Apple Photos icloud family album

[DM_DM]

I know this topic has been discussed many times, but still:

My wife and i use one account in google photos to sync pics to cloud.

This is not possible in Apple photos + icloud, we use different icloud accounts.

Does anybody know if this feature will ever be released?

The existing family sharing in icloud photos is not good enough for us.

 

[PeterKeller]

I'd like to know too because this would make subscribing to more iCloud storage worth it!
You'd think Apple would want that.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[zorinlynx]

What you describe is very much possible! Create a shared album and invite your wife to it. Then you can put whatever photos you like in there to share between the two of you.

I have a whole bunch of Shared Albums where I share photos of all kinds with family and friends, including one for my cat photos. It works really well in my experience.

You may have to go into iCloud -> Photos settings and turn on the switch for shared albums if it's not visible to you.

EDIT: I just noticed the end of your post "The existing family sharing in icloud photos is not good enough for us." I don't know if you mean what I just described, but if if you do, ignore this response. I know there used to be something called Shared Photostreams that was clunky and didn't work too well; maybe you're using that by accident? I just don't get how the Shared Albums feature wouldn't work since it works so well for me.

 

[PeterKeller]

Shared photos using shared albums are reduced in size. Also there is a limit to the number of photos you can put in a shared album. (think 5000?)

 

[DM_DM]

What you describe is very much possible! Create a shared album and invite your wife to it. Then you can put whatever photos you like in there to share between the two of you.

I have a whole bunch of Shared Albums where I share photos of all kinds with family and friends, including one for my cat photos. It works really well in my experience.

You may have to go into iCloud -> Photos settings and turn on the switch for shared albums if it's not visible to you.

EDIT: I just noticed the end of your post "The existing family sharing in icloud photos is not good enough for us." I don't know if you mean what I just described, but if if you do, ignore this response. I know there used to be something called Shared Photostreams that was clunky and didn't work too well; maybe you're using that by accident? I just don't get how the Shared Albums feature wouldn't work since it works so well for me.

I meant the shared albums, sorry for not being clear on that. My understanding was that you have to manually share, like press a button to place photos in this album. If i am wrong, i am happy to cancel my google subscription today 😉

with google photos, your camera roll can be background syced to cloud from both our phones.

 

[DM_DM]

Shared photos using shared albums are reduced in size. Also there is a limit to the number of photos you can put in a shared album. (think 5000?)

5000 may not be sufficient, long term POV.

Not sure, why they have to compress- looks like they are copying the pic to different album 😉 Apple goto learn some tricks from Google.

I guess we will have to pay Google for at least for a few years. Apple sure has other development priorities, haha

 

[zorinlynx]

I meant the shared albums, sorry for not being clear on that. My understanding was that you have to manually share, like press a button to place photos in this album. If i am wrong, i am happy to cancel my google subscription today 😉

with google photos, your camera roll can be background syced to cloud from both our phones.

Wow, talk about a different usage scenario! I'd go nuts if every single random photo I took was shared with family automatically. I'm always taking photos of random things that interest me but not much anyone else, especially tech stuff, etc.

If I want to share a photo with family I like explicitly sharing it.

I guess we just do things differently, and that's fine. It just boggled my mind that someone would want to have a directly shared camera roll; it sounds like a nightmare to me.

 

[DM_DM]

its is a lot easier to delete unwanted pics from google photos than explicitly share every time.

99% of our combined camera roll are our kid’s pics. So this setup works well for us.

 

[Fruehling]

iCloud photo sharing sucks big time on the Mac. The shared albums are cumbersome and require me to manually add recent photos instead of automatizing this process. You can't share smart folders to others. And shared albums don't include full resolution photos.

Another issue I have with the sharing options: If you want to share pictures with friends who do not have iCloud after let's say a vacation together, they can't even download the whole shared album all at once. What you have to do instead then is go to iCloud.com (where you can't even search through your own pictures!) select the pictures and share them this way so that others can download all pictures all at once.
Why Apple did not include this functionality directly within the Mac Photos app is beyond me. They did add it to the iOS app ("create iCloud link" for photos/videos), but not for the Mac app which from my understanding should have more "pro" options than a small iPhone.

Google is so much better at sharing and shows how easy it can be. I actually use both services - Apple Photos / iCloud photos to have a local photos library and a decent app to scroll through and watch images and Google Photos for their superb AI recognition and their sharing options, including sharing the whole library with my wife. Apple needs to catch up. That they did not do this with Monterey is a big shame if you ask me. Now we have to wait at least one more year and having more Photos sharing options on the Mac will not even be guaranteed.

This article sums up my frustration quite well: https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/31/icloud-photo-family-sharing/