Using iCloud shared album links for sharing on social networks?

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Using iCloud shared album links for sharing on social networks?

I’m trying to get away from using Google Photos. At least until they relent and let legacy Google Suite free users buy more storage space.

I have a 2 TB iCloud subscription, and would like to try sharing albums in general, like making links to them on social networks. I have no trouble sharing collaborative albums with specified friends.

This seems to be more difficult with iCloud Photos. I read through this documentation:

Apple Support

How to share albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac

But it doesn’t seem to explain how to do what I want, which is just share a photo or album via a link.

But don’t give recipients edit access to the album. That’s trivial in Google Photos - you just grab a link to an existing album.

I get that iCloud albums come in share and not shared types. So if I want to share some photos I have to create a new “shared album” and put photos in there. And those photos then become extra copies of the original photos, but don’t count against your iCloud storage limit (which is nice).

But what’s the best way of creating albums like that for sharing on a social network?

iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 16

Posted on Nov 7, 2022 2:09 PM

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Answer 1

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,397 points

Nov 7, 2022 2:47 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

I think I see. I had to tap another icon inside the shared album and turn on Public Website. Then there is a share link available

I toggled off the Subscribers can Post because I wouldn’t want just anybody to be able to add photos.

Unfortunately unlike with Google Photos there is no album cover preview. Just the iCloud Sharing message you see. Not very inviting. Is there any way to show an album preview image?

The link does work though. Very awkward compared to Google Photos shared albums.

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Answer 2

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,397 points

Nov 12, 2022 1:44 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

I think I found the perfect solution to this considering:

- Honestly, Apple Photos sharing seems to be flaky (links are temporary for example) and shared albums don't show previews when posted.

- Not wanting to sync all my photos anymore to Google Photos because they won't sell me extra space since I'm a Legacy G Suite user. I'm already paying for their extra 100 GB plan, but they won't let me pay to increase it to 200 GB.

- Yet Google Photos sharing is trivially easy and shared links work well everywhere.

The solution?

Leave the Google Photos app on my iPhone. Make sure Backup is turned off so you're not wasting Google Photos cloud storage space by syncing everything.

If you do that, you can still add individual photos and videos to existing Google Photos albums and just those added photos and videos are uploaded to the cloud. Not much space to worry about at all.

Works just fine.

If Apple ever makes their sharing albums work better I will reconsider this approach. But it works best for now I think.

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Using iCloud shared album links for sharing on social networks?

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