and the text “Publishing…” as the page is being generated. Then, the URL will be shown below, but they’re not the most user-friendly or memorable URL’s, making the Share Link feature the best way to send out the link for others to see the pictures.

How about the websites themselves? They’re minimal but quite nice, displaying thumbnails of the shared photos against black backgrounds, each can be clicked for a larger version with some additional options to either flip through the rest as a self-controlled or automated slideshow, and there’s also a button to download the picture locally.

Remove the Public Website of a Photo Stream

Alternatively, what if you setup a public website of a photo stream by accident, or what if you no longer want the website visible but you still want the photo stream to exist? You can toggle the website option off on a per-stream basis again, there’s no need to delete the entire photo stream.

• Open “Photos” again and tap the “Photo Stream” button


• Tapping the blue (>) arrow button next to the name of the Photo Stream, then flip the switch next to “Public Website” to OFF

Remember, disabling the Photo Stream website will not disable that photo stream itself, and it will not delete the pictures, it only removes the publicly accessible website.

The once accessible public website will instantly disappear, and if the URL was known before it will disappear with anyone trying to access the shared picture website seeing this cutesy error message instead:

Have fun!