New shared albums created on iPad not showing in MacOS

Question

New shared albums created on iPad not showing in MacOS

I created 2 new shared albums on my iPad (iPad 9, iPadOS 17.2) today. They are visible on both my iPad and iPhone (iPhone SE 3rd Gen, iOS 17.2.1), but do not appear in Photos on my MacBook Pro (2020 M1, Sonoma 14.2.1).

All of my other shared albums behave normally.

My iCloud storage is comfortably under its limit, and none of the system limits (that I know about) for shared albums have been exceeded. All of the photos themselves show up in iCloud Links, presumably because the photos themselves are synced across all 3 devices. But the shared albums are not listed in iCloud (even the old ones that are behaving normally). The Activity item under Shared Albums on my Mac does not show the photos as added either.

Looking through the Community posts it seems this is a pretty common problem (and has been for quite a while), but none of the use cases exactly match mine (most of them are not seeing shared albums at all, and have inadvertently hidden them), and none of the recommended fixes seem to have any effect.

MacBook Pro (M1, 2020)

Posted on Jan 17, 2024 5:02 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

wendysboyfriendjames Author

Level 1

70 points

Jan 18, 2024 3:37 AM in response to wendysboyfriendjames

We got it resolved, but I'm going to leave this here for those who follow. Also for any Apple Developers that might be trying to work out how to fix it for real, because this is really a workaround.

The problem appeared to be that the person I'd invited to share the 2 new albums hadn't yet gotten the invitation, and for whatever reason, in MacOS, that shows up in Activity. Once she accepted the invitation, the new albums appeared on my MacBook, as if by magic. So that's how you jiggle the handle, I guess. Your first invitee make the magic happen by accepting the invitation. Go figure.

Reply

New shared albums created on iPad not showing in MacOS

Similar questions