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Apple Delays iCloud Shared Photo Library Feature for iOS 16

Not surprised. Holding it for Ventura release.

Side note, is anyone seeing a bunch of non related pictures in their shared library if you base the library off a face? For example, my wife and I want to have a shared library of our son, but once I create it on iOS beta, it shows his pictures, and pictures of our stove, car, etc. when I go to my photos library and select his face, it’s just him.
 
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TimFL1 said:
There is Shared Albums you can use for that. Been using said feature for years to share vacation photos with my family.
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Shared Albums can work, but unfortunately you lose quality whereas the Shared Library keeps the full quality photos. It's honestly more of a Shared Stream until they add an albums feature to it.
 
TimFL1 said:
No she never had the beta nor took part in any shared library.

I on the other hand had the betas, never set up a shared library but can still see the option and start the setup assistant.

I assume users with beta builds were flagged to keep the feature in case they moved stuff over to shared libraries.
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I updated and shared libraries remain, phew. I wonder if you were to set up a shared library and invite her if it would get enabled on her phone. The invite goes through the Messages app.
 
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TimFL1 said:
There is Shared Albums you can use for that. Been using said feature for years to share vacation photos with my family.
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That feature is a mess. Shared albums is a long list of albums, some shared with family, some with friends and you can’t make any subfolders. It is difficult to organize.

I just want a nice album called Vacations and have a subalbum for all the trips I’ve made. So that I can find the photos of one specific trip.
 
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TimFL1 said:
There is Shared Albums you can use for that. Been using said feature for years to share vacation photos with my family.
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No thats not the problem. I have an 80k library organised into 600 albums and folders. I would like to share this with my wife. But all she will see is 80k pictures dumped on her devices, not organised into albums and folders. Useless.

Fortunately Adobe Lightroom Cloudy does the same job very well.
 
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TimFL1 said:
There is Shared Albums you can use for that. Been using said feature for years to share vacation photos with my family.
Click to expand...
Shared albums aren’t full quality. It’s fine for viewing on your phone, but it’s not good enough if you’re trying to print something.
 
TimFL1 said:
There is Shared Albums you can use for that. Been using said feature for years to share vacation photos with my family.
Click to expand...
Shared Albums isn't at all the same as the Library Albums. It has many undesirable restrictions, such as:
  • Limited to a combined total of 5,000 photos and videos per album
  • Video must be 15 minutes or less
  • Photos are reduced to about 3 megapixels
  • Videos are reduced to 720p
 
MacRumors said:


Apple appears to have delayed its new iCloud Shared Photo Library feature for iOS 16, which is scheduled to be officially released on Monday, September 12.

iOS-16-iCloud-Photos-Guide-Feature.jpg

In iOS 16, currently still in beta, Apple has introduced an iCloud Shared Photo Library that aims to make it easer to share photos with your friends and family.

With the new ‌iCloud‌ Shared Photo Library in ‌iOS 16‌, a new option in the Photos app lets you create a shared library and then invite anyone with an Apple device to view the photos, contribute photos to the library, and edit the photos contained within it, including favoriting images and adding captions. There are no limitations, and all participants have the same permissions.

However, in a footnote at the bottom of its iPhone 14 press release, Apple says "iCloud Shared Photo Library will be available in a future software update." It therefore looks like the new Photos iCloud feature will not make it to the first official version of iOS 16. We'll update this article if we learn more.

Article Link: Apple Delays iCloud Shared Photo Library Feature for iOS 16
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What this is about?
For years already there is shared albums in Apple Photos.
We use this feature for years already on our iPhones, Macs, iPads.
So this is nothing new.
 
Mike Boreham said:
No thats not the problem. I have an 80k library organised into 600 albums and folders. I would like to share this with my wife. But all she will see is 80k pictures dumped on her devices, not organised into albums and folders. Useless.
Click to expand...
Wow, that really is useless. How disappointing. I have a similar library with 40k photos and dozens of folders and albums. All I want is to share the same library with all organization intact. I understand that there are complexities around the boundary between the shared library and each person's personal library, as well as edit/delete permissions. But surely it can't be that difficult??

I've been waiting to have a truly shared family photo library (like the family photo album of the past) since Photo Stream was first introduced. Guess I'll have to keep waiting!
 
raha613 said:
I updated and shared libraries remain, phew. I wonder if you were to set up a shared library and invite her if it would get enabled on her phone. The invite goes through the Messages app.
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Sadly, that seems to be glitchy right now.

I've been playing with Shared iCloud Photo Library since the early developer betas (although I avoided adding any real important photos to it until I was convinced it was stable). I updated my daughter's new iPhone to the iOS 16 public beta in August and was able to invite her to the Shared iCloud Photo Library. With the release of iOS 16, we both still have the Shared iCloud Photo Library, and it's working fine.

However, after my girlfriend updated directly to the final release of iOS 16, she was unable to join my iCloud Shared Library. She sees the invite in Messages, but when she tries to view it, she gets an error that says "Shared Library Unavailable: The owner stopped sharing, or you don't have permission to open it." I've tried removing her and re-inviting her using other methods, but they all show the same result.

Oddly, she has the option in settings to set up her own iCloud Shared Photo Library from scratch, and that works fine. Of course, I can't join it as I already have a shared library of my own, but I tried setting one up on her iPhone and then deleting it to just to see if that would unclog something, but no change — she still can't join my shared library. I guess she'll have to wait for iOS 16.1.
 
jhollington said:
Sadly, that seems to be glitchy right now.

I've been playing with Shared iCloud Photo Library since the early developer betas (although I avoided adding any real important photos to it until I was convinced it was stable). I updated my daughter's new iPhone to the iOS 16 public beta in August and was able to invite her to the Shared iCloud Photo Library. With the release of iOS 16, we both still have the Shared iCloud Photo Library, and it's working fine.

However, after my girlfriend updated directly to the final release of iOS 16, she was unable to join my iCloud Shared Library. She sees the invite in Messages, but when she tries to view it, she gets an error that says "Shared Library Unavailable: The owner stopped sharing, or you don't have permission to open it." I've tried removing her and re-inviting her using other methods, but they all show the same result.

Oddly, she has the option in settings to set up her own iCloud Shared Photo Library from scratch, and that works fine. Of course, I can't join it as I already have a shared library of my own, but I tried setting one up on her iPhone and then deleting it to just to see if that would unclog something, but no change — she still can't join my shared library. I guess she'll have to wait for iOS 16.1.
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Same exact issue for me with same error. Did you ever resolve it?
 
GDF said:
Same exact issue for me with same error. Did you ever resolve it?
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Sadly, no. I tried everything I could think of short of removing and recreating my own shared photo library. I eventually gave up and decided to wait for iOS 16.1.
 
jhollington said:
Sadly, no. I tried everything I could think of short of removing and recreating my own shared photo library. I eventually gave up and decided to wait for iOS 16.1.
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Thanks for the feedback. I have iOS 16.1 beta and it still does not work. My wife is not on the beta, so maybe that is why and once she gets 16.1, I hope it works. Lost all my photos on my iMac, since it does not have the new OS on it. Hope they come back, once Apple fixes everything.
 
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