Photos library pop-up is not available to enable viewing of shared photos.
IMac [ late 2013 ] with 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 is "up to date" running Catalina 10.15.7.
apparently viewing shared photos is only available if running Ventura 13 or later .
time to replace Mac ?
Earlier Mac models
Shared Library support was introduced in Ventura (macOS 13). Systems before that cannot see photos in Shared Libraries.
There is an older system for sharing photos through Shared Albums, with a different set of limitations such as reduced resolution, suppression of metadata, and item count limits.
After ten years, it my be time to replace that iMac if you need features it doesn't support.
Shared Library support was introduced in Ventura (macOS 13). Systems before that cannot see photos in Shared Libraries.
There is an older system for sharing photos through Shared Albums, with a different set of limitations such as reduced resolution, suppression of metadata, and item count limits.
After ten years, it my be time to replace that iMac if you need features it doesn't support.
You said, "I thought choosing to push photos to iCloud would make them more accessible and reclaim space."
The base iCloud Photos is great for making photos and videos more accessible among your own devices with a common Apple ID. It can ease a storage crunch on a device if you make use of the "Optimize <device> Storage" option on that device, but there are tradeoffs.
Shared Library (as with the older Shared Albums) is for sharing photos and videos with other users.
Time Machine is great for local backup. iCloud Photos is not true backup at all; it is cross-device synchronization. If you delete a photo from your Mac, it will be deleted from iCloud and any other devices connected to the same iCloud Photos library. On the other hand, if the whole library is accidentally deleted outside Photos, you may be able to re-sync a copy from iCloud.
One of the tradeoffs of Optimize...Storage is that Time Machine cannot make a full backup of the photos that do not lie fully on your local Mac.
I thought choosing to push photos to iCloud would make them more accessible and reclaim space.
I'm very disappointed. I guess I'm going to resort to in home backup and for redundancy & time machine
Old Mac not showing shared photos
