ICloud Family Sharing - no centralized photo library?

Tech Support
1

Not sure which forum this should be in, figured this or the Software one?
Also I did search the forums and couldn’t find my exact issue/concern.

I’m the “Organizer” and my I’m sharing my iCloud with my wife’s Apple ID.

We can share purchases, iCloud Drive storage, etc… but why is there no centralized photo library?
That should at least be an option.

When she uploads all her photos on her iPhone it pops up as “Family” on the iCloud Storage tab and is all grey and you can’t access or see it.

Basically I just want to see any picture/screenshot/video she takes and vice versa.

The only way we’ve been able to accomplish this is to both use my google account and both have the google photos app on our devices so we can see each others photos/videos. The good thing about google is its free, just sucks that everything is condensed, which is fine anyway nice the photos and video all still look good.

Is there a better way?

I know you can manually share up to 5000 photos and I think 100 videos on the “Shared” tab in the apple photos app, but that is separate and tedious since it’s not automatic, and my library alone is over 12,000 photos and videos.

2

I just read on here today that someone uses Dropbox for this. Basically Dropbox sucks up the photos and then they can be pulled in on a Mac. A neat idea.

I REALLY wish Apple would get its act together with family photo sharing. I hate that they aren’t full resolution when using Photo Sharinf.

3

This is not possible. Each individual user’s library is private to that individual.

When you create a family, a shared iCloud Photo Album called Family is automatically created. Any family member can select photos to add to that library where they will be visible to all members of the family.

4

This display isn’t intended to give family members access to others’ files or have anything to do with file or photo sharing.

The purpose of this display is to show how iCloud storage is being used by all people who can use that storage. For privacy reasons, only you can see a categorical breakdown. All other family members’ storage use will be just a grey bar.