Universal What's the limit on Apple Photo Shared Albums - 200?

[donawalt]

So - the other day, when invited to subscribe to a shared Apple Photo album, it would not let her subscribe - a dialog box said it was not permitted as she had exhausted the 200 shared album limit.

I have since moved the photos in some shared albums to her own albums, and unsubscribed to the shared albums - presumably getting her to around 195 shared albums. However, here lies my question - I counted to verify how many under the 200 limit she was, and after accepting the invite to a new shared album (proving she was 'under' the limit), she has 206 shared albums! So I checked mine - I have not had any issues - I have 220 shared albums! Both these counts are both ones we subscribe to and ones we initiated - some of both - it's a count of all the shared albums that show up in that section.

We both are on the latest iPad/iPhone OS software (and I have a MacBook Pro - also on the latest OS). We both use iCloud for Photos. I checked the iCloud Photos settings and the Photos Settings on our 2 iPads, the settings are identical.

So - what's the limit, or why did she get an error message for 200? Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks!

 

[BigMcGuire]

I didn't even realize there was a limit! That's crazy! Guess I'll go clean them up sometime...

Shared Album limits - Apple Support

Shared Albums don't count against your iCloud Storage, but there are limits to the number of photos, albums, and invites that you can share.

support.apple.com

 

[donawalt]

Ah I bet my wife hit the 200 albums subscribed to. I checked mine, I have 197 shared, 23 subscribed to! Uh oh.

I guess they do this since shared photos don't count against your iCloud storage limit, they don't want 10 people say, sharing a lot of photos that only one person actually pays for the storage. I don't know what the logic is if people aren't using iCloud, and that's just a guess anyway. They have raised the limit over time, from 100 -> 150 -> 200 if you search for this topic.

Seems like they could do something else even as an option, like keeping shared photos/videos in iCloud if someone wanted, or certainly to make move a shared photo album to non-shared and vice-versa easier.

 

[BigMcGuire]

My guess is they're hoping a lot of people do the Shared Library thing. My wife and I found it difficult to find out who took the photos when we did that, so we undid it for all photos and only do it for events when we are doing things together. This stopped me creating shared albums with my wife. But I still do shared albums with friends who also have iPhones. Interesting.

 

[donawalt]

I have been using attachments of photos in Messages lately. That gets huge, but people know if it's there they should save any they want. But my Messages storage is 37.6GB, which is not bad on a phone these days (I have 145GB in 38,000 photos 1000 videos). Messages and Photos are 90% of my iCloud storage....

That said - seems like this is an area Apple could do something simpler/more efficient given the quantity of photos and videos people take these days.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I have been using attachments of photos in Messages lately. That gets huge, but people know if it's there they should save any they want. But my Messages storage is 37.6GB, which is not bad on a phone these days (I have 145GB in 38,000 photos 1000 videos). Messages and Photos are 90% of my iCloud storage....

That said - seems like this is an area Apple could do something simpler/more efficient given the quantity of photos and videos people take these days.

YES, my wife's iMessage storage is over 100GB I think. I have a family iMessage chat group that is 20+GB because of photos and videos (of my sisters kids etc). Kinda cool how Apple Photos incorporates those in my photo album but it comes at a significant cost lol.

Yep, same here. And it's exploding in use - every month we add many GBs of iMessage/Photos storage to our iCloud especially if there's a vacation/birthday event.

I really hope Apple has a plan for this because we're nearing 1TB of usage on our iCloud plan (700GB).

 

[awhester]

How can you see who is subscribed to your "recent photos"? I opened the contact info of a friend and it showed all of my recent photos in our shared, he used to own an iphone repair shop so i know he is more knowledgeable than me. I saw it 3 times while i was freaking out, then I went back to screenshot it and those photos disappeared. I didnt even know someone could be subscribed to your recents album.

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