iCloud Photos with more than 1 Apple ID

Question

Level 1

8 points

iCloud Photos with more than 1 Apple ID

My wife and I have different Apple IDs for all sort of reasons (not wanting to mix our contacts being one), but the IDs are joined together with the Family facility in iOS8.

However, there does not seem to be a way of bringing the family photos together with the new Photos app on the Mac. It only seems to support 1 Apple ID. Of course I can use the share facility. But I have to do that for each group of photos as I take them. There is no facility (as far as I can see) to say "share all the photos in my library (existing photos and any more I take from now on) with my wife".

We are not the only ones with this problem. Other couples have been complaining about it to me as well. This week I have to do some work for a family with 5 different Apple IDs, no idea what to tell them. In a way it used to be easier in the old days when everyone in the family used the same Apple ID, but we are trying to move away from that now (as Apple are) to separate out other settings and preferences. Only it has broken the gathering of the family photo collection.

Is there away around this?

Mac mini, iOS 8.1.1

Posted on May 17, 2015 8:15 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

207,337 points

May 17, 2015 11:27 AM in response to Ratbatty

You might look into the family sharing feature: https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-sharing/ However, it might be more than they want to share. I've not used it so the link is all I know about it.

Reply

Answer 2

Ratbatty Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 4, 2015 6:37 AM in response to Old Toad

I tried out the sharing, it looks like Apple have not considered this scenario, but I think they need to if they want to have full family support.

I can select a group of photos that I already have to share, but I can't just say share everything, including any new ones I have not yet taken. Of course this used to work when the whole family was on one Apple ID, but they have broken it by encouraging us to move to separate IDs.

Reply

Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,337 points

Jul 4, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Ratbatty

Another option is a Shared Photos Album that's set to allow others to add to it and make comments. Photos can be added to it at any time. This Apple document explains it in detail: iCloud Photo Sharing FAQ - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 4

met_fan

Level 1

18 points

Oct 9, 2015 6:48 PM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad wrote:

Another option is a Shared Photos Album that's set to allow others to add to it and make comments. Photos can be added to it at any time. This Apple document explains it in detail: iCloud Photo Sharing FAQ - Apple Support

This is not an option in my case. I just noticed the problem the original poster mentioned - my wife suddenly lost access to the 20000 pictures in our iCloud account. I tried to just share all the pictures with her but there is a limit of 5000, and I don't want to have to manually share our pictures with her every time there are new pictures anyway. This is an old thread, so has there been any kind of solution found for this thread in the past few months? Why have a family sharing option that takes away the option to share pictures?

Reply