How to Set Up and Use iCloud Shared Photo Library on Your iPhone
While it’s true that Apple has offered Shared Albums for quite a while now, don’t confuse it with iCloud Shared Photo Library because they aren’t the same. This new addition brings several quality-of-life improvements to the photo-sharing experience across your Apple devices.
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What Is iCloud Shared Photo Library?
For the most part, the name gives you an indication of what thisawesome iOS 16 featureis. It’s a place where you can share photos with your friends and family to see at all times.
The Shared Library can have up to six people at a time, and everyone added can view, edit, add, and delete pictures in the library. It’s a fantastic way to create memories and store your favorite moments in one place.
How to Create and View a Shared Photo Library in iCloud
Before you begin, you must ensure your iPhone is updated to iOS 16.1 or above. You must also enable iCloud Photos fromSettings>Photos>iCloud Photos.
Once that is done, the steps to create a shared photo library are pretty simple. Here’s what you’ll have to do:
You can now view your iCloud Shared Photo Library alone or alongside your personal library in your Photos app. Here’s how:
How to Move Photos to Your iCloud Shared Photo Library
As mentioned above, you can move photos when setting up your iCloud Shared Photo Library. If you want to move them later, follow these steps:
How to Choose What You Share From the Camera in the iCloud Shared Photo Library
While you can manually select and move pictures from your Photos app as described above, you can also directly share photos from the Camera app. To enable this feature, follow these steps:
Once you do so, you can choose betweenShare AutomaticallyandShare Manually. WhenShare Automaticallyis enabled, the Camera app will automatically add photos to the Shared Library when it detects you’re with participants. How cool is that?
However, you do need to ensure that Bluetooth is turned on for this feature to work. But ifBluetooth isn’t working on your iPhone, try these fixes. WithShare Manually, you can choose when the Camera app adds a photo to the Shared Library and when it doesn’t.
Another cool feature in this category isShare When at Home. Once you turn on the toggle next to this option, your Camera will add whatever photos or videos you take at home to your iCloud Shared Photo Library. It’s quite a handy feature, especially if your Shared Library is with your family members.
You can also choose what photos to add to your Shared Library directly through the Camera app. Here’s how:
How to Delete Your iCloud Shared Photo Library
All the extra photos and videos may be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you’re privacy conscious. So, if you want to delete the iCloud Photo Library you created, follow these instructions:
Don’t worry about losing everything. As you can see, once you pressDelete Shared Library, iOS will ask if you’d like toKeep EverythingorKeep Only What I Contributed.
All participants will receive a notification about the Shared Library being deleted. If they’ve been a participant for more than seven days, they will receive a copy of all photos in the Shared Library. If not, they will only get to keep the photos they contributed themselves.
Ran Out of Storage in Your iCloud Shared Photo Library?
Keep in mind that the person who creates the library is the one who provides iCloud storage for the entire Shared Library. If you’re a collaborator and aren’t the one who created the Shared Library, then your iCloud storage will not be used up.
If your iCloud Shared Photo Library is out of storage space, it is because the creator’s iCloud storage is full. So, if you’re the one who made it, you will have toupgrade your iCloud storage planto add extra storage.
Use iCloud Shared Photo Library to Create Memories With Family and Friends
Apple introduced iCloud Shared Photo Library alongside iOS 16.1, allowing up to six people to add, edit, view, and delete photos and videos in one gigantic library.
You can manually add pictures from Photos or let your iPhone automatically add them from your Camera app. You can explore many tricks with this new addition, but don’t forget that this is just one of the many great features iOS 16 brings to the table.
Apple introduced some long-awaited features in the iPhone’s Messages app alongside iOS 16, although most of them are exclusive to iMessage users.
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