Rich Owen
Level 1
(4 points)
Q: Photos - iCloud photos - multiple user shared database issues
Hi hoping someone can point me in the right direction here as it's driving me nuts!
New Mac mini, latest OS X and photos app.
Basically, I want to share a single Photos database between two user accounts on the same Mac. I have followed all the advice online but am still running in trouble. I have put the database on an external SSD with permissions in place for any user to access the database (but only one at a time of course).
All fine so far, but here comes the issue. Because I want iCloud photos enabled on one of the accounts with full upload of all the photos to iCloud, when I exit photos, the photolibraryd process remains active. This means that when I switch accounts and try to access photos, I cannot because photoslibraryd in the other account is still accessing it. To get round this I have started going into activity monitor and killing photoslibraryd as well as Photos itself before logging into the second account and accessing Photos. This seems to work (but is a bit of a pain if I forget!) - what is much more of a pain is that if I add some photos in the second account and then return to the first, instead of syncing the few new photos with iCloud, photos proceeds to sync the entire 20,0000 photo library all over again! This is bad!
Have I approached this in the wrong way? Is there a better way of achieving what I want - I.e. Fully shared photos database between two users on same Mac (with photo stream enabled on both accounts for those devices that don't have iCloud photo enabled) and iCloud photo enabled on only one of the Mac accounts - without killing processes or any massive sync overheads?!
Grateful for any help.
Many thanks,
Rich.
Mac mini, iOS 9.3.1
léonie
Level 10
(105,801 points)
It is not possible to share a photos library between multiple users, if the library in question is your system photo library. So you cannot share the library used as the iCloud Photo Library with others. If you want to share photos with others, use a separate Photos Library for sharing and transfer the photos from there to your iCloud Photo Library.
I found this in the PowerPhotos documentation:
Sharing a library between multiple user accounts on one Mac
Photos is not designed with multi-user use in mind, which makes it very difficult to create a setup where a single Photos library can be accessed from multiple accounts on your Mac. If you wish to share a library this way, the following restrictions will apply (for the below discussion, assume we have two users named A and B that we want to share a library):
- Only one user account can ever have a given library open in Photos at a time. Before you can use the shared library as user A, you must first make sure to quit Photos as user B.
- None of the user accounts that are accessing the library can designate it as their "system library". The system library is effectively open at all times by OS X in the background as long as that user is logged in, so even quitting Photos will not free up the library so that another user can open it. You must either designate a different library as the system library, or fully log out user B before trying to access the library as user A. Note that this also precludes having this library sync with iCloud.
- The library cannot be stored on your internal drive, or any other drive where permissions are respected. Fighting against permissions on OS X is a losing battle; while you can play whack-a-mole trying to fix permissions on the library before you open it, something will eventually go awry and it's likely you'll be unable to access some portion of your library. You should store the library on an external drive, and in the Get Info window in the Finder, make sure that the "Ignore ownership on this volume" checkbox is checked.
