Smart Albums - iCloud photo library

Thats fine if you have one or two smart albums. But insane if you have dozens of smart albums for family members, locations, themes, etc.

If this issue is important to you, please write to Apple about it here, and urge fellow iOS Photos users to do the same.

Photos for iOS - Feedback - Apple

workaround (I know this is tedious and misses the point but....) on your Mac, open Apple Photos, open a smart album, select all the photos in that smart album, go file menu, click new Album, and all the smart album photos will appear in the new album, and if you are syncing your photos to iCloud they will soon appear there and then on your iOS devices. From time to time, you will have to update your album. A have a smart album called Wine which takes all photos I title as wine, and now I have a second one called Wine (manual) because I have to update it manually. There is probably a way to write a script in the Automator app that will do this automatically somehow.

Agreed!

I'm so disappointed by this... I have just bought an Apple Watch and wanted a Smart album of the last 6 months of photos to sync to it. This would also mean it would manage itself, updating accordingly with new photos being added and photos that go past 6 months deleting automatically.

Really hope that they are working on making Smart albums available across ALL devices, not just Photos on the Mac.

I was up for the same thing until I figured smart albums are no longer supported on iOS devices. What a shame!

I just hope smart albums come back with iOS 9 this fall.

I Thought I had done my homework - subscribed to iCloud 200GB and for 1 week my 21,000 library sync'd up and then down to my iPhone. I then realized all my tagging and smart album creation were not coming to iCloud.

This is a real shame. In the world where we have too many photos - smart albums is 1 great way of getting re-use of photos as you can find them "in the moment" and share them with friends or family there and then.

Let's hope Apple can deliver here.

Smart albums do sync to iCloud Photo Library, and the sync very well between Macs.

But the software on the iPhone or iPad does simply not (yet) support the smart albums, because it cannot handle keywords well or other metadata. When syncing photo libraries between Macs with iCloudhowever, the only things missing are the Faces albums and the projects.

I hope the Photos app on the mobile devices will be improved - Photos on iOS that cannot yet handle photo libraries properly like iPhoto iOS could.

Yet another reason I wish I had gone with a shareware database or a more broadbased application like Picassa fifteen years ago when I entrusted my memories to Apple with iPhoto. In five years Apple will be sold, bankrupt, or otherwise obsolete--who knew?

Really disappointing that Apple has not yet fixed this obvious need. Once again, it seemed a lot simpler with iPhoto. And just as surprisingly, having spent 3+ hours on the phone with Apple Support today, no one seemed to know that iCloud does not upload smart albums.

A secondary issue (why won't iCloud upload 1200 of my photos, even though they are recent standard JPEG's taken with the back camera of an iPhone 6) was left unresolved. The recommendation I got involved doing 1200 screen shots and uploading that.

No thanks. I'm on my 15th Mac (no kidding) because I don't want to have to deal with this stuff.

And just as surprisingly, having spent 3+ hours on the phone with Apple Support today, no one seemed to know that iCloud does not upload smart albums.

It is a confusing situation: The smart albums upload to iCloud, but the Photos.app at www.icloud.com is not showing them, and neither do the mobile iOS devices.

But any mac I am syncing with iCloud Photo Library will mirror the smart albums I am creating on another mac. So they are uploading to iCloud and are syncing well between macs.

The recommendation I got involved doing 1200 screen shots and uploading that.

😮 Surely you are joking!

You have signed up for enough iCloud storage, haven't you? Does the iPhone not upload the JPEGs to iCloud, or are they now on your Mac and theMac does not upload them. If they are on the Mac, check, if you accidentally imported these JPEGS as referenced images. Referenced images cannot upload to iCloud. and test, if these JPEGs are readable. Try to export one of the original image files with "File > Export > Export unmodified original ..." and check, if oher applications can edit the exported file.