Informative video, thank you. Have seen this shared feature mentioned many times, but nobody has ever given a detailed explanation of the feature with examples. Thanks, again.
Another superb video Gary. I have since migrated to iCloud Photo Library and Shared Library. It is so nice not having to manually sync! The migration/upload took me 7 days 24 hours a day (running Amphetamine) to keep my Mac from sleeping.
There shouldn't be a need to keep your Mac from sleeping. It will do this in the background. In fact, it may have been slower because you kept it from sleeping that way so it may have uploaded at a slower pace thinking you were using your Mac and it didn't want to use all the resources.
Super-useful video, Gary, as always! I've been hesitant to try this feature, but your comments about trying it and possibly backing out if it turns out not to be what you want gave me the oomph to go ahead and try. Thanks!
Gary you are amazing! I had to rewatch this video to gain an understanding of that this new feature is about. Especially in the area of Shared albums vs Shared Library
This can also be usefull for teams, let's say pro photographers or something like that. As usual, very clear and very informative video. Thanks... Mark! 🙂
Very helpful. I hadn't realised that sharing Photo albums had got so sophisticated. My wife wants access to the photos I have taken for last 25 years since I first started using a digital camera. But she doesn't want to see every one of the 80K I have organised in Photos. With this I should be able to select the albums in which she's interested and not the 1000s of other photos from my hobbies and interests.
Thanks for sharing! I have one question. If my spouse and I merge both of our personal libraries into a shared one, will this cut down on the storage we both are using in the iCloud?
Hi Gary, heard about this and was so excited! My husband and I right away upgraded our iPhones, iPads and our Macs to prep for it. Quite disappointed after reviewing how to and then creating the Shared Library found we couldn't share the organization of photos in Albums and Folders, could only share the Library!?? So for me to share my 11,000 organized pictures he will have to reorganize them all himself?.. In talking about this we're wondering if we're the only people that very much want the ability to share not just the pictures but also the way they're organized? Any thoughts?
How about using keywords though? Select all of the photos in an album, assign a keyword to them all (same name as the album if you like). Then you can both view them by keyword instead of by album. Or, she can easily recreate the album using those keywords.
@@macmost Thx Gary, we tested setting up the pics with keywords and then share and found it does help, unfortunately that can only be done on the Macs, not on the iPhones/iPads.. Will be a lot of work to share and organize them all. Still find it unfortunate we can't just share the sorted Folders and Albums, would make it so much easier. Are we the only ones that seem to want that?
@@jenniferreidartmy wife and I are in the same situation. I would also like to share photo org such as folders and albums. Without this feature, it’s a non-starter for us. I hope apple is listening.
I had this same problem but found a way round it by adding keywords to each photo this can be done on mass for each album and the remote viewer can search by keyword to find the pictures required , for me I used the album title for each keyword and it works great
@@jenniferreidart Yes, same for my wife and me. Keyword option for editing and viewing only possible on Mac. My wife does not have a mac. Therefore it would be awesome if they could include in a future update that one can share a whole album/folder.
Thanks for explanation. I have a question about Folder/Album structure in the Shared Photo Library. I configured the Shared Photo Library and move all my favorites photos to this library. All these photos are structured in folder/albums in my personal library. Now all these photos are just flat in the new library. I cannot find any possibility to structure these photos in the shared library. The only possibility is that all other family members define these structure in there own personal library. But that makes no sense. Do I miss something?
Right. Albums are for you. So everything is in the library flat as before. You can arrange photos in your albums as you like, and other people can arrange them in their albums as they like.
@@macmost Is there a way to arrange the photos in the shared library - otherwise 5 people have to do the same thing again and again. Every time I create the new album like 'Holiday 2022' and publish the photos in the shared lib, all members have to create this album on there site. Not very useful. Is that a missing feature, or are there technical problems to solve that?
@@bjornbeeli6161 Not sure which direction Apple will go on this. On the one had it would be useful for everyone to see those photos grouped into that album. But on the other hand, why should one user's album structure be forced on the other members of the shared library?
Apparently, iPhone photo syncing (My Photo Stream) is coming to an end in July 2023. I hope you plan a video about what this means and how we should prepare. Thanks for your consideration.
Photo Stream is just an old way to do a type of syncing (last 30 days of photos up to 1000). Are you using Photo Stream in 2023? Probably not. The current ways to do syncing, using iCloud Photos, is completely different. iCloud Photos, iCloud Photos Sharing and iCloud Photos Share Libraries (what I talk about in this video) are what people use today.
@@mlocascio656 On your new device are you using iCloud Photos? If so, do you see those photos there? If so, then you have them in iCloud Photos and there should be nothing more to do.
Thanks - lots of great info here. One thing I don't think is covered is what about what happens to your shared albums once you join a shared library? Or - are you shared albums different depending on which library you are viewing? Beyond that - if I create a shared album with pictures from a shared library that I did not take (but I can see) - and I share the album with someone not in the shared library - will that person be able to see the photos?
Shared albums are a completely different feature. Nothing changes with them. Creating a shared album shouldn't be any different either. Try it and see.
If one wanted to merge the Photos library from separate iCloud accounts, is the method described at the 8:10 mark the best way? I have two iCloud accounts, one of which is no longer used and want to merge all of those files into the active iCloud account. From prior merging attempts years ago, many of the files in the old account are duplicated in the active account so I plan on using the new Duplicates feature to clean up the Library after the merge is complete. All told, there are about 30,000 files in each Library, with likely 15,000 or so that are duplicates. Luckily, I have foot surgery next week so I'll have plenty of time. Many thanks in advance!
Sounds like you have a mess. I wouldn't use this feature to merge them, that is not what it is meant to do. I would export all the photos from the secondary library, then import them into the primary library.
@@macmostDefinitely a big hairball! Will the export retain all of the meta data, most importantly like the date the photo was taken? Seems like I tried that once a few years ago and the "date taken" was over-ridden by the import date.
Fantastic! This is finally here. Hopefully, in a future update, Apple will make it so you can share within a certain amount of time like hours, days, or weeks. So if you are on vacation, for example, you can set it to auto-share in that time frame. Sort of how you can share your location for an amount of time.
Gary, do you know if the photos from Shared Library take up storage space on your local device if you have ‘Download Originals’ turned on? I feel like this feature could eat up your local device storage pretty quickly if you have a smaller drive.
Yes. If you have Download Originals, then all of your photos will be local as well as on iCloud. If you have a smaller drive, use the Optimize option instead.
Great video! I was waiting a while before proceeding. My husband is soooo excited! We had had a separate photos library for his childhood photos, but it wasn’t a system library. We now put it on his account on our MacBook and it’s now his personal library. As the photos library curator, I turned on shared library and now my husband has his childhood photos syncing to his phone AND our shared library. We are thrilled to finally have this work after about 10 years of wanting this capability!! One question : how does it work for people? For the people library? Because he has people in his personal library, that I also have listed in the main shared library, and some of the people spend both libraries, but in order to see the people, you have to be viewing both libraries… How does this work and will we be able to reconcile when people are the same?
Gary this video blew me away! I am still old school and that I have all my photos & videos reside on my Mac hard drive mostly because I am afraid of losing control. I don’t want to have the worry of losing my nice album organization and the thought of my wife accidentally deleting photos. Do I have anything to worry about?
😊Gary, You're a master at teaching this MAC stuff! Is this video still correct for the latest updates iOS 17.4.1 and Mac OS Sonoma 14.4.1 and Photos ver 9.0?
Thank you for the detailed video! @macmostvideo I have a question, if my partner and I are sharing the same library, are we able to move the entire shared library into both of our personal libraries? It looks like it can only be done by one person, removing all of the photos for the other. Am I correct in saying this?
Not sure why you would want to do that. The whole idea of the Share Library is you see the photo just like it is in your library. What's your use case here? Give me an example.
@@macmost yes I can give a couple of examples. 1) If my partner wants to copy the entire library so that she can delete and edit photos specific to her taste. 2) So that we can delete the current shared library and create a new shared library with different users, I believe I can only be part of one shared library at a time. The only workaround I have found is to export the entire shared library and import the photos back to my personal library.
@@w3rky For the first one, you can either just duplicate the photo, you would then have two copies of it taking up lots of space. Or, you can just not put that photo into your shared library at all, but instead send it to them (AirDrop). For the second one -- I strongly recommend not doing that. That's not what Shared Libraries are for. Dropping and connecting to Shared Libraries will probably cause a lot of problems. Use Shared Albums instead, if you want others to see your photos.
Dear Gary, thank you for the upload of this detailed and informative description of using the Shared Photo Library. On our recent world trip I have created an individual album of the country we visited. Now I want to share these albums with my wife via Photo Library. Unfortunately it just shows all of the photos and videos on her phone and not the different albums. Is there a way she can see those photos within the albums or does she have to create those albums again on her iPhone? Thank you for your feedback.
Great video! Many thanks for covering what can be a very challenging and confusing subject for people. Not sure I fully understand everything yet. I have a Mac with an Apple Photos Library. Is it possible for me to share my entire Photos Library with other family members (who live in other cities), but only as VIEW-ONLY, such that they cannot Add / Edit / or Delete photos. We don't have a Family iCloud account. My understanding is that the other family members must have their own Apple Account IDs for me to share my library. Thank you very much.
Great information, as always. Question: I have thousands of Photos/Videos on another Photos library stored on a RAID system. I would like to move these to an icloud shared library without transferring to my System Photo library so I don’t overwhelm my MAC MINI Storage….is this possible?
So I assume you are using "Optimize" right? You can upload them in groups and let your library offload them before the next group. Or, you can upload via the iCloud web site to go directly from the external drive to iCloud, then let the system library work as normal with "optimize."
Hi Gary, here's something you didn't mention on your video and no one asked below. So I finally setup a Shared Library with my husband (family plan). Then I noticed that some of the photos that I added to the Shared Library, that were my hearted/Favorites, now also show as Favorites on his devices. Of course he can toggle Personal/Shared/Both around to view only his Favs, but kind of annoying that if either of us leaves it on "Both Libraries" all the time, we have to deal with each other's Favorites. I am really bummed by that. Now I might have to create an Album named Favorites on my Personal, just because of that... and totally ignore the Favs native section. Ugh!!! Comments?
Agreed, at this point the feature seems like a half-baked ideal. I’ve had sharing library nightmares with friends. My camera was sharing photos randomly & automatically. I deactivated the feature & deleted the library, but others could still view my photos. I want nothing to do with this lousy feature. Not to mention it is a huge potential security risk for those who work with sensitive docs.
Thanks for the video This feature is super confusing as it adds an additional sharing feature to the ecosystem. Any idea how to get the link to the shared library again? I’ve shared the library by invite but now I need to send the link to the same people. Can’t seem to find this option in iPhone .. Thanks for the awesome work that you do
This is NOT a "sharing" feature. You wouldn't use this to share some photos with others. Use regular photo sharing. This is a "Shared Library" and you should only do it between yourself and perhaps a spouse or your immediate family. Or perhaps nobody. Like think about if you share your life with someone and your books, music and other things are all together in your home. Then you may want to also have your photos together. That's what this is for. As for re-sharing the "link": they should see it if they go to their Photos app, Settings, Shared Library. If they don't you can maybe try to remove them and add them again in your Settings.
@@macmost Very good point re: it’s not a sharing feature. Immediately after creating that photo library I started being cautious of the photos I take whether others will have access to it ! So what would you use if you have a video on your iPhone and want to share it with someone?
@macmostvideo I really appreciate your detail instructions. I am having a problem viewing Shared Album on iCloud.I have multiple shared albums on my phone but it's not in my iCloud. Is this not possible? Would you mind doing a video on this?
Not sure what you are experiencing. By "in my iCloud" do you mean on an other device in Photos? Make sure you have turned on shared albums there. Note that Shared Albums are a very different feature than Shared Library which is what this video is about.
Hi Gary.. i love your videos.. today i was trying to view two photos at the same time side by side in the photos app and didn't see a way to do it..i know you can do it in preview mode...but is there a way to compare to photos side by side in the photos app? thanks. Norm
You can put those photos into an album and then view the album and enlarge the viewing size. Is there something you are trying to DO by viewing them next to each other? Maybe if I know why you wanted to do ti, I could suggest something.
@@macmost thanks Gary... i am trying to put the photos side by side to compare the before and after comparisons after using photo ai from topaz..just wanted to see the vast difference between the two...Norm
@@normdorosh Ah, I see. Have you tried flipping between them? So view the first one, then right arrow to go to the next, left to go back. Left and right back and forth. But I suppose some people (me) prefer flipping between photos, and other prefer seeing them side-by-side.
I have a question. On a MBP. Is there a way to keep your original photos in Photos. But duplicate them so they are also in shared photo library. So you can manually back up the library from MBP to an external HD.
Not sure what you are asking. Shared Photo Library is a feature designed to help you and your family share the same photos. But you are asking about backing up your library. Shared Photo Library doesn't do anything concerning backing up.
Thanks. I want to keep my original photos in my personal library and also put them on shared photo library. This way I can backup up personal library to an EHD. Ie. Photos will be in two places. In my personal library AND in shared library. Is this possible? As I understand it when you move to share SS library it removes from personal library. I don’t want them removed from personal library.
@@RogerPuzo415 Watch this video again. it explains how Share Photo Libraries work. They aren't in two places. They are in one place but also shared with your family members. If you aren't dealing with sharing with family members, then this isn't the feature to use. Your library is BOTH your personal one (only you) and your shared library (you + family can access). You don't need to have something in both personal and shared. Just always view "both" and you'll see everything without having duplicates.
Thanks again. I appreciate it. Yeah. Great video. But I still want them in two places 😫. I feel safer being able to manually backing up to an EHD. But then want ability to share with family/kids. The shared albums (before shared library was developed) kept them in your personal library and just duplicated them in iCloud shared albums if I’m not mistaken (and still functions that way, correct?). I wish shared library at least gave option to do that. In other words I’d feel more comfortable having a back up in a safe than only using iCloud. But want them available to kids too.
@@RogerPuzo415 So is the problem that you are afraid one of your kids may delete a photo? There are safeguards against that. I think I mention them in the video. But you can also ready about them here: support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248 "When a participant deletes a photo or video from the Shared Library, it moves to Recently Deleted. Only the contributor of that photo or video can delete it from Recently Deleted."
Thanks for the video. So I'm interested in Shared Library because when I use Shared Albums, it seems that Apple completely ruins the resolution of the photos that go into Shared Albums, whereas my understanding is that the Shared Library albums will maintain the original resolution/quality. However, what concerns me is that any participant of the shared library can modify/edit any of the photos that are present. I usually put a lot of time editing the photos I take with Adobe LR, and I wouldn't want somebody else to further make changes to the photos that I contribute (I don't mind if they can download my photos or add their own to the Shared Library). Is there a way to restrict other participants from editing/changing the photos that I contribute to the Shared Library?
A Shared Library should only be with your closest family members. Like spouses, for instance. It is for sharing a library, not for showing others your photos. Using a Shared Album to do that. Not sure what you mean by "completely ruins the resolution." The resolution should be the same, but it is up to the other person how they view it online in a browser.
@@macmost Thanks for your response. And yes I want to both show certain other people my photos and also allow them to download at full resolution. In Apple Photos what i've noticed is that after I've taken a photo on my camera (and after editing in Adobe LR), my jpeg photos are 10-20 MB in size (and they're always 6000x4000 resolution assuming I don't crop anything). These characteristics are maintained when I add these photos to my own personal Apple Photos albums. However, once I copy these same photos into a Shared Album, Apple reduces the resolution of these photos down to ~2305x1537 (and the new size is 1-2 MB). That's what I meant with reduction in resolution or quality by Apple when moving between a personal album into a shared album. Checking back between the original photo in my personal Apple album and the same photo in the Shared Album this change becomes evident through the "Get Info" option of each photo.
@@charlesv1606 I don't use Lightroom so I may not be able to help you there. But sharing online typically does show the user a high-resolution jpg image, not the unmodified image you seem to be exporting from Lightroom. The difference is probably not too much to the eye though. I suppose if you are doing something like sharing source files with clients in a business you may want to use some other file sharing solution, not a consumer one like iCloud.
Do you mean in the Photos app, like in a slideshow? Or are you asking about something not involving Photos? If you mean just the files, then you can take them into the Music app and play them there. Or get another third-party audio player like VLC.
Great video! Thanks. I still don’t get why iCloud Photos Library needs to be turned on. Mine is off as I don’t want my photos in iCloud. I prefer them locally.
Great explanation. Do you know if this new shared library has the same limitations as the old version (maximum number of photos, videos only in 720p quality)?
Hard for me to guess what you have done. Look carefully at your settings and hers. Look at the top of the Photos app and see what you have selected there too.
So does it automatically share my favorites from my personal album to the shared library? Or is it a separate favorite album that’s only included in the shared library (effectively 2 favorite albums) This part wasn’t clearly explained.
Another awesome video on a badly needed function. No doubt majority of people will be in same boat as me and want to share everything with a spouse. Perhaps you can do a more granular, future video on this? Also, is there a way to automatically move any shared photos to a personal library so they are kept locally with a main library?? Thanks much, Gary!!!
If you have Optimize turned off, that is for both your personal library and your shared library. Photos from both will always be local. So no need to have two copies of photos.
It took a bit of fiddling to figure this out. Good thing I had watched your video. I added Titles to all my pictures before sharing them to the Shared Folder but they do no appear there. Why is that?
Yes, I deleted all the pictures and after titling them in my Personal Album, shared them again to the Shared folder, but the titles don't appear there!
Sorry, I mean I deleted them from the Shared folder and then shared them again after I added all the titles. But still the titles don't appear on the Shared folder pictures.
I have a video I sent from another iPhone to MY iPAD! It was a video I wanted to send in an iMessage, so I did, and It was like an eleven hour video. It's been uploading since yesterday morning! How do I see the percentage, or some progress bar? I mean I immediately deleted it from the other iPhone from another account, but I deleted the video from that iPhone and on MY iPad, It's been uploading since yesterday morning! PLEASE HELP!
Sent in what way? I'm not sure what you are using (AirDrop?) but look for a cancel option. I can't see what you are seeing, so you'll need to poke around and look for a solution.
What about with normal shared albums - if a subscriber that is not you adds to that album - is it linking from their library or does it get stored in yours?
So Shared albums, not the Shared Library that I'm talking about in this video? With Shared albums you'd see it and of course you'd have to have a copy of it or you wouldn't be able to see it.
@@macmost Yeah just regular shared albums - if I create one and someone else adds a picture to it - does that go against my storage and end up in my library?
@@landon.cunningham Your iCloud server storage, or your local drive storage? Shared Albums don't count against your iCloud storage. See support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299
@@macmost If you create a shared library - what happens to your system library? Do you know have 2 library files in the pictures folder - or is the shared library fully cloud based?
@@landon.cunningham The Shared Library is part of your System Library. You just have one Library on your drive, but some of those images are "Personal" and some "Shared."
Hi - I enjoyed your shared library video. Is it possible to take a project slide show created in 'My Projects' on my Mac (Ventura) and copy into a new shared album in Photos? I would like to show these on Apple TV or other devices and I don't know how to view a Project slide show unless it's in a shared photo album.
I don't think so. Just create the shared album instead of a Project slideshow. But once you have a Project, you can't do it from that end, you just have to add the same photos. Maybe next time create the Shared Album first, then you can create the Project from the photos in there instead of the other way around. Or, just not use Project slideshows at all. You could always export the Project slideshow as a video and keep that video in your library to show on Apple TV.
I have a MacBook with Ventura and I want to share the photo library with my wife's iPad which has iOS16.3 but there is no icon to let me invite her iPad. What am I missing?
I just said to my wife that one problem with Apple Photos is the lack of a shared library. A quick search resulted in this vlog. Thanks for sharing. Now it would be great if you could include Android without doing an import. My son is on Android and loves the Google verse versus the Apple verse. It would be great if someone came up with third party verse where both Apple and Android could commingle.
hey there, thanks for this amazing video - question: I follow this process to share my library with my wife, do I have to do it again from my wife's computer so she can add her photos to the pool? Will that automatically merge our two libraries, or will it create two siloed 'shared libraries'?
Yes, she needs to accept the invitation. When she does, she needs to make the same decisions about what to move to the Shared library and what to just have in her Personal library. Then you will have ONE Shared library. That's the whole idea.
@@macmost here's a million dollar question: is there any way to remove duplicates that span each library. if I have the exact same photo on my library that she has on hers, and I want to merge them, it doesn't seem possible. The Duplicates feature disappears when viewing "Shared Library'...any ideas how to work around that?
nope. i go to photos/settings and the only options are general or icloud there is no shared folders option....now what? the version I have is 9.0 is that the problem?
@@macmost I don't think I understand your question. When I use photos it doesn't it automatically use iCloud? Do I have to initiate something or turn it on somewhere?
Need help!! I'm sharing photos with my wife using iCloud shared photos. The problem is that I can't assign people (facial recognition) to the photos that come from her phone. Is there any way to solve this?
I haven't tried that, but perhaps it just isn't set up to work that way? Experiment and see. Call Apple Support if you need a definitive answer as to whether or not it is supported.
As long as they are linked to the same Apple ID, it doesn't matter much. If someone has a device, say an iPad, set to only get messages from one or more email addresses, and not their phone number, then they may only get that message on their phone. Just use what you normally use to chat with them over Messages.
This was great and I setup my Shared Library with my wife, but I have run into a few limitations. We put ALL photos into the shared library so we can have ONE shared library and really don't use our personal libraries. Here's some limitations with this route: 1) We cannot share any albums with each other or anyone else because shared albums cannot include photos from a shared library. 2) We'd like to also share the albums we create with each other, but because albums are only in personal libraries we need to each create separate identical albums which is too much work. 3) I use MultiCloud to transfer between iCloud and Google photos. MultiCloud (or possibly the Apple API it uses) does not support shared libraries so the tool is now useless. If you have any ideas for how to address these limitations, we're all ears! Thank you for the wonderful videos!
Not sure what you are running into with the first one. I was able to add photos from my Shared Library into a Shared Album without an issue. I don't see a workaround for 2, and I don't use the app you mention in 3 so I can't help there.
@@macmost On number one, you're right. If you create a Shared album, it will COPY the photos you share into it (thereby using more of your iCloud storage) and can be seen by whomever you share it with. But we may have hundreds of albums so going this route is more cumbersome and uses way more storage. It's cumbersome because we need to do the extra step to share it with the same person with whom we have the Shared Library with and it's more expensive since the photos are duplicated. Also, if we want to delete a photo from our library, I don't think it'll delete the one in the shared album. What I want is to be able to create an album in the Shared Library that is automatically seen by anyone with access to the Shared Library.
Thank you Gary. As ever, you've described a new and rather complex feature brilliantly. However, it leaves me a bit frustrated - my MacBook Pro purchased 2017(2016 model) will not take Ventura. My iPhone and iPad are newer and run 16.2. And my friends with Mac - most of them, probably not using Ventura. For my own situation, I'm hovering on buying a new MacBook, but the market, doesn't seem quite ready for me to take the step at this point. This is the first time since converting from Windows to Mac since 2017, that I'm feeling a bit downhearted about Apple.
I recently set up iPhoto family sharing with my wife. She can see some but not all of the image folders. Then I checked my phone and it's the same. When I look at the thumbnails on the Mac Mini, which is our main computer, I can see that all of them have the sharing symbol in the upper right corner. I can see all of the folders on our MacBook Air no problem. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. There are just over 70k images in photos. It even shows the same number on my phone when I go into settings, iCloud, photos. Yet they aren't all there. Finally I had to resort to asking for help. lol Thank you in advance!
Hello. Having trouble here. I made a shared library but I cant see the photos of my wife. She doesn’t see my photos either. Does anyone know why? On our iphones
I have yet to see anyone clarify this, so maybe you have some insight… is there just ONE shared library or can I have multiple? Say I want a shared library with my family and then a completely different set of people (friends) added to a different separate library? Is that possible or can you only create (or be part of) a single shared library at a time?
You can create a Shared album with your friends for example one album called Party with your friends and another album called vacations with your family
Hi I try make a shared library and add only photos with named family people only. When I add the names it takes all the photos lets say of the whole year 500 photos instead of adding the named photos which are only 100.... how I fix it?
Just select the photos you don't want to include and set them to Personal Library. You can switch photos as you like manually so customize as you like.
Thank you for your reply! My Mac is new and I have not noticed a library in Pictures until 2 days ago. At that time I opened the Photo app and chose a photo for editing in Topaz app. When I dragged it, the photo did not drop in Topaz as expected. Instead the Pictures folder opened and there I noted the Photo library and separately the photography I chose for editing. I could drag and drop the photography from Pictures into Topaz, edit it and when done I had a copy of edited photo in Pictures along with the Photo library. Then I had to drag and drop the edited photo into Photo library. However, it seems that was only a copy since the edited photo remained as separate file in Pictures. To avoid duplicates I deleted the edited photo in Pictures. Thank you for your help, regards Ziga TRETJAK
Quick Question. Let's say I add my dad to my shared library. Can i save one of his photos from the shared library to my personal library and if my dad leaves the shared library will the photo stay in my personal library or will it be removed from my personal library since my dad left the group?
Yes, you should be able to. Plus, after the first 7 days I believe if your dad leaves the Shared Library, you get the option to keep the photos he contributed.
Please help me understand. If I have a photo I want to share with the family, First I have to choose what are my favorite 5 family members. Then, I can only put that photo in the shared album, and then trust the other members wont, crop, edit, delete my only original photo? I see there is a notification i can receive if a photo is deleted. How do I get the deleted photo back? Is the deleted photo in my deleted folder or is it gone for good?
If you don't trust the other people, then they are probably not good candidates for library sharing. But even if they make a mistake and delete one, you can get it back pretty easily. Yes, it would be in your deleted folder.
I think that is the default when you choose to share all. I think screenshots are automatically not shared. Also, note you don't need to save screenshots to your Photos library. I assume you mean on your iPhone, right? Just tap the thumbnail after taking a screenshot, then tap the Share button and Save To Files instead. Create a folder to hold them if you like.
Since you decide what to add, just try it and see. Start it off empty, add a few photos each. Then try one of those duplicates and see what it does. Probably both will be there.
If a family has a shared account, and only wants access to their own individual photo stream, what do we need to do ? I let my wife log onto my iPad with her account now my photos are showing in her photo stream
Sounds like when she logged out of your account, she kept the photos on the iPad. Then when she logged into her account it added those photos to her Photos library ("library" not "stream," that was something different). Can't say for sure, but that's my guess.
Hi Gary, I have approx 50000 photos in about 50 albums named in year order, but now i have shared my library with my wife she can see the 50000 photos but my album data is not shared and she simply has 50000 photos in a random order, can i share my album data to to maintain the sorted order of our family photos? im using MacAir M1 , Ventura 13.1, IOS 16.2 iphone 12 and and IPAD 9th gen IPADOS latest version too. My wife is IOS 16.2 on an iphone 13, all patches and updates are installed but Apple seems to have missed this vital component off the new shared library function, or am I doing something wrong, does anyone else share their library but successfully include album titles too? thanks
Albums aren't shared, photos are. You both have separate albums, organized as you each want. The photos shouldn't be in random order, but date order if she is viewing them that way.
@@macmost thanks Gary thats a great shame thats pretty useless then, 50000 photos from loads of holidays from three decades all mixed up again is next to useless, oh well, something we wont use then, i thought this would be of benefit to share our family memories !! appreciate the rapid response though !
@@stsxt05 Why are they "mixed up?" They are all dated and some may have GPS if you took them with a phone. I never bother with albums myself. I just look at the dates for a trip and there are all the photos from that trip.
@@macmost Hi Gary , because 30 years ago GPS data wasnt invented lol !! , and to be hionest neither of us can remember what we had for dinner last week let alone where we were 30 years ago, so our photos are sorted by titles reflecting an occasion or place, this is placed in the album title, remove the album title and we have no way of sorting them into a specific holiday or family occasion. Some places we visited several times a year so the potential for mixing photos up is huge. However, Ive just found if I copy the album title and then slect all photos in an album i can paste this to all the photos in the keywords field, im hoping this is searchable !!! thanks for your elp though , appreciate the help Sir
You shouldn't share a library with someone you don't trust. Plus, if you look at the details there are many failsafes against exactly the thing you are worried about.
A Shared Album does that. A shared Library should only be used with one or a very few people that you completely trust, like your immediate family. For "people" you should use Shared Albums.
@@macmost I'm seeing that now. I guess I was looking for a slicker solution than Dropbox for read-only photo sharing (that preserves my file names) with family and friends.
Thanks for the explanation! Great video. I think it's a half-baked solution because only those who have an iDevice with iOS 16.1 can participate in a shared library, which means I can't share photos with someone on PC, Android, or older iPhone. Also, it's ridiculous to only allow 1 shared library. What if I want to share some photos with my friends and some with my family in original quality? It seems like I have to stick with Google Photos 😢
Actually, someone can. They would just have to use the Photos web app at iCloud.com. But if the others want to use Google Photos then no, you can't share between iCloud Photos and Google Photos, obviously. They are two different systems by two different companies.
How do you share a movie that is a huge file that is NOT in your library? (made with iMovie) I have relatives who are not Mac people (horrors!) and even though I've tried to "share" and they made an iCloud account, they still can't open it. Frustrating!
Very dissatisfied with iCloud 200 GB family storage, sharing a complete library is a drama and the support is hopeless have been struggling with storage since the arrival of Ventura and iOS 16, have been calling Apple for more than 2 hours in total, the supervisors can't figure it out and have put the problem to Apple itself, but that takes so long very unfortunate I feel so powerless except that I can switch to Google Problem more than 60,000 photos were largely duplicated, I think I'm starting again as head of the family and deleted the family members and deleted all my photos, now my family members have 5 GB standard storage and iCloud tries to download with them 60,000 photos that aren't there, it says they will leave the family account once the 60,000 photos are downloaded, but you can't with 5 GB and iCloud completely crashes unusable for months hopelessly bad from Apple 1 star is still too much. Be warned, or better yet, ignore them
Keep in mind Shared albums are for showing photos to "other" people, not people you want to have a combined album with. Shared albums are lower resolution versions and you have a limit on how many photos you can in them.
@@macmost I did not know that shared albums are at a lower resolution. Even if the invitees are on iPhones? How many pictures/videos in a shared album vs shared library?
But i have another question Right now I create shared album with my family all of them have iPhones and if we go to the beach we create an album called Beach if we go to the park we create another album called park and every body upload the photos of the park and beach and it’s easy to find it But If I automatically shared a photo how can I separate phtos from the beach and for the park because all the pictures upload to the same shared album Maybe I don’t understand well the benefits of this functions
So... I just created the shared library and added 21 photos to it. I shared the invite to my family, only to find that this stupid thing shared all 1800+ photos on my iPhone. More broken crap. Deleted.
Sounds like you simply didn't add 21 photos to it like you thought, but added all of them. You could have simply selected them and removed them pretty easily.
What happened with “just works“? This is way too complicated for the average user. I hope Apple can come with a better solution, easier to understand and to use
Informative video, thank you. Have seen this shared feature mentioned many times, but nobody has ever given a detailed explanation of the feature with examples. Thanks, again.
Great Video: Question - How do you make folders in the Shared Album and is there a way to share/move a whole folder over? Thanks
It's great video, and thank you for not dragging this out to be an hour long. straight to the point
I agree!
Great content as always. Would love to see a piece discussing how shared access to an Apple One plan works.
Another superb video Gary.
I have since migrated to iCloud Photo Library and Shared Library.
It is so nice not having to manually sync!
The migration/upload took me 7 days 24 hours a day (running Amphetamine) to keep my Mac from sleeping.
There shouldn't be a need to keep your Mac from sleeping. It will do this in the background. In fact, it may have been slower because you kept it from sleeping that way so it may have uploaded at a slower pace thinking you were using your Mac and it didn't want to use all the resources.
Awesome, Gary! Another great video! Now waiting for the spouse to share the library with 🤭
Super-useful video, Gary, as always! I've been hesitant to try this feature, but your comments about trying it and possibly backing out if it turns out not to be what you want gave me the oomph to go ahead and try. Thanks!
Gary you are amazing! I had to rewatch this video to gain an understanding of that this new feature is about. Especially in the area of Shared albums vs Shared Library
Thank you so comprehensive yet succinct, which is rare! Very good to have a look at all the dets and implications before signing up or trialling. 😊
Hi Gary.. i love your videos. Thank you so much for excellent presentation!
A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Great topic! Thank you, Gary! 👏❤️
So helpful, as usual. Thank you!
Thanks Gary, just what I was looking for.....great video!
This can also be usefull for teams, let's say pro photographers or something like that. As usual, very clear and very informative video. Thanks... Mark! 🙂
Thank you so much! this was exactly what I needed!!
Pheeeew! Good one. If you see your views double by tonight, it's just me. Good video!
Thanks so much. We were having a lot of questions that you answered.
Excellent! You talk faster than I can think but, fortunately, I can rewind. LOL.
Awesome stuff as always!
Very helpful. I hadn't realised that sharing Photo albums had got so sophisticated. My wife wants access to the photos I have taken for last 25 years since I first started using a digital camera. But she doesn't want to see every one of the 80K I have organised in Photos. With this I should be able to select the albums in which she's interested and not the 1000s of other photos from my hobbies and interests.
Yes. You could also share all of them, and she can switch between her Personal library to just see hers, and "Both" to see yours and hers.
Thanks for sharing!
I have one question. If my spouse and I merge both of our personal libraries into a shared one, will this cut down on the storage we both are using in the iCloud?
If you have duplicates, and then delete those duplicates, then I suppose it could.
You are such a apple nerd, thank you kind sir ;)
Hi Gary, heard about this and was so excited! My husband and I right away upgraded our iPhones, iPads and our Macs to prep for it. Quite disappointed after reviewing how to and then creating the Shared Library found we couldn't share the organization of photos in Albums and Folders, could only share the Library!?? So for me to share my 11,000 organized pictures he will have to reorganize them all himself?.. In talking about this we're wondering if we're the only people that very much want the ability to share not just the pictures but also the way they're organized? Any thoughts?
How about using keywords though? Select all of the photos in an album, assign a keyword to them all (same name as the album if you like). Then you can both view them by keyword instead of by album. Or, she can easily recreate the album using those keywords.
@@macmost Thx Gary, we tested setting up the pics with keywords and then share and found it does help, unfortunately that can only be done on the Macs, not on the iPhones/iPads.. Will be a lot of work to share and organize them all. Still find it unfortunate we can't just share the sorted Folders and Albums, would make it so much easier. Are we the only ones that seem to want that?
@@jenniferreidartmy wife and I are in the same situation. I would also like to share photo org such as folders and albums. Without this feature, it’s a non-starter for us. I hope apple is listening.
I had this same problem but found a way round it by adding keywords to each photo this can be done on mass for each album and the remote viewer can search by keyword to find the pictures required , for me I used the album title for each keyword and it works great
@@jenniferreidart Yes, same for my wife and me. Keyword option for editing and viewing only possible on Mac. My wife does not have a mac. Therefore it would be awesome if they could include in a future update that one can share a whole album/folder.
Great explanation
Really informative video, thanks Gary.
Can you create two separate shared libraries? For example one with colleagues and one with family?
No. You can only belong to one.
Thanks for explanation. I have a question about Folder/Album structure in the Shared Photo Library.
I configured the Shared Photo Library and move all my favorites photos to this library. All these photos are structured in folder/albums in my personal library. Now all these photos are just flat in the new library. I cannot find any possibility to structure these photos in the shared library. The only possibility is that all other family members define these structure in there own personal library. But that makes no sense. Do I miss something?
Right. Albums are for you. So everything is in the library flat as before. You can arrange photos in your albums as you like, and other people can arrange them in their albums as they like.
@@macmost Is there a way to arrange the photos in the shared library - otherwise 5 people have to do the same thing again and again. Every time I create the new album like 'Holiday 2022' and publish the photos in the shared lib, all members have to create this album on there site. Not very useful.
Is that a missing feature, or are there technical problems to solve that?
@@bjornbeeli6161 Not sure which direction Apple will go on this. On the one had it would be useful for everyone to see those photos grouped into that album. But on the other hand, why should one user's album structure be forced on the other members of the shared library?
Thanks for explaining details.
Very helpful. Thanks for sharing 👍
Apparently, iPhone photo syncing (My Photo Stream) is coming to an end in July 2023. I hope you plan a video about what this means and how we should prepare. Thanks for your consideration.
Photo Stream is just an old way to do a type of syncing (last 30 days of photos up to 1000). Are you using Photo Stream in 2023? Probably not. The current ways to do syncing, using iCloud Photos, is completely different. iCloud Photos, iCloud Photos Sharing and iCloud Photos Share Libraries (what I talk about in this video) are what people use today.
@@mlocascio656 Most likely you have those photos in iCloud Photos now. Just check and see.
@@mlocascio656 On your new device are you using iCloud Photos? If so, do you see those photos there? If so, then you have them in iCloud Photos and there should be nothing more to do.
Thanks - lots of great info here. One thing I don't think is covered is what about what happens to your shared albums once you join a shared library? Or - are you shared albums different depending on which library you are viewing?
Beyond that - if I create a shared album with pictures from a shared library that I did not take (but I can see) - and I share the album with someone not in the shared library - will that person be able to see the photos?
Shared albums are a completely different feature. Nothing changes with them. Creating a shared album shouldn't be any different either. Try it and see.
Great job !!!
Thank you!
If one wanted to merge the Photos library from separate iCloud accounts, is the method described at the 8:10 mark the best way? I have two iCloud accounts, one of which is no longer used and want to merge all of those files into the active iCloud account. From prior merging attempts years ago, many of the files in the old account are duplicated in the active account so I plan on using the new Duplicates feature to clean up the Library after the merge is complete. All told, there are about 30,000 files in each Library, with likely 15,000 or so that are duplicates. Luckily, I have foot surgery next week so I'll have plenty of time. Many thanks in advance!
Sounds like you have a mess. I wouldn't use this feature to merge them, that is not what it is meant to do. I would export all the photos from the secondary library, then import them into the primary library.
@@macmostDefinitely a big hairball! Will the export retain all of the meta data, most importantly like the date the photo was taken? Seems like I tried that once a few years ago and the "date taken" was over-ridden by the import date.
@@StEvieWeevee If you export "unmodified originals" then all of the metadata that is embedded in the photo (from the camera) is retained.
Fantastic! This is finally here. Hopefully, in a future update, Apple will make it so you can share within a certain amount of time like hours, days, or weeks. So if you are on vacation, for example, you can set it to auto-share in that time frame. Sort of how you can share your location for an amount of time.
Gary, do you know if the photos from Shared Library take up storage space on your local device if you have ‘Download Originals’ turned on? I feel like this feature could eat up your local device storage pretty quickly if you have a smaller drive.
Yes. If you have Download Originals, then all of your photos will be local as well as on iCloud. If you have a smaller drive, use the Optimize option instead.
Great video! I was waiting a while before proceeding. My husband is soooo excited! We had had a separate photos library for his childhood photos, but it wasn’t a system library. We now put it on his account on our MacBook and it’s now his personal library. As the photos library curator, I turned on shared library and now my husband has his childhood photos syncing to his phone AND our shared library. We are thrilled to finally have this work after about 10 years of wanting this capability!! One question : how does it work for people? For the people library? Because he has people in his personal library, that I also have listed in the main shared library, and some of the people spend both libraries, but in order to see the people, you have to be viewing both libraries… How does this work and will we be able to reconcile when people are the same?
Not sure. I think People is something that is different for each account. Compare and see.
Gary this video blew me away! I am still old school and that I have all my photos & videos reside on my Mac hard drive mostly because I am afraid of losing control.
I don’t want to have the worry of losing my nice album organization and the thought of my wife accidentally deleting photos.
Do I have anything to worry about?
😊Gary, You're a master at teaching this MAC stuff! Is this video still correct for the latest updates iOS 17.4.1 and Mac OS Sonoma 14.4.1 and Photos ver 9.0?
Yes.
Thank you for the detailed video! @macmostvideo I have a question, if my partner and I are sharing the same library, are we able to move the entire shared library into both of our personal libraries? It looks like it can only be done by one person, removing all of the photos for the other. Am I correct in saying this?
Not sure why you would want to do that. The whole idea of the Share Library is you see the photo just like it is in your library. What's your use case here? Give me an example.
@@macmost yes I can give a couple of examples. 1) If my partner wants to copy the entire library so that she can delete and edit photos specific to her taste. 2) So that we can delete the current shared library and create a new shared library with different users, I believe I can only be part of one shared library at a time. The only workaround I have found is to export the entire shared library and import the photos back to my personal library.
@@w3rky For the first one, you can either just duplicate the photo, you would then have two copies of it taking up lots of space. Or, you can just not put that photo into your shared library at all, but instead send it to them (AirDrop). For the second one -- I strongly recommend not doing that. That's not what Shared Libraries are for. Dropping and connecting to Shared Libraries will probably cause a lot of problems. Use Shared Albums instead, if you want others to see your photos.
@@macmost thanks, I appreciate your help.
Dear Gary, thank you for the upload of this detailed and informative description of using the Shared Photo Library.
On our recent world trip I have created an individual album of the country we visited. Now I want to share these albums with my wife via Photo Library. Unfortunately it just shows all of the photos and videos on her phone and not the different albums.
Is there a way she can see those photos within the albums or does she have to create those albums again on her iPhone?
Thank you for your feedback.
She has to create her own albums. The photos are shared, but the organizational structure is individual.
Great video! Many thanks for covering what can be a very challenging and confusing subject for people. Not sure I fully understand everything yet. I have a Mac with an Apple Photos Library. Is it possible for me to share my entire Photos Library with other family members (who live in other cities), but only as VIEW-ONLY, such that they cannot Add / Edit / or Delete photos. We don't have a Family iCloud account. My understanding is that the other family members must have their own Apple Account IDs for me to share my library. Thank you very much.
No, that's not what this is for at all. This is for actual family members and you share the shared library.
Great information, as always. Question: I have thousands of Photos/Videos on another Photos library stored on a RAID system. I would like to move these to an icloud shared library without transferring to my System Photo library so I don’t overwhelm my MAC MINI Storage….is this possible?
So I assume you are using "Optimize" right? You can upload them in groups and let your library offload them before the next group. Or, you can upload via the iCloud web site to go directly from the external drive to iCloud, then let the system library work as normal with "optimize."
Hi Gary, here's something you didn't mention on your video and no one asked below. So I finally setup a Shared Library with my husband (family plan). Then I noticed that some of the photos that I added to the Shared Library, that were my hearted/Favorites, now also show as Favorites on his devices. Of course he can toggle Personal/Shared/Both around to view only his Favs, but kind of annoying that if either of us leaves it on "Both Libraries" all the time, we have to deal with each other's Favorites. I am really bummed by that. Now I might have to create an Album named Favorites on my Personal, just because of that... and totally ignore the Favs native section. Ugh!!! Comments?
Agreed, at this point the feature seems like a half-baked ideal. I’ve had sharing library nightmares with friends. My camera was sharing photos randomly & automatically. I deactivated the feature & deleted the library, but others could still view my photos. I want nothing to do with this lousy feature. Not to mention it is a huge potential security risk for those who work with sensitive docs.
soo, can i have a few icloud sharing library? because i need to share library with a few spouse and i dont wanna to mix it all
Thanks for the video
This feature is super confusing as it adds an additional sharing feature to the ecosystem.
Any idea how to get the link to the shared library again? I’ve shared the library by invite but now I need to send the link to the same people. Can’t seem to find this option in iPhone ..
Thanks for the awesome work that you do
This is NOT a "sharing" feature. You wouldn't use this to share some photos with others. Use regular photo sharing.
This is a "Shared Library" and you should only do it between yourself and perhaps a spouse or your immediate family. Or perhaps nobody. Like think about if you share your life with someone and your books, music and other things are all together in your home. Then you may want to also have your photos together. That's what this is for.
As for re-sharing the "link": they should see it if they go to their Photos app, Settings, Shared Library. If they don't you can maybe try to remove them and add them again in your Settings.
@@macmost Very good point re: it’s not a sharing feature. Immediately after creating that photo library I started being cautious of the photos I take whether others will have access to it !
So what would you use if you have a video on your iPhone and want to share it with someone?
@@Kralechka Just the regular photo sharing that has been around for a long while. See ua-cam.com/video/rt2hKEs-ZZU/v-deo.html
@@macmost thank you! Will give it a crack. The video is 40 mins long let’s see if it works
How do you merge the duplicate photos added to shared library?
Not sure. Look and see what is offered. It may different depending on who had the original.
@macmostvideo I really appreciate your detail instructions. I am having a problem viewing Shared Album on iCloud.I have multiple shared albums on my phone but it's not in my iCloud. Is this not possible? Would you mind doing a video on this?
Not sure what you are experiencing. By "in my iCloud" do you mean on an other device in Photos? Make sure you have turned on shared albums there. Note that Shared Albums are a very different feature than Shared Library which is what this video is about.
Hi Gary.. i love your videos.. today i was trying to view two photos at the same time side by side in the photos app and didn't see a way to do it..i know you can do it in preview mode...but is there a way to compare to photos side by side in the photos app? thanks. Norm
You can put those photos into an album and then view the album and enlarge the viewing size. Is there something you are trying to DO by viewing them next to each other? Maybe if I know why you wanted to do ti, I could suggest something.
@@macmost thanks Gary... i am trying to put the photos side by side to compare the before and after comparisons after using photo ai from topaz..just wanted to see the vast difference between the two...Norm
@@normdorosh Ah, I see. Have you tried flipping between them? So view the first one, then right arrow to go to the next, left to go back. Left and right back and forth. But I suppose some people (me) prefer flipping between photos, and other prefer seeing them side-by-side.
thanks Gary... i think i will just put both in photoshop together...but thanks so much for your help
Thanks bunched
I have a question. On a MBP. Is there a way to keep your original photos in Photos. But duplicate them so they are also in shared photo library. So you can manually back up the library from MBP to an external HD.
Not sure what you are asking. Shared Photo Library is a feature designed to help you and your family share the same photos. But you are asking about backing up your library. Shared Photo Library doesn't do anything concerning backing up.
Thanks. I want to keep my original photos in my personal library and also put them on shared photo library. This way I can backup up personal library to an EHD. Ie. Photos will be in two places. In my personal library AND in shared library. Is this possible? As I understand it when you move to share SS library it removes from personal library. I don’t want them removed from personal library.
@@RogerPuzo415 Watch this video again. it explains how Share Photo Libraries work. They aren't in two places. They are in one place but also shared with your family members. If you aren't dealing with sharing with family members, then this isn't the feature to use. Your library is BOTH your personal one (only you) and your shared library (you + family can access). You don't need to have something in both personal and shared. Just always view "both" and you'll see everything without having duplicates.
Thanks again. I appreciate it. Yeah. Great video. But I still want them in two places 😫. I feel safer being able to manually backing up to an EHD. But then want ability to share with family/kids. The shared albums (before shared library was developed) kept them in your personal library and just duplicated them in iCloud shared albums if I’m not mistaken (and still functions that way, correct?). I wish shared library at least gave option to do that. In other words I’d feel more comfortable having a back up in a safe than only using iCloud. But want them available to kids too.
@@RogerPuzo415 So is the problem that you are afraid one of your kids may delete a photo? There are safeguards against that. I think I mention them in the video. But you can also ready about them here: support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248 "When a participant deletes a photo or video from the Shared Library, it moves to Recently Deleted. Only the contributor of that photo or video can delete it from Recently Deleted."
Thanks for the video. So I'm interested in Shared Library because when I use Shared Albums, it seems that Apple completely ruins the resolution of the photos that go into Shared Albums, whereas my understanding is that the Shared Library albums will maintain the original resolution/quality. However, what concerns me is that any participant of the shared library can modify/edit any of the photos that are present. I usually put a lot of time editing the photos I take with Adobe LR, and I wouldn't want somebody else to further make changes to the photos that I contribute (I don't mind if they can download my photos or add their own to the Shared Library). Is there a way to restrict other participants from editing/changing the photos that I contribute to the Shared Library?
A Shared Library should only be with your closest family members. Like spouses, for instance. It is for sharing a library, not for showing others your photos. Using a Shared Album to do that. Not sure what you mean by "completely ruins the resolution." The resolution should be the same, but it is up to the other person how they view it online in a browser.
@@macmost Thanks for your response. And yes I want to both show certain other people my photos and also allow them to download at full resolution. In Apple Photos what i've noticed is that after I've taken a photo on my camera (and after editing in Adobe LR), my jpeg photos are 10-20 MB in size (and they're always 6000x4000 resolution assuming I don't crop anything). These characteristics are maintained when I add these photos to my own personal Apple Photos albums. However, once I copy these same photos into a Shared Album, Apple reduces the resolution of these photos down to ~2305x1537 (and the new size is 1-2 MB). That's what I meant with reduction in resolution or quality by Apple when moving between a personal album into a shared album. Checking back between the original photo in my personal Apple album and the same photo in the Shared Album this change becomes evident through the "Get Info" option of each photo.
@@charlesv1606 I don't use Lightroom so I may not be able to help you there. But sharing online typically does show the user a high-resolution jpg image, not the unmodified image you seem to be exporting from Lightroom. The difference is probably not too much to the eye though. I suppose if you are doing something like sharing source files with clients in a business you may want to use some other file sharing solution, not a consumer one like iCloud.
If you share a library do shared albums also transfer or do they have to be reshared with your shared library partner?
Share albums are separate things.
Hi Gary ,
I am new to mac and i wonder how can I take few audio files and play them one after the other
(Like play all in windows)
Many thanks 🙏
Do you mean in the Photos app, like in a slideshow? Or are you asking about something not involving Photos? If you mean just the files, then you can take them into the Music app and play them there. Or get another third-party audio player like VLC.
@@macmost thank you 🙏 yes I meant playing music tracks
Great video! Thanks. I still don’t get why iCloud Photos Library needs to be turned on. Mine is off as I don’t want my photos in iCloud. I prefer them locally.
You'd need to be using iCloud to use iCloud. This is a feature of iCloud, so you can't do it without that.
Great explanation. Do you know if this new shared library has the same limitations as the old version (maximum number of photos, videos only in 720p quality)?
No. Not at all. This is a share LIBRARY. These are the full resolution files.
I wish the selection for shared or personal library could have a default. Every time I open Photos, it seems I have the wrong one selected...
Hi Gary, not sure what I’ve done. But I shared with my wife. Now I don’t have the photos at all but she does?
Hard for me to guess what you have done. Look carefully at your settings and hers. Look at the top of the Photos app and see what you have selected there too.
So does it automatically share my favorites from my personal album to the shared library? Or is it a separate favorite album that’s only included in the shared library (effectively 2 favorite albums)
This part wasn’t clearly explained.
I think your "Favorites" is just YOUR favorites. You shouldn't see two of them so I'm not sure what you are experiencing there.
Another awesome video on a badly needed function. No doubt majority of people will be in same boat as me and want to share everything with a spouse. Perhaps you can do a more granular, future video on this? Also, is there a way to automatically move any shared photos to a personal library so they are kept locally with a main library?? Thanks much, Gary!!!
If you have Optimize turned off, that is for both your personal library and your shared library. Photos from both will always be local. So no need to have two copies of photos.
Thanks!
It took a bit of fiddling to figure this out. Good thing I had watched your video. I added Titles to all my pictures before sharing them to the Shared Folder but they do no appear there. Why is that?
Do you mean you created a Shared Album? The titles should appear there. Not sure why they aren't for you.
Yes, I deleted all the pictures and after titling them in my Personal Album, shared them again to the Shared folder, but the titles don't appear there!
@@garycard1826 You deleted the pictures? Sorry, I'm not following you. How did you share them if you deleted them?
Sorry, I mean I deleted them from the Shared folder and then shared them again after I added all the titles. But still the titles don't appear on the Shared folder pictures.
@@garycard1826 I guess those just aren't included.
I have a video I sent from another iPhone to MY iPAD! It was a video I wanted to send in an iMessage, so I did, and It was like an eleven hour video. It's been uploading since yesterday morning! How do I see the percentage, or some progress bar? I mean I immediately deleted it from the other iPhone from another account, but I deleted the video from that iPhone and on MY iPad, It's been uploading since yesterday morning! PLEASE HELP!
Sent in what way? I'm not sure what you are using (AirDrop?) but look for a cancel option. I can't see what you are seeing, so you'll need to poke around and look for a solution.
What about with normal shared albums - if a subscriber that is not you adds to that album - is it linking from their library or does it get stored in yours?
So Shared albums, not the Shared Library that I'm talking about in this video? With Shared albums you'd see it and of course you'd have to have a copy of it or you wouldn't be able to see it.
@@macmost Yeah just regular shared albums - if I create one and someone else adds a picture to it - does that go against my storage and end up in my library?
@@landon.cunningham Your iCloud server storage, or your local drive storage? Shared Albums don't count against your iCloud storage. See support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299
@@macmost If you create a shared library - what happens to your system library? Do you know have 2 library files in the pictures folder - or is the shared library fully cloud based?
@@landon.cunningham The Shared Library is part of your System Library. You just have one Library on your drive, but some of those images are "Personal" and some "Shared."
Hi - I enjoyed your shared library video. Is it possible to take a project slide show created in 'My Projects' on my Mac (Ventura) and copy into a new shared album in Photos? I would like to show these on Apple TV or other devices and I don't know how to view a Project slide show unless it's in a shared photo album.
I don't think so. Just create the shared album instead of a Project slideshow. But once you have a Project, you can't do it from that end, you just have to add the same photos. Maybe next time create the Shared Album first, then you can create the Project from the photos in there instead of the other way around. Or, just not use Project slideshows at all. You could always export the Project slideshow as a video and keep that video in your library to show on Apple TV.
I have a MacBook with Ventura and I want to share the photo library with my wife's iPad which has iOS16.3 but there is no icon to let me invite her iPad. What am I missing?
I just said to my wife that one problem with Apple Photos is the lack of a shared library. A quick search resulted in this vlog. Thanks for sharing. Now it would be great if you could include Android without doing an import. My son is on Android and loves the Google verse versus the Apple verse. It would be great if someone came up with third party verse where both Apple and Android could commingle.
You'd need to use an app like Google Photos that is on both. You couldn't do it with Photos, really, since it doesn't exist on Android.
hey there, thanks for this amazing video - question: I follow this process to share my library with my wife, do I have to do it again from my wife's computer so she can add her photos to the pool? Will that automatically merge our two libraries, or will it create two siloed 'shared libraries'?
Yes, she needs to accept the invitation. When she does, she needs to make the same decisions about what to move to the Shared library and what to just have in her Personal library. Then you will have ONE Shared library. That's the whole idea.
@@macmost I have literally been waiting for a feature like this since they launched iCloud, thanks for clarifying !!
@@macmost here's a million dollar question: is there any way to remove duplicates that span each library. if I have the exact same photo on my library that she has on hers, and I want to merge them, it doesn't seem possible. The Duplicates feature disappears when viewing "Shared Library'...any ideas how to work around that?
@@baggetta Maybe something for the future? We just got Shared Library and Duplicate merging a few weeks ago after all.
nope. i go to photos/settings and the only options are general or icloud there is no shared folders option....now what? the version I have is 9.0 is that the problem?
9.0 is current. Are you maybe not using iCloud Photos?
@@macmost I don't think I understand your question. When I use photos it doesn't it automatically use iCloud? Do I have to initiate something or turn it on somewhere?
@@painfullyhonest No. You have the option to use iCloud or not. Look in Photos, Settings.
If it's possible to turn off syncing one album from photos? Not entire Photos.
Using this new iCloud Shared Photo Library? You choose which photos you want to be in your personal library and which to be in your shared library.
Need help!! I'm sharing photos with my wife using iCloud shared photos. The problem is that I can't assign people (facial recognition) to the photos that come from her phone. Is there any way to solve this?
I haven't tried that, but perhaps it just isn't set up to work that way? Experiment and see. Call Apple Support if you need a definitive answer as to whether or not it is supported.
Does it matter if we chose a phone number or an email to add people?
As long as they are linked to the same Apple ID, it doesn't matter much. If someone has a device, say an iPad, set to only get messages from one or more email addresses, and not their phone number, then they may only get that message on their phone. Just use what you normally use to chat with them over Messages.
This was great and I setup my Shared Library with my wife, but I have run into a few limitations. We put ALL photos into the shared library so we can have ONE shared library and really don't use our personal libraries. Here's some limitations with this route:
1) We cannot share any albums with each other or anyone else because shared albums cannot include photos from a shared library.
2) We'd like to also share the albums we create with each other, but because albums are only in personal libraries we need to each create separate identical albums which is too much work.
3) I use MultiCloud to transfer between iCloud and Google photos. MultiCloud (or possibly the Apple API it uses) does not support shared libraries so the tool is now useless.
If you have any ideas for how to address these limitations, we're all ears! Thank you for the wonderful videos!
Not sure what you are running into with the first one. I was able to add photos from my Shared Library into a Shared Album without an issue. I don't see a workaround for 2, and I don't use the app you mention in 3 so I can't help there.
@@macmost On number one, you're right. If you create a Shared album, it will COPY the photos you share into it (thereby using more of your iCloud storage) and can be seen by whomever you share it with. But we may have hundreds of albums so going this route is more cumbersome and uses way more storage. It's cumbersome because we need to do the extra step to share it with the same person with whom we have the Shared Library with and it's more expensive since the photos are duplicated. Also, if we want to delete a photo from our library, I don't think it'll delete the one in the shared album. What I want is to be able to create an album in the Shared Library that is automatically seen by anyone with access to the Shared Library.
Thank you Gary. As ever, you've described a new and rather complex feature brilliantly.
However, it leaves me a bit frustrated - my MacBook Pro purchased 2017(2016 model) will not take Ventura. My iPhone and iPad are newer and run 16.2. And my friends with Mac - most of them, probably not using Ventura.
For my own situation, I'm hovering on buying a new MacBook, but the market, doesn't seem quite ready for me to take the step at this point.
This is the first time since converting from Windows to Mac since 2017, that I'm feeling a bit downhearted about Apple.
so you can’t you create “shared albums” in the shared library?
You should be able to, sure.
I recently set up iPhoto family sharing with my wife. She can see some but not all of the image folders. Then I checked my phone and it's the same. When I look at the thumbnails on the Mac Mini, which is our main computer, I can see that all of them have the sharing symbol in the upper right corner. I can see all of the folders on our MacBook Air no problem. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. There are just over 70k images in photos. It even shows the same number on my phone when I go into settings, iCloud, photos. Yet they aren't all there. Finally I had to resort to asking for help. lol Thank you in advance!
Are you maybe using an older OS on some of those devices?
@@macmost Both phones are IOS 18.1.1 and both computers are using Sequoia.
@@macmost Both iPhones are IOS 18.1.1 and both computers are running Sequoia. Sorry if this is a duplicate reply.
@@tomacquilano1304 Then your next step is to contact Apple Support and get some help to sort it out.
How does the shared library handle duplicates?
Just as you would expect. If there are duplicates, it shows them to you. Try it and see.
@@macmost thanks.
Hello. Having trouble here. I made a shared library but I cant see the photos of my wife. She doesn’t see my photos either. Does anyone know why? On our iphones
You wouldn't see her photos and she wouldn't see yours. You would both see the photos you each designate as being shared between the two of you.
I have yet to see anyone clarify this, so maybe you have some insight… is there just ONE shared library or can I have multiple? Say I want a shared library with my family and then a completely different set of people (friends) added to a different separate library? Is that possible or can you only create (or be part of) a single shared library at a time?
Just one.
You can create a Shared album with your friends for example one album called Party with your friends and another album called vacations with your family
@@pakoserrano6704 That's just the normal Shared Album function that has been around for years. ua-cam.com/video/rt2hKEs-ZZU/v-deo.html
Hi I try make a shared library and add only photos with named family people only. When I add the names it takes all the photos lets say of the whole year 500 photos instead of adding the named photos which are only 100.... how I fix it?
Just select the photos you don't want to include and set them to Personal Library. You can switch photos as you like manually so customize as you like.
A propos photos- I somehow dragged and dropped the photo library into pictures. Mow I cannot reverse the process. Any solution to this?
What did you drag and drop, exactly? The large Photos library file is normally in the Pictures folder. That is its default location.
Thank you for your reply! My Mac is new and I have not noticed a library in Pictures until 2 days ago. At that time I opened the Photo app and chose a photo for editing in Topaz app. When I dragged it, the photo did not drop in Topaz as expected. Instead the Pictures folder opened and there I noted the Photo library and separately the photography I chose for editing. I could drag and drop the photography from Pictures into Topaz, edit it and when done I had a copy of edited photo in Pictures along with the Photo library. Then I had to drag and drop the edited photo into Photo library. However, it seems that was only a copy since the edited photo remained as separate file in Pictures. To avoid duplicates I deleted the edited photo in Pictures. Thank you for your help, regards Ziga TRETJAK
@@zigatretjak75 If you want to edit a photo from the Photos app in another app, use Images, Edit With. See ua-cam.com/video/is7L1nrQT4w/v-deo.html
@@macmost thank you so much, your contribution is very useful indeed!
I never get any notification when photos are deleted neither my other family members. It's just so broken
Quick Question. Let's say I add my dad to my shared library. Can i save one of his photos from the shared library to my personal library and if my dad leaves the shared library will the photo stay in my personal library or will it be removed from my personal library since my dad left the group?
Yes, you should be able to. Plus, after the first 7 days I believe if your dad leaves the Shared Library, you get the option to keep the photos he contributed.
@@macmost awesome!!!
Please help me understand. If I have a photo I want to share with the family, First I have to choose what are my favorite 5 family members. Then, I can only put that photo in the shared album, and then trust the other members wont, crop, edit, delete my only original photo? I see there is a notification i can receive if a photo is deleted. How do I get the deleted photo back? Is the deleted photo in my deleted folder or is it gone for good?
If you don't trust the other people, then they are probably not good candidates for library sharing. But even if they make a mistake and delete one, you can get it back pretty easily. Yes, it would be in your deleted folder.
@@macmost Thanks for confirming.
Did I hear correctly, do all favorite photos get shared?
I don't think so. It is just that all shared photos marked as favorite appear in each users' Favorites album. Test and see.
Is there a way to share all photos BUT screenshots? I use screenshots for reminders but I doubt anyone else would find them useful.
I think that is the default when you choose to share all. I think screenshots are automatically not shared. Also, note you don't need to save screenshots to your Photos library. I assume you mean on your iPhone, right? Just tap the thumbnail after taking a screenshot, then tap the Share button and Save To Files instead. Create a folder to hold them if you like.
I've been hesitant to try shared library because I don't know how it will handle duplicate photos that my wife and I have air-dropped to each other.
Since you decide what to add, just try it and see. Start it off empty, add a few photos each. Then try one of those duplicates and see what it does. Probably both will be there.
If a family has a shared account, and only wants access to their own individual photo stream, what do we need to do ? I let my wife log onto my iPad with her account now my photos are showing in her photo stream
Sounds like when she logged out of your account, she kept the photos on the iPad. Then when she logged into her account it added those photos to her Photos library ("library" not "stream," that was something different). Can't say for sure, but that's my guess.
Hallelujah 🎉
Hi Gary, I have approx 50000 photos in about 50 albums named in year order, but now i have shared my library with my wife she can see the 50000 photos but my album data is not shared and she simply has 50000 photos in a random order, can i share my album data to to maintain the sorted order of our family photos? im using MacAir M1 , Ventura 13.1, IOS 16.2 iphone 12 and and IPAD 9th gen IPADOS latest version too. My wife is IOS 16.2 on an iphone 13, all patches and updates are installed but Apple seems to have missed this vital component off the new shared library function, or am I doing something wrong, does anyone else share their library but successfully include album titles too? thanks
Albums aren't shared, photos are. You both have separate albums, organized as you each want. The photos shouldn't be in random order, but date order if she is viewing them that way.
@@macmost thanks Gary thats a great shame thats pretty useless then, 50000 photos from loads of holidays from three decades all mixed up again is next to useless, oh well, something we wont use then, i thought this would be of benefit to share our family memories !! appreciate the rapid response though !
@@stsxt05 Why are they "mixed up?" They are all dated and some may have GPS if you took them with a phone. I never bother with albums myself. I just look at the dates for a trip and there are all the photos from that trip.
@@macmost Hi Gary , because 30 years ago GPS data wasnt invented lol !! , and to be hionest neither of us can remember what we had for dinner last week let alone where we were 30 years ago, so our photos are sorted by titles reflecting an occasion or place, this is placed in the album title, remove the album title and we have no way of sorting them into a specific holiday or family occasion. Some places we visited several times a year so the potential for mixing photos up is huge. However, Ive just found if I copy the album title and then slect all photos in an album i can paste this to all the photos in the keywords field, im hoping this is searchable !!! thanks for your elp though , appreciate the help Sir
I’m not to fond of the idea that photos are ‘moved’ to this shared library. Sounds like a receipt to have photos lost for good
You shouldn't share a library with someone you don't trust. Plus, if you look at the details there are many failsafes against exactly the thing you are worried about.
How is shared library more useful than shared album?
I try to explain that in the video. Very different things.
I wish there was a way to do shared library, but make the files read only so people couldn't change them.
A Shared Album does that. A shared Library should only be used with one or a very few people that you completely trust, like your immediate family. For "people" you should use Shared Albums.
@@macmost I'm seeing that now. I guess I was looking for a slicker solution than Dropbox for read-only photo sharing (that preserves my file names) with family and friends.
Thanks for the explanation! Great video. I think it's a half-baked solution because only those who have an iDevice
with iOS 16.1 can participate in a shared library, which means I can't share photos with someone on PC, Android, or older iPhone. Also, it's ridiculous to only allow 1 shared library. What if I want to share some photos with my friends and some with my family in original quality? It seems like I have to stick with Google Photos 😢
Actually, someone can. They would just have to use the Photos web app at iCloud.com. But if the others want to use Google Photos then no, you can't share between iCloud Photos and Google Photos, obviously. They are two different systems by two different companies.
How do you share a movie that is a huge file that is NOT in your library? (made with iMovie) I have relatives who are not Mac people (horrors!) and even though I've tried to "share" and they made an iCloud account, they still can't open it. Frustrating!
Use a free streaming service like UA-cam. Make it super-easy for them: ua-cam.com/video/FYP6ttYmWzE/v-deo.html
Very dissatisfied with iCloud 200 GB family storage, sharing a complete library is a drama and the support is hopeless have been struggling with storage since the arrival of Ventura and iOS 16, have been calling Apple for more than 2 hours in total, the supervisors can't figure it out and have put the problem to Apple itself, but that takes so long very unfortunate I feel so powerless except that I can switch to Google
Problem more than 60,000 photos were largely duplicated, I think I'm starting again as head of the family and deleted the family members and deleted all my photos, now my family members have
5 GB standard storage and iCloud tries to download with them 60,000 photos that aren't there, it says they will leave the family account once the 60,000 photos are downloaded, but you can't with 5 GB and iCloud completely crashes unusable for months hopelessly bad from Apple 1 star is still too much.
Be warned, or better yet, ignore them
Thank you for this tutorial. I do not see the value in this. I like shared albums better.
Keep in mind Shared albums are for showing photos to "other" people, not people you want to have a combined album with. Shared albums are lower resolution versions and you have a limit on how many photos you can in them.
@@macmost I did not know that shared albums are at a lower resolution. Even if the invitees are on iPhones? How many pictures/videos in a shared album vs shared library?
@@mehmd1913 I can't remember the resolution limits of the photos, but they have the amount limits here: support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299
@@macmost got it. Thank you!
But i have another question
Right now I create shared album with my family all of them have iPhones and if we go to the beach we create an album called Beach if we go to the park we create another album called park and every body upload the photos of the park and beach and it’s easy to find it
But If I automatically shared a photo how can I separate phtos from the beach and for the park because all the pictures upload to the same shared album
Maybe I don’t understand well the benefits of this functions
So... I just created the shared library and added 21 photos to it. I shared the invite to my family, only to find that this stupid thing shared all 1800+ photos on my iPhone. More broken crap. Deleted.
Sounds like you simply didn't add 21 photos to it like you thought, but added all of them. You could have simply selected them and removed them pretty easily.
This is exactly what I am worried about.
I really don’t see many people ever using shared libraries, it just takes your privacy and throws it away.
How so??? What does it even have to do with privacy at all?
What happened with “just works“? This is way too complicated for the average user. I hope Apple can come with a better solution, easier to understand and to use