“Cannot Load Photos” on shared photo album public website

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“Cannot Load Photos” on shared photo album public website

I have created a shared photo album of about 950 photos and have opted for the option to create a Public Website for the album so I can share it with friends and family. When I go to the link for the public website, none of the photos load and there is a gray triangle with a ! in the middle in place of each photo thumbnail. When I click one, it says “Cannot Load Photo.” The album title, proper number of photos, my name, and the date I uploaded them are all there, but you cannot see any photos. This is true across devices and browsers when using the shareable link to the public website.

iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 16

Posted on Aug 22, 2023 11:16 AM

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Answer 1

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Rosegenoch Author

Level 1

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Aug 23, 2023 3:53 PM in response to chuckbl

Hi there,

Thanks for your response! I was on the phone with Apple for a long time today to try to figure this out and I found a solution that might help people with this same problem! I will detail the situation below.

First we eliminated possible causes for this issue:

We knew that this was not a sync issue because other people invited to the shared album directly could see all of the photos on their own phones/devices.
We knew that this was not a wifi/browser issue because the public website link did not work on Mac, PC, iPhone, etc.
We knew it was not a size issue, because even if I made a shared album with just one of these photos, it gave me the same problem on the public website ("cannot load photo").
We finally found that this was an issue with these specific photos themselves, as I tried making a shared album with other random photos, and the public website worked just fine.

The photos in question were large-size photos from a professional photographer. She had named the photos as: "NAME + NAME - 001" and on and on. I finally figured out (through a lot of trial and error) that the name of the photos (probably the "+" symbol) was causing the issue. I then tried changing the names of the photo files in Finder on my Mac, but when I would then AirDrop the photo to my phone and looked at the photo info on my phone, the name would not be changed (still "NAME + NAME - 001") and a test shared album with this photo gave me the same issue. So then I had to figure out how to permanently rename the photos so that the previous name was not attached anymore to the photo. I found this article which told me how to do it: Changing name of photos using my MacBook - Apple Community

This needs to be done from a Mac with the Photos app synced via iCloud with your phone. You need to select all photos, then Export, and select "Use Title" for File Naming. Then you can export them into a folder on your computer, rename them in Finder that way (since now the given Title will update the File Name) and then re-import them into Photos and then create the Shared Album. The Public Website for the shared album should now work.

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Answer 2

chuckbl

Community Specialist

Aug 23, 2023 10:44 AM in response to Rosegenoch

Hello Rosegenoch,

Let's use the iCloud website to see if the photos from that shared album are accessible from there: iCloud Photos While you won't see the shared album on the iCloud website, we can still utilize it to verify that the photos still appear in your Photos Library.

Additionally, if you create another shared album with only a handful of photos, do you experience the same behavior?

Are you able to view the photos from an album that someone else has shared with you?

Additionally, have you had the opportunity to test this behavior with multiple Wi-Fi networks, and with mobile data?

Let us know, as those details will help us to further isolate this behavior.

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“Cannot Load Photos” on shared photo album public website

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