iCloud Shared Photo Library Support Added in Latest iOS 16 and macOS Ventura Betas

[hudson1]

The real intent of Shared Library is to help all those out there who are sharing Apple IDs just to keep their photos in a single library. They will no longer have to go through this clunky and non-desired step just to keep a single Photos library.

For everyone else who is worried about who is going to see what or is worried about who might delete something, the existing Shared Albums approach is for you.

 

[DotCom2]

The real intent of Shared Library is to help all those out there who are sharing Apple IDs just to keep their photos in a single library. They will no longer have to go through this clunky and non-desired step just to keep a single Photos library.

For everyone else who is worried about who is going to see what or is worried about who might delete something, the existing Shared Albums approach is for you.

The solution is to make a copy and only share the copy.

 

[hudson1]

The solution is to make a copy and only share the copy.

Though not identical, that's more or less what Shared Albums are.

 

[Stecchino]

I was really bummed when Apple didn't iCloud Family Photo Library 10 years ago or whenever the cloud photo features came out--because that's what was missing, a true family photo/video archive for all the devices. A couple years ago I discovered Mylio (https://mylio.com/) which is awesome and it's a cross-platform and cross-mobile device tool which I highly recommend. That said, I will be watching how well this feature does after it's released next year, because I never wanted to leave the Apple Photos ecosystem to begin with.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I was really bummed when Apple didn't iCloud Family Photo Library 10 years ago or whenever the cloud photo features came out--because that's what was missing, a true family photo/video archive for all the devices. A couple years ago I discovered Mylio (https://mylio.com/) which is awesome and it's a cross-platform and cross-mobile device tool which I highly recommend. That said, I will be watching how well this feature does after it's released next year, because I never wanted to leave the Apple Photos ecosystem to begin with.

My situation exactly except that we moved to Lightroom Cloudy which does the same job very well (but costs £9.98 per month).

 

[Lethen]

I was really bummed when Apple didn't iCloud Family Photo Library 10 years ago or whenever the cloud photo features came out--because that's what was missing, a true family photo/video archive for all the devices. A couple years ago I discovered Mylio (https://mylio.com/) which is awesome and it's a cross-platform and cross-mobile device tool which I highly recommend. That said, I will be watching how well this feature does after it's released next year, because I never wanted to leave the Apple Photos ecosystem to begin with.

When I moved from Windows to Mac I needed a replacement for Picasa. Was disappointed to find out that Photos library really is one person only.
Looked at Mylio, but it’s 10$/month, so I kept our common photos on a USB disk.

It seems this new feature is what we need, I prefer the tight integration with IOS. And Apple can sell me some iCloud storage.

 

[Lethen]

Hopefully the MacOS version will allow for bulk loading (importing) loads of photos from HDD directly into the shared library.

Business case for Apple: users upgrading iCloud subscription.

 

[<Q>]

Why would I let anyone mess with my photos?
I really don’t get the idea of everyone being able to edit or delete my photos.
Even if you trust them, you’re giving control out of your hands.
Seems to be a conceptual mistake if you ask me.

 

[Stecchino]

Why would I let anyone mess with my photos?
I really don’t get the idea of everyone being able to edit or delete my photos.
Even if you trust them, you’re giving control out of your hands.
Seems to be a conceptual mistake if you ask me.

If we have a household with common memories such as trips, pets, and families, the basic idea is you can see all my best shots and I can see yours. And I can enjoy them without having to micro manage it. I think the promise here is to let Apple's stack of vanilla Photo apps do it's on-device machine learning stuff to identify people, dates, and places and call it a day.

It why I've like Mylio as a substitution...offline, on-device face recognition, RAW image support, etc. and it offloads mobile device photos automagically. But it's not part of the Apple ecosystem per se, 3rd party app.

 

[Gerry Hornik]

This is something I've been waiting for for years.

Question: Do all people sharing the Shared Photos Library have to be running the version 16's of all the OS's?

 

[LtRoyalShrimp]

This is something I've been waiting for for years.

Question: Do all people sharing the Shared Photos Library have to be running the version 16's of all the OS's?

Yes, iOS/iPadOS 16 and macOS 10.13 Ventura are required.

 

[Gerry Hornik]

Why would I let anyone mess with my photos?
I really don’t get the idea of everyone being able to edit or delete my photos.
Even if you trust them, you’re giving control out of your hands.
Seems to be a conceptual mistake if you ask me.

It's useful for a family to be able to share among immediate family members without having to have the same account on all their devices.

 

[Lethen]

Why would I let anyone mess with my photos?
I really don’t get the idea of everyone being able to edit or delete my photos.
Even if you trust them, you’re giving control out of your hands.
Seems to be a conceptual mistake if you ask me.

No mistake, You still have you personal library for pictures you don’t want to share. You choose what pictures to put in the family album, and if you don’t trust your family won’t mess it up then make a copy and move that to the shared library.

I trust my wife and kids won’t mess it up, just like I trust that they won’t throw our paper photo albums into the fireplace.

Actually I look forward to them all contributing more photos, to tagging and creating new albums.

 

[W£S]

I am looking forward to this a lot.

However, I wish Apple will have the foresight of making it easy to duplicate the photos when my children grow up and start their own family (limit of 6 will be insufficient then).

Hopefully they allow people to leave the group, with an easy way to copy the desired photos back to their personal library.

This is critical. If not when they “move” any photos back to their library, it will disappear from the shared library.

Yes, can manually duplicate before moving. But can you imagine the effort required to do so for a large library? 😅

 

[darngooddesign]

I am looking forward to this a lot.

However, I wish Apple will have the foresight of making it easy to duplicate the photos when my children grow up and start their own family (limit of 6 will be insufficient then).

Hopefully they allow people to leave the group, with an easy way to copy the desired photos back to their personal library.

This is critical. If not when they “move” any photos back to their library, it will disappear from the shared library.

Yes, can manually duplicate before moving. But can you imagine the effort required to do so for a large library? 😅

I would imagine it's the same as if they wanted to copy photos from your personal library.

 

[Gerry Hornik]

With the third betas of iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura that went out to developers this morning, Apple has added support for iCloud Shared Photo Library, a new feature that was not in the initial betas.

iCloud Shared Photo Library is designed to make it easier for you to share photos with your family members, and after installing iOS 16, iPadOS 16, or macOS Ventura, it can be set up in the Settings app. Under Photos, scroll down to "Shared Library" and tap it.

From there, tap on "Start Setup" to add participants you want to share with. You can invite up to five other people, and all participants can add, edit, or delete content from the shared library. You can add any five people, including people who you do not have a Family Sharing setup with.

After selecting people to share with, you can opt to move your photos to the Shared Library. You can move all your photos and videos, photos that include select people or that are from a select date, or you can choose photos manually.

Once your photos are added, you can preview the library before it's shared, and then officially invite participants using the Messages app or a shared link. All participants will have access to all photos that are uploaded to the shared library.

To prevent accidentally shared photos, there are smart setup rules that can be implemented. You can opt to share all past photos or just photos from a specific start date. You can also choose to share photos that have only specific people, such as your family members.

Photos can be added to the Shared Library automatically, but there are also options to share based on Bluetooth proximity. Sharing suggestions will continue to pop up in For You as well.

With a new toggle in the Camera app you can upload all photos you take to the Shared Library automatically, so if you're out on vacation with your family, everyone can see vacation photos as soon as they're snapped.

Shared photos will show up in Memories, Featured ‌Photos‌, and the ‌Photos‌ widget, similar to standard ‌iCloud‌ Library images.

Article Link: iCloud Shared Photo Library Support Added in Latest iOS 16 and macOS Ventura Betas

Question: What happens to the iCloud Photo Library that the photos are copied from? Are they COPIED to the new Shared Library, or are they MOVED there? I’d like to try this, but I would want my existing collection preserved as a backup.

 

[Gerry Hornik]

Another question: How do you access a Shared Photo Library that is available to you as well as an existing non-shared one?

 

[W£S]

I would imagine it's the same as if they wanted to copy photos from your personal library.

Currently, it is “move”. There is no “copy”😅

 

[<Q>]

If we have a household with common memories such as trips, pets, and families, the basic idea is you can see all my best shots and I can see yours. And I can enjoy them without having to micro manage it. I think the promise here is to let Apple's stack of vanilla Photo apps do it's on-device machine learning stuff to identify people, dates, and places and call it a day.

It why I've like Mylio as a substitution...offline, on-device face recognition, RAW image support, etc. and it offloads mobile device photos automagically. But it's not part of the Apple ecosystem per se, 3rd party app.

There's nothing against family members seeing the photos.
But if you know teenagers. they will delete any photos they don't like to see of them.
Also any family member will be able to delete valuable memories for all time.
I think there should be a mechanism for users only to delete the photos they added to the shared library.
Some kind of permissions.
Everyone having the same permissions within a shared album is complete nonsense and will end up by people losing data.

 

[Lethen]

There's nothing against family members seeing the photos.
But if you know teenagers. they will delete any photos they don't like to see of them.
Also any family member will be able to delete valuable memories for all time.
I think there should be a mechanism for users only to delete the photos they added to the shared library.
Some kind of permissions.
Everyone having the same permissions within a shared album is complete nonsense and will end up by people losing data.

Maybe we’re just old fashioned, we would just tell our teenagers to please talk with us before they delete a picture. There’s really no substitute for good upbringing and trust.
Also if you have picture of them looking goofy - you should ask them if it’s ok to keep it anyway - they have rights too.

If your kids wanted to, they could probably also destroy your pictures today.

 

[darngooddesign]

Currently, it is “move”. There is no “copy”😅

I meant copy from your library to a drive; by exporting or dragging to finder.

 

[KeesdeW]

Library resides with person who created it, and it counts against their iCloud storage. You will then have a personal and a shared. If a familymembers moves a photo it’s not in their personal library (iCloud) any more, it’s in the shared library on your iCloud.

I wonder if the maligned screenshot is from an owner moving their photo to the library shared by them. I would imagine (hope) that when adding to another person's shared library, it would instead say copy?
Still, granting other people the right to alter or delete the sole copy of a photo in your shared library sounds like a disastrous idea. You would think the storage space owner would be granted some kind of 'administrator' rights

 

[Lethen]

I wonder if the maligned screenshot is from an owner moving their photo to the library shared by them. I would imagine (hope) that when adding to another person's shared library, it would instead say copy?
Still, granting other people the right to alter or delete the sole copy of a photo in your shared library sounds like a disastrous idea. You would think the storage space owner would be granted some kind of 'administrator' rights

Copying comes with its own set of drawbacks. As I understand it the user can see both their personal library and the library shared by/to* them as one, if you copy photos there would be annoying duplicates.

I would just move family photos to the shared library and keep photos and screenshots with no interest for my wife/kids in my personal photo library.

*read somewhere that you can only have one shared library, it’s either one you created or one you have been invited into. If you’re participating in a shared library you cannot create others or participate in others.

 

[W£S]

I meant copy from your library to a drive; by exporting or dragging to finder.

Ahhh! That will work for sure. But it is not very apple-ish as it cannot be done easily via iOS

 

[darngooddesign]

Ahhh! That will work for sure. But it is not very apple-ish as it cannot be done easily via iOS

It literally is Apple-ish because that's how Apple does it in MacOS Photos. It should be easy enough in iOS and not all that different from saving photos from an email, text message, Files app, or another source. Select the photos you want, tap on the Share Icon/Button, and select Save Image(s).