iOS 16 - Shared Photo Library

[JayBuchanan]

I am running iOS 16 Beta 3 and enabled Shared Photo Library with my wife. On both her iPad and iPhone (running iOS Beta 3) all of the pictures have sync from the Shared Library…everything is looking good and we both have a “shared” and “personal” libraries.

The only issue that I am seeing is that the folders and albums which are in the shared library on my iPhone & iPad (source of “shared” library) are not syncing to my wife’s iPhone & iPad. Again all pictures have sync’d but the folders and albums have not.

Has anyone else encountered this? I was really hoping the “organization” with folders and albums would sync as well. Maybe a future feature for another beta or the official release will include this.

If others have found a way to fix this, please let me know.

Thank you in advance!

 

[JayBuchanan]

Is no one else having the same issues or is it just my OCD of organizing my photo library?

 

[krazyleb]

I tried enabling Shared libarary, It didnt sync everything so I disabled it.

Maybe I’m being over cautious but I’m hesitant to really test it, worried about it messing up my photo library

 

[JayBuchanan]

I have my photo library backed up from my Mac mini on 2 different external hard drives just in case. All of my pictures did sync over, took probably 24-36hrs for everything to sync to my wife’s iPad and iPhone. Probably would have sync quicker if she hadn’t been using them as much during the sync.

 

[Doth]

I started to share with my wife, but she isn’t running beta. I went to delete the Shared Library, and now it is asking me if I want to keep everything. Will this cause duplicate photos?

 

[oliverames]

I have my photo library backed up from my Mac mini on 2 different external hard drives just in case. All of my pictures did sync over, took probably 24-36hrs for everything to sync to my wife’s iPad and iPhone. Probably would have sync quicker if she hadn’t been using them as much during the sync.

Did your albums and folders successfully sync as well?

 

[JayBuchanan]

Did your albums and folders successfully sync as well?

On my iPhone and iPad, the pictures, folders and albums sync with no issues.

On my wife’s iPad and iPhone, the pictures sync but the albums and folders did NOT.

All devices are on iOS 16 Beta 3.

 

[Doth]

I started to share with my wife, but she isn’t running beta. I went to delete the Shared Library, and now it is asking me if I want to keep everything. Will this cause duplicate photos?

I decided to give move forward anyways…No duplicates were created.

 

[jaknudsen]

Any more "long-term" experience with shared library? If I set it up to automatically share photos of specified people, can I still manually move some of these photos back to my private library?

 

[tvdsm]

Anyone with the new beta 5 see any differences in the Folder/Album organisation?
If I understand it well, you can move your personal library Folders and Albums to the shared library. These Folders and Albums will be visible for yourself, but not for other members of the shared library? They will not see the Folder/Album structure? That's really a pitty, as I have around 65.000 photos with many Folders and hundreds of Albums inside it (took me some years). The goal was just to have a shared library with all my Folders/Albums available, so my wife could just add the photos from her iphone to the corresponding Folders/Albums. But then that's not possible? Is that correct?
Unbelievable that the Folder/Album structure is not synced to the shared library

And are you able to create Folders or Albums in the shared library?

 

[JayBuchanan]

I removed the shared library from the wife’s iPad and iPhone and then re-set up the shared library hoping to get the folders and albums now with every device on iOS 16 Beta 5 and sadly no luck on the folder and albums being sync’d to her devices. I hope Apple gets this figured out as with a 250+ GB library and 37+k pictures…having folders and albums is essential.

Guess the only good thing is the folders and albums are on my iOS devices…if not my OCD would drive me crazy!

 

[kylew1212]

I removed the shared library from the wife’s iPad and iPhone and then re-set up the shared library hoping to get the folders and albums now with every device on iOS 16 Beta 5 and sadly no luck on the folder and albums being sync’d to her devices. I hope Apple gets this figured out as with a 250+ GB library and 37+k pictures…having folders and albums is essential.

Guess the only good thing is the folders and albums are on my iOS devices…if not my OCD would drive me crazy!

The shared album seriously doesn't have the ability to share folders/albums??!!! I mean for me having the album is huge, but I REALLY need the ability to organize it as well for my wife and I..

 

[JayBuchanan]

Not at this point which has been a huge disappointment for me as well.

 

[hg.wells]

This was the notes in the MacRumors article on iCloud shared photo libraries:

All tags, metadata, and location information remain accessible on photos added to an ‌iCloud‌ Shared Photo Library, but albums do not transfer over.

 

[JayBuchanan]

Deleted shared library after updating to iOS 16 Beta 7 and re-downloaded shared library and still no albums or folders

 

[Michael306141]

I am on iOS 16 Beta 7 and I am able to see albums on the shared photo library on my device. I haven't checked if my other family members can see those albums.

 

[tvdsm]

Would be great if you could do a check with a family account 😁. And do you see folders also?

 

[HMcG]

I am running iOS 16 Beta 3 and enabled Shared Photo Library with my wife. On both her iPad and iPhone (running iOS Beta 3) all of the pictures have sync from the Shared Library…everything is looking good and we both have a “shared” and “personal” libraries.

The only issue that I am seeing is that the folders and albums which are in the shared library on my iPhone & iPad (source of “shared” library) are not syncing to my wife’s iPhone & iPad. Again all pictures have sync’d but the folders and albums have not.

Has anyone else encountered this? I was really hoping the “organization” with folders and albums would sync as well. Maybe a future feature for another beta or the official release will include this.

If others have found a way to fix this, please let me know.

Thank you in advance!

I've just installed MacOS Ventura and IOS 16.1 and this problem is still there - no folders and album structure on my wife's iPhone but all photos are synced and available! I suppose given the glacial pace of such basic developments as adding photos to family sharing, fixing this could be a long wait!

 

[Olliejb]

The concept is great but yes it’s really annoying album names aren’t carried over to other users! I have 130 albums currently (I’m pretty ocd with the way I sort out my photos) so I decided I had two options 1st was to create and sort out new albums on all my family’s phones (but would take until Xmas next year) 2nd as a temporary measure (as hopefully in a future update there will be a option to create, share and maintain albums to all users) is to use the current shared albums service which theoretically would work for the time being, and I know the photos and videos are limited to size and quality etc but at least while using the shared library you can add photos to each album (all bar certain limitations) just hopefully they will add a more solid shared album feature in the future. Well I really hope so!