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Shared Smart Album

this seems like such a basic function... create a smart photo folder and share it within family.

It has been a few years since Hunter Maclean posted this. Is it possible yet?


How do Apple executive share within their familes and friends? manually sharing ??? in 2022?


share across Mac devices and ipads and iphones. seems like others would be interested??


MacBook Pro

Posted on Dec 16, 2022 9:50 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Dec 16, 2022 11:39 PM

To share a selected album you can create a shared album. People without an Apple device can view the shared album in a web browser, if you enable it as a public website.

To share the photos from your smart album:

  • Go to "Shared albums" in the sidebar of Photos, then click "+" to the right of Shared Albums
  • Name the album, then add the email addresses of people to invite
  • Now drag the photos from your smart album into the shared album.
  • You do not have to subscribe to paid cloud storage to use Shared albums. The storage is free. But the items in the shared albums will be reduced in size, so the photos will not be larger than 2048 pixels at the longest edge, and many metadata will be stripped.

For details see: How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support


If you already have upgraded to macOS 13 Ventura and all people you want to share your photos with are also using Ventura, or iOS16 or iPadOS 16, you can set up a Shared iCloud Photos Library instead. How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple SupportOfficial Apple Support › en-us


The advantage of the shared iCloud Photos Library would be, that the items will be shared at the full resolution, with all metadata, like titles, keywords, dates, and the subscribers a work with the shared photos and the adjustments will sync back to your library and the items will be shared in the full resolution. But only the photos will be shared, not the albums or smart albums. The subscribers would have to recreate the (smart) albums. And the cloud storage for the shared iCloud Photos Library is not free.

I am adding keywords for each smart album, for example Antarctica_1999. That makes it easy to recreate the smart album for the subscribers of the shared library. They just have to enter the keyword in the search field on the iPhone or iPad, or as a rule in a smart album on a Mac.



Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Dec 16, 2022 11:39 PM in response to _TC10_

To share a selected album you can create a shared album. People without an Apple device can view the shared album in a web browser, if you enable it as a public website.

To share the photos from your smart album:

  • Go to "Shared albums" in the sidebar of Photos, then click "+" to the right of Shared Albums
  • Name the album, then add the email addresses of people to invite
  • Now drag the photos from your smart album into the shared album.
  • You do not have to subscribe to paid cloud storage to use Shared albums. The storage is free. But the items in the shared albums will be reduced in size, so the photos will not be larger than 2048 pixels at the longest edge, and many metadata will be stripped.

For details see: How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support


If you already have upgraded to macOS 13 Ventura and all people you want to share your photos with are also using Ventura, or iOS16 or iPadOS 16, you can set up a Shared iCloud Photos Library instead. How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple SupportOfficial Apple Support › en-us


The advantage of the shared iCloud Photos Library would be, that the items will be shared at the full resolution, with all metadata, like titles, keywords, dates, and the subscribers a work with the shared photos and the adjustments will sync back to your library and the items will be shared in the full resolution. But only the photos will be shared, not the albums or smart albums. The subscribers would have to recreate the (smart) albums. And the cloud storage for the shared iCloud Photos Library is not free.

I am adding keywords for each smart album, for example Antarctica_1999. That makes it easy to recreate the smart album for the subscribers of the shared library. They just have to enter the keyword in the search field on the iPhone or iPad, or as a rule in a smart album on a Mac.



Dec 16, 2022 11:50 PM in response to léonie

Thank you, I am trying to actually share "Smart Photos Folders" with my wife so as more items are tagged she can see them in various folders.


The concept of "Smart Folders" is excellent. Tag items and they show up in various smart folders.


Having to manually check the smart folder and then upade shared folders becomes very time consuming. It should be as simple as having a sync tag on the picture that sync checked periodically when it syncs other pictures.


I really appreciate your work arounds. I have tags for my smart folder names as well. It is good to know that the tags are available.


It would be helpful to be able to save Photo searches on the iPad and iPhone (like a smart folder😀)! Maybe with a widget or shortcut?? ... hmmm?

Shared Smart Album

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