iCloud Shared Photo Library
As Apple presented it, it seemed like the shared library would be tied to the Family Sharing system; the six users are the six people in your Family Sharing group. That would certainly be the Occam’s razor approach, removing the need for additional account management steps. However, apparently, that is not the case and the “up to six users” can include people that aren’t in your Family Sharing circle. That definitely opens up the feature to be useful to groups of people who want to share their photos but are not neatly contained into a single household, with just one shared payment method between them. It does raise some finicky questions, though, like how exactly does iCloud allocate the shared library’s storage. If someone contributes a photo, does the file size count against their personal iCloud storage quota, the person who created the shared library originally, or a wholly separate bucket altogether? Who pays for it, if you need more space? Who is in control of adding and removing people? Can you be removed from the shared library against your will, and if that happens, can you get a local copy of all the pictures of you before you lose access?
Previously:
- macOS 13.0 Ventura Announced
- iOS 16 Announced
- Catalina No Longer Caches Shared Photos Locally
- Missing Family Support
- Backing Up Shared iCloud Photo Albums
The old Photos shared albums are worse in every way but one: they were more social. The new Shared Library has no way for individuals to like or comment on pics.
In fact, if you heart a pic in the Shared Library, it hearts it for everyone … which feels a bit silly.
