Folder Structure In Shared Libraries (Strategies & Enhnacements)

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Folder Structure In Shared Libraries (Strategies & Enhnacements)

Hello Photos Community - I am generally quite happy with the Photos app. One thing that has been as issue since the beginning is sharing my photos effectively with my wife. I have played with shared libraries but their inability to maintain folder structure effectively renders them useless for us as we have 50,000+ images between us. Simply having that in a flat format and having to create our own organization is really not sustainable, especially since we have been meticulous organizing photos over the years. My question is two fold. One, how do others work around this rather large limitation? Two (for the Apple team), are there any plans to enhance shared folders in the development pipeline? Seems like a rather straight forward request and based upon the community feedback would be a very welcome enhancement. Thanks in advance for any feedback, thoughts, suggesting or otherwise. Cheers, Bryan

Posted on Feb 14, 2026 10:08 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,693 points

Feb 15, 2026 10:41 AM in response to bryankvincent

You are right - the iCloud Shared Photo Library is a bit limited and we can only share the photos and videos, but not the structure of the library.

To work around this limitation of the iCloud Shared Photo Library I am using keywords.

For each album I assign the name of the album to all photos in the album, before I move the photos to the Shared library. That makes it easy to recreate the albums as smart albums, based in the keywords.

I think Apple has intentionally restricted the shared library to the sharing of the media and does not allow to share the albums, because the shared items will become apart of the iCloud Photos Libraries for all subscribers. And they might not like to have their folders and albums cluttered up with additional albums and folders created by others.

It would be much easier, when the iCloud Shared Photo Library were a second iCloud Photos Library, independent of our original iCloud Photos Library. Then we could share a structured library. But this would require to share the photos as duplicates and not to move them out of our personal library into the shared library. We would need more iCloud Storage, but it would be safer and more convenient.

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Answer 2

Feb 15, 2026 8:31 AM in response to bryankvincent

You discuss Shared Libraries, but it sounds more like Shared Albums. Which do you mean? You don't mention Shared Links-- is that because those are more temporary?

I case you'd didn't means "Shared Library:"

How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library on iPhone or iPad – Apple Support (UK)

When albums, libraries, or links are shared, they have an owner who has more privileges than sharees. Is that OK?

One: you don't say if you're using iPhones, iPads, Macs, or what-- makes it hard to discuss strategies. On Macs, for instance, you can have more than one User and more than one Library and more than one iCloud account, but not on iDevices.

Two: the "Apple team" doesn't read this stuff. This is a Community of users like yourself. If you want to leave a suggestion for Apple, go here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Answer 3

Feb 15, 2026 12:18 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Hello Richard and thanks for the prompt reply. I do indeed mean shared libraries. In short what I would like to see is a shared library with a shared organizational structure. I am not really interested in shared links precisely because they are temporary. The main objective here is for my wife and I to have one location to store and share our collective images.

We are 100% an Apple environment (iPhone, iPad, Mac). I am pretty technical and understand the limitations of no more than one AppleID (account) per device. I really do not want to manage more than one ID per any device.

Thanks for the suggestion link, I was unaware of that.

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