Is there any way to retain location metadata for a photo shared to a Shared Album in Apple Photos? I have a Shared Album I use to share photos with my wife, who has her own Apple Account, but the location data is lost when we post photos to our shared album.
iMac 24″, macOS 13.3
It is intentional - the location data and other metadata are removed for privacy reasons, when we share photos to a shared album. And the photos will be scaled down to a small size for sharing.
On macOS 13.3 you can use the Shared iCloud Photos Library to share photos at the full resolution, with all metadata applied. That will give you a better result when sharing photos and videos.
What is iCloud Shared Photo Library?
But you would need to subscribe to iCloud+, as you can only share photos from your iCloud Photos Library.
It is intentional - the location data and other metadata are removed for privacy reasons, when we share photos to a shared album. And the photos will be scaled down to a small size for sharing.
On macOS 13.3 you can use the Shared iCloud Photos Library to share photos at the full resolution, with all metadata applied. That will give you a better result when sharing photos and videos.
What is iCloud Shared Photo Library?
But you would need to subscribe to iCloud+, as you can only share photos from your iCloud Photos Library.
If you view your Shared Album photos an Apple device, there is no way to get to to the metadata.
However, the metadata are still there. I learned this after I installed the "iCloud Shared Albums" app on my Windows computer.
When you do that the app will generate a directory for the shared photos and (after a few minutes) your shared photos will be downloaded there. Just open a photo with the regular photo viewer (I use Photos in Windows 11) and click on the circled "i" on the top line. The data will pop up.
I am not sure if this is relevant, but read on if you do not see the data. When you create the shared album, there is no way to select if you want to keep the metadata. In my case, before I started creating my shared albums, I first shared a single photo. (Just click on the "up arrow in the square box" when you view the photo. ) In that case you will have an opportunity to specify what do you wan to keep. Perhaps those settings are transferred to shared albums, but I am not sure.
Good luck.
Thanks léonie. What's strange is that once I downloaded the photos to my library from the Shared Album, the location information showed up (along with the rest of the metadata), so it must have downloaded the full file from my wife's account.
After reviewing the Apple How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support information, I am going to set up a Shared Photo Library since I do have Apple+ and it appears more efficient than a Shared Album.
Thank you again for your response; you seem to be the Photos guru on the discussion boards.
I found that if you Save it to your library on the phone the metadata is there. I also found that if you look at the photos in the shared album on a Mac computer (I am running Sonoma 14.2.1) that you can see the metadata even in the shared album. This may also be because it is shared by my daughter and she is part of my Apple One subscription and shared storage. Hope this helps.
I have the same issue. I spend a lot of time annotating my photos with background information, which I want others to see. Surely it should be MY decision regarding what information I choose to share. I'm an elderly adult and perfectly capable of making decisions about what's private and what's not. At the very least Apple should provide a toggle that allows metadate to be included or not when sharing photos. I think a blanket suppression policy regardless of the user is nothing short of insulting.
Brian Smale
Is there any way to retain location metadata for a photo shared to a Shared Album in Apple Photos?
