new Photos app sharing library across users

Note that the app can't be running in both users at the same time.

And even this solution will not allow you to share the system photo library between users. if you enable a library as your system photo library, because you want to use it in other applications, the library will always be in use by the system as long as you are logged in. You will have to log off before someone else will be able to open the Photos Library. Putting the Photos Library on an external drives to share will work for any Photos Library, but not the System Photo Library, unless we log off, when the second user wants to use it.

Interesting. I recall having that experience under Yosemite, but after recently re-mapping the permissions under Yosemite with the shared system library, it seems to be working as expected with both users. I had it set as the system library for one user and not the system library for the other user when I ran the permissions update. Then I claimed it as the system library for the second user and logged out of both users. Then I logged back in as the first user, launched, checked to see if it was still the system library for that user (it was), took a screenshot and dragged it into the library, and it worked. I then quit the app and fast user switched into the second user. Launched the app, saw the first screenshot, took another screenshot dropped it into the library and it worked. Quit the app, Fast user switched back into the first user and both screenshots were there.

I'll keep playing with it and see if something comes up at some point, but for now, it seems to be working.

Yes, please report back, if you have new results. I'm continually getting "Library in use", if I try to open my system library from the second user account, even on an external drive with permissions ignored.

Trying it again, and it's still working consistently for me, running Photos 1.5 and El Capitan 10.11.5.

Here's a screenshot of my Activity Monitor. There is one instance of Photos and one instance of Photos Agent running, as well as two child processes to Photos. these are the active user. Both the Active and Inactive user are concurrently running the photolibraryd process as well as it's two child processes.

In addition, I've noticed that quitting the Photos app kills the child processes for it, but doesn't cause Photos Agent to stop running. However, if I fast user switch to the other account, and open activity monitor in the other user, I once again see only the Photos Agent process for the active user, not the inactive one. In addition, I don't have to relaunch Photos in the other user for the Photos Agent process to appear; it seems to restart by itself. It's as though Apple silently changed something, and now Photos Agent is now being quit automatically when switching away from one user, and then restarted automatically when you resume. Perhaps this was an undocumented change in a maintenance release. Are you running 10.11.5 and Photos 1.5? Perhaps you can retry applying the group and ACLs and post your results?

I cannot test it on my main system photo library, because I do not want to move it out of the Pictures folder an risk again an endless upload to iCloud Photo Library. I tested with a separate library that is not my system library, but the system photo library in a differnet user account, and that seemed to work. Hopefully this issue has been fixed in OS X 10.11.5.

I too have been using this approach for years with Aperture. Recently I was forced to migrate my library from Aperture to Photos because we were making a book and Aperture is no longer supported. After the library got upgraded only one person can open it. The custom ACLs are not only ignored but oddly enough detected by Photos as incorrectly set permissions!!! Photos offers to fix the permissions but it fails. I have a fair amount of experience with UNIX and I have never come across a user-level application that insists that it must run with particular permissions and attempts to fix permissions if they are different. This is just plain wrong. Not to mention incredibly annoying.

I am now stuck with crummy Photos app and I cannot go back to Aperture. Sure I can still use it for new photos and I can restore my Aperture library from backup but I shouldn't have to resort to such tactics. I am very annoyed with Apple for this. Apple software is just getting worse and worse at an accelerating rate. Such a shame.

Your mistake is to assume that a give-away consumer app is somehow a replacement for a pro-level $80 one. But you are not stuck with Photos. Yes you can go back to Aperture, and there are 3rd party options for printing Aperture books, but Aperture is a dead end. You need to find a like-for-like replacement.

I would suggest it's difficult/annoying/challenging to do, largely due to the fact you shouldn't be doing it.

Call it what you wish and be disappointed if you want, but Photos is not a sophisticated photo database manager in the manner that you want or need it to be. This happens.

As noted, find and use the tool that meets your requirements instead of trying to micromanage an app at the UNIX permissions level you don't even like.

OK, I refused to give up and most importantly I refused to believe that Apple would somehow cripple the ACL mechanism or make Photos undermine it. I tinkered with my photo libraries (250+GB) and I fixed them all.

• I moved all of my Photos libraries out of the shared folder with custom ACLs
• I recursively removed all ACLs from all Photos libraries and all their constituent files
• I re-inspected the clean files and I noticed this:

[tomek@koan-wiifi Shared]$ ll -@

total 0

drwxrwxr-x@ 18 nada friday 612 11 Jul 17:17 Family Photos.photoslibrary/

com.apple.FinderInfo 32

com.apple.quarantine 46

What's "com.apple.quarantine"? I checked it and removed that extended attribute with:

sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Family\ Photos.photoslibrary/

• Next I deleted the original shared folder and recreated it with the following ACL:
  • group:friday inherited allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,re adextattr,writeextattr,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit
  • the above will ensure that any files and/or folders created in the shared directory will correctly inherit desired permissions regardless of which user causes the file manipulation
• Finally, I moved the cleaned up Photos library back to the shared folder. IMPORTANT: I used Finder to do this. By using Finder you ensure that everything you move into that shared folder will correctly inherit the right file permissions and ACL entries.

Next I tested the result and all works as expected. This solution should work for everyone.

cheers,

-tomek

tomek,

Does your ACL-fix allow 2 different user accounts on the same Mac to launch the Apple Photos app at the same time and access the same photo library?

launch the Apple Photos app at the same time and access the same photo library?

That is a separate problem, independent of the access control lists. Apple is trying to prevent concurrent access to the Photos Library, because two users writing to the photos library at the same time could erase each others edits and make the library inconsistent. Photos has noprotection to synchronize concurrent database transactions. If one user has the library open, the other will see a warning like below that the library is in use and cannot open it.

If there is an additional ACL problem, you might see instead a warning about a permissions repair that failed.

YItem ember, at the end of the day, photos is maintaining a database, and you can't give multiple systems write access to the same database file at the same time, otherwise the database would easily become corrupted. when you quit the app in one user account before opening it in the other, you're releasing the write lock to allow the other user write access.

if you need that, you're looking for an asset management that uses a server to host the database and all your other computers / users access the content by requesting it through the database server. You can run your own server or use one in the cloud.

Check out GlobalEdit (cloud) or Canto Cumulus (local) or any of at least a dozen others in that space. But unless you're a professional photographer you won't want to pay for it. So use Google Photos, Flickr or the like. Photos simply isn't the tool you're looking for, and it never will be.

but all of this begs the question, why do you need to leave it open in the user you're switching away from anyway? is that user logging in remotely via back to my Mac and you want both users working at the same time?

Why leave Apple Photos open?

I guess some of you aren't married.

My wife and I share the same iMac with 2 separate user accounts. She logs into her account and uses the machine, and she often leaves her apps open when I log into my account. Sometimes we both want to view photos. I do the editing, she just wants to browse photos and perhaps drags JPGs to the desktop for submission to online printing services. But I don't want to switch to her account only to close apps.

And there you have it.

My wife and I use the shared library for the exact reason and in the exact way you do. I would say that the complexity and cost of setting up a client/server based asset management system for us is easily avoided by teaching ourselves to quit Photos before fast user switching into our own account. Two clicks. took about five times to train myself.

Training myself is easy. Training one's wife... Well... :-)

Let's just say that an improved Photos app from Apple would make marriages even happier. Let us keep the app open and even make edits -- no shared folder or external HDs required. It is 2016, after all. This sort of thing shouldn't be that hard. And since numbers talk, consider well how many married couples there are who have situations and needs just like this.