Do shared albums take up space on my devices?

Hi Everyone!

Cheese, did you manage to solve your issue in the end?

I was also looking for a way to have access to all my photos but not have them stored on the phone itself. As far as i’ve learned, once you delete a photo on iphone it gets deleted on icloud and all your other devices and vice versa.

I then like you thought i’d create a shared folder -thinking this is stored *exclusively* on the icloud - and dump bunch of old photos there which i would then be able to access from my phone without using up space on the phone itself. I had 4.19gb of photos on iphone, created shared folder, moved half of the photos there and deleted the “originals”, h

owever what happened is now instead of reducing the load on my phone it increased to over 5gb for some reason (?!) and i’ve no idea why. Also, what’s odd is that on my Mac a lot of the photos in my new shared folder haven’t even synced.

I would appreciate if anyone has managed to sort out how to just have all your photos uploaded on iCloud and then just be able to access them without having to have the on your iphone *as well*. Thanks

Howdy cheese_aholic,

Pictures in shared albums are uploaded to iCloud for the purposes of sharing, so you could delete them from the device and they would still be available. See this help page - iCloud Photo Sharing overview

I would recommend, however, that you maintain at least one copy of your pictures locally, as shared albums are not backed up online. See this article - Get help using iCloud Photo Sharing and shared albums - Apple Support

In particular -

How do I back up a shared album?

Shared album content isn't automatically backed up. You need to save your photos and videos locally before backing up your device.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Best to you.

As answwered in the very first post

Pictures in shared albums are uploaded to iCloud for the purposes of sharing, so you could delete them from the device and they would still be available. See this help page - iCloud Photo Sharing overview

LN

Shared album files are kept in the com.apple.photo.icloud.sharedstreams folder which is buried in the Library folder in your Mac's user home folder.

It would be great if there was a way to make the Mac not download local copies of these photos. But it would probably be considered a roundabout way to get free photo storage.

After hours of research, this is what I found:

No, they won't take up space from your device (other than the space the thumbnails and temporarily cached photos take) but it's not a perfect and free way to backup your photos and videos because they are downsampled to approximately 3.1-3.5MP for photos, and 720p for videos.

On a Mac all photos you are sharing to shared albums are cached locally in your user library - in the reduced size they are shared to iCloud. Photos will be reduced to 2048 pixels at the longest edge (Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide.). I would not delete the originals from my Photos Library.

On macOS 10.13 High Sierra you can see the complete copies of the photos and videos in your shared albums in the sandbox of the cloudphotosd process:

~/Library/Containers/com.appleccloudphotosd/Data/Library/Application Support/com.apple.cloudphotosd/services/com.apple.photo.icloud.sharedstreams/

I just shared an album with four photos and eight videos, and this album is taking up exactly the same amount of storage locally on all my Macs in the user library as in iCloud - 0.5GB of storage. Even sharing such a small album will increase the storage noticeably.

Hey Cheese,

I can certainly understand there being an issue with your iPhone's storage getting full. After all pictures do take up a lot of space. It is important to have all of your important data, including (presumably) these photos, in at least two places. One could be this shared album, but in order to be safe with the data, you should have at least one copy elsewhere. If you have a computer, import the photos into that computer and save it onto the hard drive, or burn the photos to CDs or DVDs. You can even put the albums on other photo sharing web sites.

This article explains how to import photos into your Photos application on your Mac - Import photos from a camera or mobile device - Photos Help

This article has info on how you might burn the picture files to a CD or DVD if you have a drive that supports burning - Burn CDs and DVDs - Mac Help

This article explains how to share to 3rd party photo sharing web sites from your Mac using Photos - Share items using other apps and websites - Photos Help

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Safe computing.

Hey Cheese,

I am so glad to hear that you have your important photos backed up safely. To answer your question about albums that are not shared and whether they are stored online and are easily available, I would like you to look at this article - iCloud: iCloud Photo Library overview

Basically if you use the iCloud Photo Library, all of your photos from the devices using it are stored online and available either to those devices or by using the iCloud.com web site. You can reduce the size of the photo files that are stored on your device.

To access the iCloud Photo Library from your iPhone use the information in this article - iCloud: Use iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device

For your Mac, use this article - Photos for OS X: Access your photos and videos everywhere with iCloud Photo Library

So using the iCloud Photo Library can, used properly, save some of the space on your iPhone. See this article - iCloud Photo Library FAQ.

Specifically -

Can I use iCloud Photo Library to save space on my device?

iCloud Photo Library automatically keeps all your photos and videos in the original, high-resolution version. Follow these steps to choose how you store your photos and videos on your device:

• In iOS, tap Settings > iCloud > Photos or Settings > Photos & Camera, then select a storage setting.
• In OS X, click Photos > Preferences > iCloud, then select a storage setting.

If you turn on Optimize [device] Storage, iCloud Photo Library will automatically manage the size of your library on your device, so you can make the most of your device's storage and access more photos than ever. All of your original, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud while device-size versions are kept on your device. You can download the original photos and videos over Wi-Fi or cellular when you need them.

If you turn on Download Originals, iCloud Photo Library will keep your original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and on your device. Download Originals is the default setting for iOS devices with the free 5 GB storage plan and for all Mac devices.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Happy computing.

Howdy Cheese,

If, as you say, you add photos from an album from your device to the iCloud Photo Library and then delete the photos from that device, the copy in the iCloud is deleted as well.

To answer your last question, yes, the album is on the device as well as in the cloud. Again see iCloud Photo Library FAQ for reference.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Best to you.

Good day Cheese,

Shared albums are stored in iCloud's servers - that is how they can be seen by those you are sharing them with. This help page may give you more ideas about how to use shared albums from your iPhone - iCloud Photo Sharing overview - iCloud Help

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Safe computing.