Separate work and personal photos on the same iPhone

I want to use one iPhone for work and private life. Everything seems to be fitting my needs except for the camera roll.

I need to keep the two camera rolls separate for obvious reasons: I would not like to have pictures of heavy machinery mixed up with my dog pictures and having to scroll for ages if I need to show something to a colleague. At the same time, the camera is at the moment my only limitation to achive this, all the other services I use enable me to have dual accounts.


I expect some questions so ill reply beforehand:

  • Yes I work with pictures a lot and the scenario where I have to write reports with pictures, share pictures, show them on the spot is likely and it is part of the job.
  • I work in my small family business, therefore I prefer to use one phone for cost reasons and also because I do not see the material need to have two identical things that do identical stuff.
  • I plausbly would be ok with syncing work photos to a different iCloud account.
  • Do not propose me to make folders. That is tedious and too manual given the amount of photos we are talking about.


Android phones have nowadays a great partition for this, I can't imagine Apple is not thinking about something similar.


Thanks.

iPhone XR

Posted on Dec 16, 2025 4:07 AM

Reply
2 replies

Dec 16, 2025 10:39 AM in response to frmbi

I don't use my iPhone camera much but I would guess you could create two albums, one for work and one for personal. As you take the pictures add them to the correct album.


Then when you're perusing the photos with work colleagues you can bring up the work album. Same with the personal album.


Or better yet get your company to get you a work phone. That way you won't risk filling up your storage and have to remove some photos to clear it up.


Dec 16, 2025 10:50 AM in response to frmbi

frmbi wrote:

• Do not propose me to make folders. That is tedious and too manual given the amount of photos we are talking about.

Creating albums or folders is really the only way I can think of to do this with Photos.


Another option might be to use a third-party app like Camera+ and not give it access to your Photo Library. Take pictures in the other app for work, for example, and view them through that app. I'm sure there are lots of apps you could use. That just happens to be one I've used.

Separate work and personal photos on the same iPhone

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.