Duplicates in shared album

Question

Level 1

4 points

Duplicates in shared album

We have 2023 now and still no solution to this problem?

Detect/sort/remove duplicate photos in en… - Apple Community

Me and my wife use iPhones only, no Mac anymore. So please share iPhone-only or browser-based solutions only. No third party software, no third party apps.

Problem: We share photos in a shared album together, for no understandable reasons, meta-data are cut off, so the sort-by-date doesn’t make sense! Apple, why?!? Think twice about it! From a software developer’s view, this makes no sense, if you provide a sort-function after posting in a shared album. My boss would fire me for such a result.

Neither there is no possible way in 2023 to filter images and videos, so that at least I would be able to see files that has not been posted in a specific album.

So what’s the solution? Can’t really be true, that the only way that works for me now is:

Deleting the shared album before posting something
select all my images to post again
Select all the files on my wife’s phone to post in the shared album
create a new shared album
Post everything again
wait for 2 weeks to finish
still struggling with sort-by-date due to missing meta-data

this is sick

I’m sure android users don’t have those issues…

iPhone X

Posted on Jan 6, 2023 11:07 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Jan 7, 2023 1:11 AM in response to Znpzotio

Shared Albums are meant for sharing the photos for looking at them, but not for archiving and managing the photos. Most metadata will be removed for privacy reasons, when sharing photos in shared albums, so we are only sharing the picture but no data with it. And the photo we share will be downsized to 2048 pixels at the longest edge, so we are not dumping too many data onto the devices of unsuspecting subscribers. It is a very lossy way of sharing.

Since iOS 15 we can at least sort photos in shared albums chronologically, and photos we share in the recent system versions are keeping their dates, but that will not help with photos you shared earlier. As you found out, you have to share the photos again, so they will now have a date and can be sorted.

Apple provided an improved sharing method on iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13 Ventura as a successor to Shared Albums. Instead of sharing selected albums with crippled photos we can now share a Shared iCloud Library. See: How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support

Any photos or videos you share in a shared iCloud Photos Library will keep the original quality and all metadata. All subscribers can add adjustments or captions. I recommend to switch to the shared iCloud Photos Library, if your wife can also upgrade her iPhone to iOS 16.

The Shared iCloud Photos Library is Apple's solution to the limitations of Shared Albums you have described.

Reply

Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Jan 7, 2023 7:13 AM in response to Znpzotio

Maybe we have been talking at cross purposes.

Photos on iOS 15 and 16 supports the sorting of shared albums. But this can only work for Photos you are sharing after the upgrade to iOS 15 or later. The photos you are sharing on iOS 15 or later will keep the dates and can be sorted by the date.

For all photos in shared albums you have shared on older versions of iOS the dates are lost, because shared albums are storing their own copies of the photos, specially created for sharing, downsized, and stripped of metadata. So photos shared with earlier versions of Photos will have to be shared again so they will be shared with the date included. And even on iOS 16 the sorting by date will only sort the photos on your device, not for the other subscribers. Each subscriber will have to sort the albums on their device for themselves.

As to the new Shared iCloud Photos Library, look at the link I gave you in my earlier post - you can only share a photos library in iCloud, if you are using iCloud Photos Library on your devices. and while the storage for shared albums is free, the iCloud Photos Library needs paid cloud storage. But you can share the photos with all metadata and adjustments, in the full quality.

See: How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 3

Znpzotio Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 7, 2023 2:50 AM in response to léonie

Since my wife and me use both iOS 16.1 and the described issue is part of this version, I cannot confirm your statement.

hence it would be no problem to ask me with an additional dialog window for whether or not I wish the metadata to be removed I find this ridiculous to just remove them by default and not letting the user know what is causing the sorting issue.

This is still no solution for me to delete the album and to redo all the stuff just to have it in right order (which how I already mentioned doesn’t work as intended). Imagine that I also have a shared album with about 6 family members. So I really don’t want them to readd all our images we’ve taken in the vacation, so this is unacceptable. This is for the sake of user convenience.

Where can I the mentioned library in iOS Photos? There are only albums.

Reply

Answer 4

Znpzotio Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 7, 2023 8:00 AM in response to Znpzotio

Thank you Leonie.

For me, I was talking specifically about the use case for my iPhone and that of my wife. Both iOS 16.1. So this is what I don’t understand why it’s not working. As far as I understood you, it should work as I want it with that version.

I will describe it again. Yesterday I tried to add a single photo, that had been posted to the shared album before (in a batch of 20 images). Then I go to the shared album. I select „sort by date“ and voila: The duplicate image will show after the first 20, not as intended. So I will just let be and check that functionality in 2030 again. iOS once was used to be intuitive and self-explaining. Really disappointing, but anyways better than Alphabet‘s Android.

I will try your suggestion with the library, as I don’t care for iCloud storage usage, as I already paying for a multiple GB in a monthly plan. I just didn’t want to purchase any further software or application on top, so that I don’t have to redo all steps on each device.

Reply