iCloud Family Storage Sharing Now Working + Questions

[VSMacOne]

anyone know if the current macos beta has this setting available? i know you can turn it on in iOS11 beta but what about macos beta?

I can see it in iCloud Settings on the latest macOS beta but I'm not sure it's there because I already enabled it from iOS 11 or not.

 

[zorinlynx]

Is there a way to share iCloud storage with someone who is not part of a Family group?

For example, I have plenty of free storage and would love to share some of it with my mother, so she can do backups and store more photos without having to pay herself. But I definitely don't want to have her purchases on my credit card as is required with the family sharing! Is there any way to do this?
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Maybe I've missed the focus of this thread but yeah that's exactly what apple has - iCloud Photo Library (ICPL). It will store as much iCloud storage space as you pay for. I currently have 2TB because these twits are making me duplicate my library in the cloud because I moved Photos for OSX between drives on my iMac.

Theoretically, ICPL can be used on your phone/iOS device and will display thumbnails for your library(not full copy until you select to view it full size). However the implementation is absolutely horrible at least for large libraries. I had to upgrade to paying 20, thankfully now 10 a month, for 2 TB and it just simply does not work. I have tried it on an Air 2, a 6 plus, a 6S plus, a 7 plus, and Ipad pro 12.9. It cannot function with the library as large as mine. The app crashes all the time and can never actually show all the pictures further back. I let it sync for weeks and even well over a month to try to sync up from my existing ICPL in the cloud. Complete fail. Apple support just threw up their hands when I called a few times and said it just is what it is.

It's exponentially embarrassing/pathetic for Apple since for FREE, Google photos does all of what Apple promised and more while doing it flawlessly (granted it's not 100% 1:1 archival but tests have shown negligible differences). Apple even went so far as to copy parts of google photos in its last update.

I've seriously considered dropping ICPL completely but then they lowered price down to $10 so I'm just keeping the status quo for now.

Is it possible that something is corrupted in the library on Apple's end? I very occasionally see a story like yours and have a hard time believing it because it's just been so solid and reliable for me.

Maybe contact support and have them completely wipe the iCloud library on Apple's end. Then re-upload your library (I realize it will take a long time). This will probably resolve your issues.

Most of the people who I see having problems are people who started using iCloud Photo Library during the beta testing period. Did you?

 

[VSMacOne]

Is there a way to share iCloud storage with someone who is not part of a Family group?

For example, I have plenty of free storage and would love to share some of it with my mother, so she can do backups and store more photos without having to pay herself. But I definitely don't want to have her purchases on my credit card as is required with the family sharing! Is there any way to do this?

The only way to share storage is with Family Sharing. You can add your mother but keep iTunes Gift Cards loaded on her account in order for her purchases to default to the gift credit.

 

[schaf]

It's simple. Apple, along with every other tech company in The Valley, heavily discourages having a family. Just look at their new campus. They have space for every service you could possibly want. What's the one service they left out? Daycare. They want to remove every reason for their employees to need to leave their desk. They want to pay their people tons of money as a justification for working them to the bone. Once people burn out they nudge them toward the door so they can hire fresh blood. Not speaking from experience, this is just what I've heard about Apple and all the other large companies in The Valley.
Again, exactly. Apple employees don't grasp features that work for families because many of them don't have spouses and children.

The situation I outlined above is exactly why, as a software developer, I will never move to California, or work for a software company based in California.

Regardless of your feeling toward large tech companies or any stories you may have heard about employee/family treatment. The fact that there is no shared iPhoto library just isn't true!

In fact one of the first things you see when you set up family share is a list of what is available to be shared, one of them is a "Family" shared photo album. In which anyone that is added to the family share may add and manage photos in the shared album. You don't have to be using the same account on your mobile devices nor do you have to have a second iCloud account added in your mail settings.

You simply need to have your shared albums visible in the photos section in your settings, and add the photos/videos you want to to that shared album.

Keep in mind that photos will not sync there automatically, AND no one should want to! I'm sure there are people out there that have some photos or videos that they would not want to be shared with everyone!

 

[garethjs]

works pretty well

I was wondering why I had to go hunting for the option to share iCloud storage and then when I found it it told me I needed at least 200GB in order to share. I've only used 3gb on mine. And then I remember my fiancé who is a family member is on the 200gb plan and has used at least 80gb. So it realised I need at least 200gb to share

 

[darknyt]

Regardless of your feeling toward large tech companies or any stories you may have heard about employee/family treatment. The fact that there is no shared iPhoto library just isn't true!

In fact one of the first things you see when you set up family share is a list of what is available to be shared, one of them is a "Family" shared photo album. In which anyone that is added to the family share may add and manage photos in the shared album. You don't have to be using the same account on your mobile devices nor do you have to have a second iCloud account added in your mail settings.

You simply need to have your shared albums visible in the photos section in your settings, and add the photos/videos you want to to that shared album.

Keep in mind that photos will not sync there automatically, AND no one should want to! I'm sure there are people out there that have some photos or videos that they would not want to be shared with everyone!

There is no shared family iPhoto library. A folder is not a library. It doesn't function the way many of us want it to. We want it to function just like it does individually. I want it to be seamless, automatic, and "just work".

If I have to manually select EVERY item to be shared then that destroys the very concept they championed.

Again, Apple treats families like loosely connected groups of adults. I do, in fact, want every picture to be shared, but I realize that's because I have young kids who aren't cluttering up the stream for now. The fact that Apple tells us why we don't really want what we want is infuriating to a lot of us.

Hence we share iCloud accounts to get the functionality we need.

 

[Within Reason]

I've been asking for a shared library with my wife since iCloud Photo Library was in beta.

The fact that there is no shared iPhoto library just isn't true!

You say there is a shared photo LIBRARY, but then you give instructions on how to use a shared photo ALBUM. This is very limited, and not what people are asking for.

Keep in mind that photos will not sync there automatically, AND no one should want to!

This is simply not true. Do not mistake the fact that you don't want to have this for your opinion that no one wants this. I want it for myself and my wife. Every photo we take goes into the family photo library, which is then curated by us. My wife, as another commentator stated for his wife, is not really interested in managing a photo library, she just wants both of us to be able to take photos and for both of us to have be able to view the library. This is most easily achieved by having a shared library, and the lack of it is why myself and others have abandoned iCloud Photo Library for services like Google Photos where we can share a library yet keep our phones separate. I'll come back to iCloud Photo Library at the drop of a hat if they make this available.

I'm sure there are people out there that have some photos or videos that they would not want to be shared with everyone!

A shared photo library would not be for those people, true, that's what social media is for. A family is not 'everyone', and I know for a fact that there are people who do not have some photos or videos that they would not want to share with their partner. I'm one of them, and others in this thread are asking for this facility.

 

[luiss]

I gave up on sharing a photo library with my family years ago. We went through great lengths on the Mac w/ iPhoto to share a library and it was worth it at the time due to the relatively high cost of storage at the time. Eventually just forked the photo libraries as our main use of the libraries switched from the computer to the phone. Life is much simpler for us this way. It's trivial to share photos that we all want (in addition to my wife I have 4 teenaged children) using the shared albums (with an optional import into your local library) or simply transferring the files via iMessage, Airdrop, etc...sharing it easy. Now each family member has a library with the photos that they are interested in and no one ever seems to complain. My wife and I have the largest overlap (we each have about 50,000 photos in our libraries), whereas the kids only ask for specific photos/events occasionally (if at all since they take their own photos). Other than the duplicates across the libraries, we find it much simpler than trying to manage a shared library.

I'm not saying this is a better way for everyone, but I would suggest that you consider the simplicity of simply having separate libraries and sharing photos as needed.

 

[darknyt]

I'm also considering leaving Mac entirely and converting everything over to PC and using something there, perhaps Google Photos.

Say what you will about being a product, that thing just works ridiculously well so consistently for us that it has to be embarrassing for Apple that someone is beating them at their own paid game for free.