Share photo library

I’d like to maintain one photo library that both my wife and I share with the folder and album structure intact and editable by both of us. Shared libraries is not useful as the structure doesn’t replicate to the other ID. The only way I can see to do this is for a master library to be maintained on my Mac and any photos taken by my wife imported to that say once a month. Or maybe better to maintain two libraries on an external drive and choose which one to open each time we fire up the Photos app. Any advice appreciated, thanks.

iPhone 13, 17

Posted on Sep 8, 2024 10:33 AM

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Posted on Sep 8, 2024 10:47 AM

When you want to share a library you condo this on an external drive, where you enable the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag. Then you can plug the external drive alternately into your Mac or her Mac and use it from your own user account. Without the "Ignore ownership" flag you would have continually to repair the library when you open it alternately from different user accounts.

Prepare the external drive exactly as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

The drive will need a wired connection. You cannot share a library over the local network.


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 8, 2024 10:47 AM in response to jagsimmons

When you want to share a library you condo this on an external drive, where you enable the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag. Then you can plug the external drive alternately into your Mac or her Mac and use it from your own user account. Without the "Ignore ownership" flag you would have continually to repair the library when you open it alternately from different user accounts.

Prepare the external drive exactly as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

The drive will need a wired connection. You cannot share a library over the local network.


Sep 15, 2024 11:11 AM in response to léonie

Thanks so much for your prompt reply Leonie - apologies for my very slow one. We shall be going down to one iMac but have two iPhones each with our own separate Apple ID's. My wife Jan will have a separate login/user account on the iMac for when she needs it but to make life easy we will use just my account most of the time (two email accounts on the mail programme and all documents and notes kept in my Finder and Notes apps). So the question is how we can import Jan's photos automatically into the photos programme on my account on the iMac. I'm thinking there is no automatic way using Apple software other than to manually import them via Airdrop. The best solution I can think of is via Dropbox so Jan's photo's automatically upload from her iPhone to a Dropbox account which I access on my login and I then drag her photos over into my photo library. Clunky but is this the best I can hope for or is there a better way? If only Apple would allow shared libraries with the folder and album structure intact rather than just dumping thousands of unsorted photos into the other persons account. Thanks again for your help. Kind regards, Graham

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Share photo library

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