How to Create a Shared Library in Photos on the iPad

In this video, we’re going to take a look at the new photos shared library. Basically, what we’re able to do now with the Photos app is have two separate libraries. And we can share one of those libraries with other people. We can move photos and videos between those different libraries. This was introduced with iPad os 16, as well as iOS 16. And MacOS Ventura, we’re just going to look at it on the iPad here, though, let’s go over to my iPad and take a look at our shared photo library.

Now the first thing that you’ll need to do is you’ll need to set this up how do you set this up? Well, all you need to do is just go over to your Settings app. And when you’re looking at your photos here, your photo settings, you’re going to see an option for shared library. Now I already set this up. If you want to see how this is set up, take a look at my iPhone video on the shared library, I have a video on how the shared library works with iOS 16. With that video, I actually set it all up I went through all the different steps. In this video. Since it’s already set up. I’m just going to show you how it works. But it’s pretty simple. All you have to do is just tap on setup. And it’ll step you through how you set it up.

So what is this shared library, I have it set up what is this mean? Well, basically what this means when I go over to my photos app is I have two libraries, I have my personal library, when I take a photo, I can have it go to the personal library. Or what I can do is I can have it go to the shared library, and I invite people to that shared library. If they accept that invitation, what they’re able to do is view that photo or video, it’s going to be on their iPhone or their iPad or their Mac as long as you using Mac OS Ventura. So it’s a way for us to have a shared library as well as our own personal library. And we can move photos in between those two libraries. If we look at this photo here on the right of abbkine. If we look in the upper right hand corner of that photo, you’re gonna see it has two people there. This means that this photo is in my shared library.

When we look at this photo of the seashell, we can see it doesn’t have anything in the upper right hand corner, this is in my personal library. So what I’m able to do is view all of my photos in both libraries. Now, if you want to view just your personal library, what you do is you go up to the More button in the upper right hand corner. And when you tap on it, what you can do is select which library you want to view. So I’m going to go to my personal library. Now I’m just looking at my personal photos, I want to view the shared library, all I have to do is just go to the upper right hand corner, I go to shared library. And now I’m looking at all of the photos that are shared. If Beth were to add a photo to this, if I share this with my wife, Beth, I would see that photo in the shared library because I’m sharing it among multiple people.

How do we move a photo between the two libraries? Well, I’m going to go show both of the libraries. So we can do that as well. I go up to the upper right hand corner, and I go to both libraries. Now what I’d like to do is move this photo here of the seashell, to the shared library, this is in my personal library. To do that, all we have to do is just go to the upper right hand corner of the photo. And what you’re going to see is move to shared library, I tap on this. And now that photo is in the shared library, anyone that I’m sharing this library with is going to be able to view that photo, they can also do the same thing. If we’re sharing the same library, they can go into their photos app. And then from there, they can move photos from their personal library to their shared library.

I want to move this back to my personal library to app on it. I move it back. So as you can see, it’s pretty simple. We basically have two libraries, and we can move our photos and between those two libraries. We can view the photos from one library or the other library. Or we can view all of our photos and videos in both libraries. Now, how do we invite people to this library? Well, that’s done through the settings app. So I’m going to swipe up, we go over to our settings app. And then from here, we need to go to photos. And then we go to our shared library I tap on it. And let’s say I wanted to invite someone all I have to do is just tap on Add participants. I type in their name they do need to have iPad os 16 or iOS 16 or Mac OS Ventura. And once they X

Up to that invitation, what they’re going to be able to do is contribute to that library, they’re going to be able to see anything that I have in that library, they can move their photos to that library. And when they take a photo, they can also add it to that library. Let’s open up the camera app, you’re going to see when I go to the camera app, there has my Mac there. When I go over to the right, what I am able to do is select which library I want it to go to right now it’s gonna go to the shared library, I tap on this little icon here. Now it’s going in the personal.

Now it’s going to go to the shared library. Let’s go ahead and take this photo. So that photo just went to the shared library, if I go to my photos app, you’re going to see, I have that photo there. Let’s go to all of my photos, we’re going to go to my personal library, we can see that that photo was not there, I go to my shared library. We have that photo there.

And again, if I want to move this to my personal library, maybe Beth doesn’t want to see that. Now it is in my personal library, and it is no longer in my shared library. You can also remove people from the shared library when I go up to my settings app. And we go back over to our photos, and we’re looking at our shared library settings. If I want to remove someone, all I have to do is just tap on it. And then I can remove them from that shared library. If they did not accept the invitation yet, I can also resend the invitation. And I can even remove that shared library altogether, I created the shared library. So when I go over to my shared library here, what I’m able to do is delete that shared library. And when I do, I can keep all of the photos and videos, or just the ones that I contributed.

So if Beth were to add some photos and videos, I could keep those photos and videos. Or if I just wanted to keep the ones that I contributed, I can do that as well. So that is the new shared library on the iPad with iPad os 16. As you can see, it’s pretty simple. Basically, we just have to libraries, you have to go to the Settings app to set it up, go to Settings, photos, and then go to shared library. If you want to see how that is set up. Take a look at my shared library photos for the iPhone. I go through the whole process of how this was set up. But it’s pretty simple to do. Once you have it set up, you can send invitations to people you want to invite to that shared library. If they accept that invitation. They can contribute to that library. When you take a photo, you can add it to your shared library or to your personal library automatically. And then you can also move photos and videos between those two libraries. So that is the new shared library the new photos shared library that we have with iPad os 16