Shared albums are one of the reasons I have loved Photos. My wife loves to see shared photos of grandkids etc across the years pop up as desktop pictures etc. Also, she isn't savoy with computers and I can share things with her that come from the kids etc.
Since Catalina launched, shared albums, used as a desktop, fails to work as it had for years. Almost all images stored in the saved albums "disappear" from "System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver" with each MACos update. I say most because a few always remain - why those? Who knows? Not Apple
The "work around" I got said that to get the pictures to work as a desktop or screen saver, I had to follow these very high tech directions;
- Open System Preferences and then Quit them from the File Menu. (No red buttons!!)
- Go to Photos and open go to the shared album and open it and select the 1st picture. Then go through each picture one at a time. (right arrow etc). After completing the viewing of every picture, closes Photos.
- Reopen System Preferences and then select the shared album you just went through. It should now have pictures and will rotate etc as before Catalina.
However, if there is an update to MACos, you have to do this all again. Apparently the shared images are temporary and cleaned off the Mac at each upgrade. I have done this 4 times so far. Really fun isn't it?
I expected that an update to Catalina would fix this. But No!! On Feb 11, 2020, I was informed that this is how it will remain. Using the shared photo album images as desktop etc isn't really supported over the long. It was further explained that the "solution" is to copy all the shared images into my library and created an album there. That album could be used as desktop etc. Sort of defeats the purpose of a shared album doesn't it?
If anyone finds or has a better work around. Please let me know.
