How to view photos from macbook pro using an iPhone 8plus without having the photos on my mac sync to my iPhone

So I used to be able to view my macbook pro’s photo library on my iPhone just fine with a “separate area” called “on my mac”, but (I probably pressed some settings button I shouldn’t have) something went wrong and now I can’t do this anymore.

I want to be able to view the photos that are on my mac using my phone, without having to sync my phone to iCloud for the reason that I don’t want all the albums and photos to show up in my ‘recents’ album or in the ‘my albums’ area on my iPhone photos.

I’m not sure if it is because there has been a new update that prevents this or I did something wrong to change this, but I’m truly at my wits end here.

Thanks in advance for any information regarding this matter!

(The iPhone is a 8plus as I don’t know how to add that info in)