Sort Feature is not working correctly on Shared Albums

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Sort Feature is not working correctly on Shared Albums

I've been loading photographs from our family's extensive photo album collections my Dad started in the 1950's. It's a long tedious process to scan the photos, clean them up and date them so they appear in some semblance of order. We purchased an Epson flat bed scanner for the large and fragile photos and an Epson FastFoto (autofeed scanner) for standard size photos. The latter is a god send and has saved me numerous hours digitizing these albums. I now have close to 22,000 photos loaded in my iCloud library which currently accounts for about 3/4 of our family albums. Once I've loaded and cleaned up and dated the photos for a given timeframe. I've been putting them into shared albums that I can share with family and friends across the country.

The one big issue I've run into is the shared album sort features. From my Mac, I've found that the date added sort seems to work correctly, but if I add photos afterward they always show at the beginning. This seems correct, but doesn't work for me. The sort by oldest first works, but sort by newest first does not. I assume Oldest and Newest is based upon the photo creation date or adjusted date if it has one. All my scanned photos have adjusted dates.

When I view the shared album on my iPhone 13 IOS 18.1.1, I can't make any sense of the sort by Date Added, Oldest or Newest. None of it resembles the correct sort on the Mac (except sorting by Newest doesn't seem to work). This is extremely frustrating and some of my shared albums have hundreds of photos and it looks like a hodgepodge of photographs to my family members and friends. I spent a lot of putting dates and times on these photos to put them in a chronological order. It should be simple to use that to sequence the album photos. These albums are stories and no one wants to jump around from page to page to read a story...

Any advice would be appreciated. I really not looking for a new Apple Photos feature. I just want the apps to work they way they're stated to work.

Thanks, Mark

iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 18

Posted on Dec 31, 2024 10:38 AM

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Answer 1

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MBlakeley Author

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4 points

Dec 31, 2024 3:16 PM in response to MBlakeley

After some testing on my Mac I realized that all my photos on the shared album I was using all have the same original date. The multi-feed scanner enters the same date I enter for the batch of photos l'm loading. I this case I loaded 176 photos all now showing an original date of .July 1, 1974. Unfortunately when these are loaded there seems to be no recognizable order within the batch even though I scan them in the order I'd like them sequenced. So I then go in and adjust the date and or time to small groups of photos to provide some semblance of chronological order. This works fine in the Library view sorted by Oldest Capture Date (which I assume is the same as Adjusted Date).

When I copy all 176 photos to my shared album it retains that order when the album is sorted by Date Added (to the album) in Oldest to Newest.

It appears that when I sort by Oldest and Newest the Mac application is sorting the album by Create Date and then a secondary sort by Date Added to the Library (but in Newest to Oldest). Since all my photos show the same Create Date in this album it simply sorts the photos by newest to oldest Date Added. So when I tried Oldest and Newest and getting the same result its because they all had the same Create Date, and the difference between sorting by Date Added and Oldest/Newest simply reverse the order since the secondary sort is by Date Added in the reverse order. I tried this on other albums with various creation dates (common and unique) and it's consistent.

With all this said (and I'd appreciate anyone's feedback), Apple should be brining the Adjusted Date over to the Albums and using that for the Oldest/Newest sorting. Then I think I'd be one happy camper.

I'll now turn my sights on the iPhone app. It's giving me different results and would like to understand why.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Dec 31, 2024 11:08 AM in response to MBlakeley

Mark, when I sort a shared album by "newest first" on my iPhone with iOS 18.2 it matches the sorting on my Mac (Sequoia) with "Sort by date, descending" .

You may want to try if updating the iPhone will help.

Have all photos been added only recently to the Shared albums, after Apple stopped stripping the dates from the photos? Or are there still photos in the shared albums, that have been shared, when the dates have been stripped?

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Dec 31, 2024 1:17 PM in response to MBlakeley

I tested with photos taken with the iPhone.

I'll repeat the test with scanned photos, where I adjusted the date on my Mac.

Added: For the scanned photos it is a mess. The date I adjusted in Photos does not show in the Shared album. The photos in the album are showing the date the photos have been scanned.

Only for the photos where the date has been corrected before importing them to photos the date in the Shared album is the correct date.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Dec 31, 2024 1:52 PM in response to MBlakeley

Which system version is running on your Mac?

On my Mac with macOS Sequoia the info is showing also a wrong date on quite a few shared photos on the Mac, when I open the Info panel in the Shared album.

For example,

for a very old family photo I have adjusted the capture date in Photos to April 16, 1944. In the Shared album the date is now December 1, 2024.
Another photo, where I adjusted the date to August 23, 1928, is now June 22, 2023 in the shared album.

I am seeing the wrong dates also on my iPhone, when I view the photo enlarged in the shared album. then the date is shown above the photo.

It does not seem to be a problem of dates older than 1970 - I am seeing the sam problem for dates newer than 1970.

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,597 points

Jan 1, 2025 6:03 AM in response to MBlakeley

On my Mac the Photos.app is setting the file creation date to the first of January, 1970, when I export a photo from Photos, where I adjusted the Date in Photos to a date before the first of January, 1970. If the adjusted date is newer than 1970, Photos will write the corrected capture date the to the photo as the new file creation date.

I have to use Houdah Geo to adjust the capture dates before importing the photos to Photos.

The first of January 1970 is the start of Unix Time, as you probably know.

It is strange that in your case the date July 1, 1974 is used, the date when Australia switched from Miles to Meters.

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Answer 6

MBlakeley Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 31, 2024 1:12 PM in response to léonie

I updated the iPhone and now at 18.2.

There’s no difference in my iPhone sort. Newest and Oldest are the same with no change in sequence. Date Added is different than the others, but it makes no sense and is different than the Mac (which looks right).

These photos were added in the last 2-3 days.

Is there a way to see what dates if any are on the album data links?

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Answer 7

MBlakeley Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 31, 2024 2:00 PM in response to léonie

I'm running Sequoia 15.2.

Really a head scratcher... I'm going to test a few more things, but it would be nice to know how the application(s) are designed to work with these dates. I'm ok with having to recreate old albums as long as I can assure a result that the photos will be sorted by oldest, newest or date added...

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Answer 8

MBlakeley Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 1, 2025 7:21 AM in response to léonie

I did not know about the 1/1/70 Unix time. The software on my Epson multi-feed scanner allows me to input the date for the batch of photos being loaded. Rather than scan small batches with individual dates, I upload up larger batches with a single date and then select small groups in the library and adjust the date. I could load the photos in small batches but it's more work/slower and somewhat defeats the purpose of the multi-feed scanner.

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Answer 9

MBlakeley Author

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4 points

Dec 31, 2024 11:25 AM in response to léonie

Leonie, just curious are these photos you loaded manually (scanned) and adjusted the dates in your library or digital photos from your iPhone?

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Answer 10

MBlakeley Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 31, 2024 1:29 PM in response to léonie

What doesn't make sense to me is that it works differently and correctly (except sort by newest) on my Mac. Are they looking at different elements on the Mac version?

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Sort Feature is not working correctly on Shared Albums

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