Shared Albums in Photos for Mac / iCloud

[interbear]

I can’t get shared albums working on my MacBook Pro 16 running Catalina 10.15.5. A catalogue of recurring problems when I try to share albums with my wife. She has an iPhone and iPad, both running latest iOS 13.5.1, including:

• Shared albums not showing up at all in Photos for Mac
• Shared album invites not being sent to my wife
• On the rare occasions that shared album invites are sent and accepted, photos I add to those shared albums do not appear on her Photos app on iPhone / iPad.

What have I tried so far?

• Wife and I have both signed out and back in to our iCloud accounts.
• Toggling the Shared Album setting on and off in preferences on the Mac and devices.
• Rebooting the Mac in safe mode and toggling the Shared Album setting on and off in preferences. This worked for a while then reverted to not working shortly thereafter.

Any more ideas folks? Or do I need to call Apple support? Thanks.

 

[interbear]

Anyone got any advice on this one? I'm so far failing to get shared albums working at all.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Is the syncing working correctly on your end? That is, can you see your entire iCloud Photos library from all of the devices under your iCloud account? Have you tried sharing an album with another iCloud user with any success?

 

[interbear]

Is the syncing working correctly on your end? That is, can you see your entire iCloud Photos library from all of the devices under your iCloud account? Have you tried sharing an album with another iCloud user with any success?

Yes, I can see my entire iCloud Photos library on all of my devices - MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad. No issues there.

I can also see the shared albums I created on my iPhone and iPad. But not on my MacBook Pro.

Not tried sharing albums with anyone other than my wife yet but will try that.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yes, it seems like a rather odd issue to be having if your devices are working as expected. It suggests the servers are doing what they should and that the problem is on your wife’s side. I actually have something similar with my wife, where my shared album doesn’t pop up on her iPhone, but it does on her iPad. She’s never been bothered enough by it to let me trouble shoot it.

 

[interbear]

Yes, it seems like a rather odd issue to be having if your devices are working as expected. It suggests the servers are doing what they should and that the problem is on your wife’s side. I actually have something similar with my wife, where my shared album doesn’t pop up on her iPhone, but it does on her iPad. She’s never been bothered enough by it to let me trouble shoot it.

Indeed. Although my devices are not quite working as they should, as I can't see shared albums in the Photos app on my MacBook Pro. Despite initially creating them there.

 

[Ray2]

I had the same issue with shared albums and Catalina. Quit Photos.

It could be a user permissions problem. You don’t have permission to save the prefs plist.

First: Go into your user library and trash the com.apple.photos.sharedefaults plist. You may be asked to enter your password to empty trash. Open Photos and reset your prefs.

Some may say just change your permissions. I have found changing permissions in Catalina to be a worst endeavor than simply doing fresh installs of everything. What I did when I wiped Catalina and went back to Mojave.

 

[interbear]

I had the same issue with shared albums and Catalina. Quit Photos.

It could be a user permissions problem. You don’t have permission to save the prefs plist.

First: Go into your user library and trash the com.apple.photos.sharedefaults plist. You may be asked to enter your password to empty trash. Open Photos and reset your prefs.

Some may say just change your permissions. I have found changing permissions in Catalina to be a worst endeavor than simply doing fresh installs of everything. What I did when I wiped Catalina and went back to Mojave.

Thanks. I tried deleting the com.apple.photos.sharedefaults plist as suggested. Then reset preferences in Photos. Unfortunately no difference. Shared albums still not showing up.

 

[Ray2]

The invites not working is pretty much normal in my world. Send links via sms and don’t rely on Apple's invites. They either never show up or show up days later.

Is Shared checked in Photos prefs when you open Photos after a reboot or relogging back in?

I frankly don’t understand the permissions issues I’ve seen with Mojave and Catalina. But if the check is not there after a reboot it’s very likely a permissions issue. If it’s there, no idea. Perhaps there’s another prefs file for iCloud that may affect Shared Albums. Might check.

Also, maybe have your wife create a shared album and send you a link to it?? Might initiate a new avenue for diagnosing.

Lastly, I stopped using Shared Albums 2 years ago. They were too much of a hassle on many counts. I moved to Adobe Lightroom CC and it’s great. If you happen to be a CC user, you might give it a thought. For just sharing, not worth the subscription price if you’re not already a user.

 

[Flying Grayson]

I've just noticed this morning that I'm experiencing the same issue on my 2014 MacBook Pro. I don't often go on Photos on my Mac but it's nonetheless a little frustrating to realise this sync issue.

The issue is solely that shared albums appear to have stopped syncing any photos since September 1st (was that an incremental update release day by any chance?) but iOS devices are unaffected - hence why I didn't notice the problem until using my Mac earlier today. iCloud is syncing my camera roll with no problems, however.

 

[interbear]

This continues to be a problem for me. Shared albums simply not working despite me following all Apple advice. Should I persevere or give up and find an alternative? My requirements are simple - share all family photos - 90% taken on iPhones, 10% on DSLR - easily and with minimal manual intervention. I was hoping iCloud and Photos would be that simple answer as we are all Apple users but it seems not. Any recommended alternatives?

 

[pauligle]

I had the exact same issue after updating my mac pro to Catalina today.
My shared albums were showing properly before and are stil showing properly on my iphone and ipad but not on the newly updated mac.
This worked for me: Go to the Photos->Preferences->iCloud and then toggle off the shared albums for 1 min and then turn it on. This made all my shared albums to appear as they should!

 

[interbear]

I had the exact same issue after updating my mac pro to Catalina today.
My shared albums were showing properly before and are stil showing properly on my iphone and ipad but not on the newly updated mac.
This worked for me: Go to the Photos->Preferences->iCloud and then toggle off the shared albums for 1 min and then turn it on. This made all my shared albums to appear as they should!

Thanks. I tried that when the problem initially occurred and it didn’t fix it for me. I’ll try again though, still haven’t found a decent fix or alternative.

 

[Ben J.]

I had the exact same issue after updating my mac pro to Catalina today.
My shared albums were showing properly before and are stil showing properly on my iphone and ipad but not on the newly updated mac.
This worked for me: Go to the Photos->Preferences->iCloud and then toggle off the shared albums for 1 min and then turn it on. This made all my shared albums to appear as they should!

Bumping this thread as I have only recently began using Photos. I use Lightroom CC/Classic on mac and IOS. I've become a grandfather and my daughter has a icloud folder in Photos w/pics of my newborn grandson.

When she adds pics to the shared album, I get notification on iphone and ipad and the new photos are there. Photos on my mac is silent. Quit/reopen Photos, or restart makes no difference. Only way I found is to toggle the "Shared" option in prefs and I get the new pics. But I have to do this everytime.

Anyone found a solution to this?
I can't go to Big Sur.

 

[hazlebury]

SOLVED. After spending a lot of time on this with Apple, the solution was to boot in safe mode. Then reboot. I had to do this on all my computers.

 

[Ben J.]

SOLVED. After spending a lot of time on this with Apple, the solution was to boot in safe mode. Then reboot. I had to do this on all my computers.

WOW! Thank you.
Worked for me too, on first try.
I'm now getting alerts when my daughter and soninlaw posts new pictures of my newborn grandson.

 

[interbear]

SOLVED. After spending a lot of time on this with Apple, the solution was to boot in safe mode. Then reboot. I had to do this on all my computers.

Nice. I'm going to try this and will advise if it works for me. I certainly hope so!

 

[carolined]

SOLVED. After spending a lot of time on this with Apple, the solution was to boot in safe mode. Then reboot. I had to do this on all my computers.

Just did what you said.....
For the first time I now see shared albums on my Mac Mini. It now seems to be busy synching all my shared albums. .... take a bit of time...... 3/4 now..... back to 0/4... keeps on synching.... 2/4.... 3/4 again.. one by one it is synching all the albums.

And Yess..... they all have synched now...

Really really great. Thank you very much for this suggestions !!!

Cheers,
Caroline

 

[OSXphoto]

SOLVED. After spending a lot of time on this with Apple, the solution was to boot in safe mode. Then reboot. I had to do this on all my computers.

Just wanted to share that the "boot in safe mode" trick worked for me. Here is what I did:
M1 MacBook Air 2020, 16GB RAM, 256GB storage.
First in normal boot mode I unchecked the Shared Albums option in Photo library prefs. Then shut down computer. Then boot in safe mode, waited for boot complete, then immediately shut down again, then boot normally, then enable the Shared Albums option in Photo library prefs again, then started the wait killing the time with deciding on my expectations. Then after a minute or so there they were again.

Thanks!

 

[Substance21]

"It just works!"

sigh...the old days

 

[johnq22]

Worked for me, too! Thank you!
Half of my Shared albums were empty for an unknown reason.
If I added to a Shared album from another device they would show up on my Mac, but nothing I tried would bring in the old pictures until I did the reboot in safe mode as suggested.