Yosemite Photos App Shared Library

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Level 1

10 points

Yosemite Photos App Shared Library

Just downloaded 10.10.3 and am migrating to Photos. On iPhoto I used to have the iPhoto library in the Shared folder, and all logins pointed to that library when they opened iPhoto in their own account.

Then Apple stopped this, and I went through lots and lots of pain until I realised this, with broken permissions, rebuilding libraries, recovered photos and the like.

Now Photos is here, I would like to be able to share one library across all our accounts. This would mean that all our photos were in one place, but our own photo streams would be visible when we logged in to our account, and when we wanted to share photos to Facebook, Twitter, etc, it would do it to our own accounts linked to our login.

Does anyone know if Apple has enabled this again, or whether it is still blocked?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD

Posted on Apr 11, 2015 6:44 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,743 points

Apr 11, 2015 6:55 AM in response to Teddosan

I have not seen any indication, that sharing the Photo Library on a Mac in a shared folder has been brought back.

The Sharing options for Photos are pretty much the same as for iPhoto and based on Shared albums.

See the Photos Help page: https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.0/?lang=en#/

And look at the section "Share your photos and videos".

To share your Photos library on the Mac, use the same cumbersome procedure as before with a sneaker drive: iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users

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Answer 2

Teddosan Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 11, 2015 7:12 AM in response to léonie

Thanks Leonie.

I feared that would be the case, but was hoping otherwise.

It doesn't seem to be too much of an issue at the moment, as Photos keeps crashing. I keep reopening it, and it keeps crashing again. It's already sent about ten crash reports to Apple!

Think I'll stick with iPhoto for now, as Photos seems to be unusable for me.

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,308 points

Apr 11, 2015 7:28 AM in response to Teddosan

Like iPhoto, the Photos Library has to be on an external disk, formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and set to ignore ownership and permissions, to do what you want.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

194,743 points

Apr 11, 2015 7:28 AM in response to Teddosan

You're welcome.

If you are not in a hurry to migrate, it will be easier, if you wait, until the first bug fixes are out.

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Answer 5

Apr 11, 2015 6:56 PM in response to Yer_Man

So, it is possible to store the Photos library on an external hard drive? How can I make sure my external hard drive is formatted like you said? I'm really upset that I upgraded to Yosemite without knowing it was going to make my photography a nightmare. I never would have done it had I known I was dumping all my iPhoto and Aperture work. My previous libraries were stored on external hard drives to save disk space. I can't do the iCloud storage as it will run out of space and I'm not in the mood to give Apple any more of my money for the pleasure of storing my photos. Any advice you can give would be helpful.

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

194,743 points

Apr 11, 2015 7:02 PM in response to limegreensuzyb

This describes how to format an external drive for Photo Libraries:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201909

Remember, formatting will erase a drive. You have to copy the contents to another drive, to save it, before you format the drive.

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Answer 7

Apr 12, 2015 4:29 PM in response to léonie

Thank you Leonie. I did as you suggested. I got my hard drive formatted and put my photos library there. I am still unable to import my previous iPhoto library even after hunting down the Masters in the package contents for my iPhoto library. Photos crashes every time I try. Any suggestions for how to get my photos back?

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