Shared photo library

[krazyleb]

I may have messed up.

I created a shared library, added my wife. Next day I removed her and deleted it. Now it’s stuck at deleting library and my wife lost all her photos.

Did I mess up or just not wait long enough

 

[krazyleb]

I may have messed up.

I created a shared library, added my wife. Next day I removed her and deleted it. Now it’s stuck at deleting library and my wife lost all her photos.

Did I mess up or just not wait long enough

Just to add.

When she Removed her self from the shared library I selected keep all I contributed. When I deleted the shared library on my phone like 2 min later I selected keep everything.

 

[krazyleb]

I guess this is too new of a feature to get any feedback

 

[W£S]

Just to add.

When she Removed her self from the shared library I selected keep all I contributed. When I deleted the shared library on my phone like 2 min later I selected keep everything.

So you have all the photos? Then it’s ok right? You can share back with her.

 

[W£S]

I guess this is too new of a feature to get any feedback

Have been using this and realised the “deleting shared library” took a while. But I only tried using a few useless photos. Nothing was lost.

For your case, check the deleted albums for your wife, or even yourself.

If all fails, check with apple. I realised that there is an additional para in the deleted album…
“Items that were part of your Personal Library when you created the Shared Library will be stored in iCloud for up to six months”.

So I guess apple is backing up our photos in case of such errors.

 

[krazyleb]

Maybe it's a time thing, Its only been about 12 hours. It is a massive library of nearly 200gb.

I did two actions at once which probably wasn't too wise. My wife left the shared library which triggered her personal library being copied back, then I deleted the shared library. Probably not the smartest thing.

Luckily I have both libraries on backup. Just can't seem to trigger iCloud to reset. Its stuck

 

[krazyleb]

So for those who are interested, time has not fixed the issue. Still stuck on "deleting shared library" on all devices.

If I log onto icloud.com i show 54 photos on there LOL

I have my library backed up, but I cant even upload it because its STUCK!

Just a warning for anyone who is considering this, do so with extreme caution!

 

[JayBuchanan]

Have you tried signing out of iCloud totally? I have had no issues removing and adding a shared library (240GB in size) 3x on 2 different iPhone and 2 different iPads.

I am willing to bet if you sign out of iCloud, restart the device and then log back into iCloud the process will finish.

 

[krazyleb]

No I have not tried that. But I have and iPad, iPhone and a Mac that are all doing the same thing (showing that its trying to delete the shared library).

I'll give it a shot thou

 

[krazyleb]

Have you tried signing out of iCloud totally? I have had no issues removing and adding a shared library (240GB in size) 3x on 2 different iPhone and 2 different iPads.

I am willing to bet if you sign out of iCloud, restart the device and then log back into iCloud the process will finish.

Yeah thanks for suggesting something but it didn't really work.

I don't even care about the old library anymore, I have that backed up, I just can't even upload it.

I talked to apple support but since its a beta I really didn't get anywhere. I thought maybe they would reset my iCloud Photo Library in some fashion and just let me start fresh but....no.

Worse case scenario I can create a new account. But that would really be absolute last resort.

 

[krazyleb]

For the benefit of anyone else considering activating shared library....DONT

Spent a lot of time on the phone with a specialist at apple. They really couldn't help me. It's funny they see that the photos are taking up space but can't really get at them. Pretty much got told there isn't anything they can do, which to be honest I expected.

Worse part is waiting for the backend to somehow get unstuck. Might happen, might not. Might have to create a new Apple ID, I'm really not sure.

Create the shared library at your own risk! That goes without say with a beta and any of its features but this is worse than just having to downgrade your IOS

 

[W£S]

For the benefit of anyone else considering activating shared library....DONT

Spent a lot of time on the phone with a specialist at apple. They really couldn't help me. It's funny they see that the photos are taking up space but can't really get at them. Pretty much got told there isn't anything they can do, which to be honest I expected.

Worse part is waiting for the backend to somehow get unstuck. Might happen, might not. Might have to create a new Apple ID, I'm really not sure.

Create the shared library at your own risk! That goes without say with a beta and any of its features but this is worse than just having to downgrade your IOS

Really quite troubling to hear your account. I hope apple implement check and balance, i.e. do not allow the shared album to be deleted prior to the completion of someone who exited the shared library.

Hope the library gets unstuck for you!

 

[dtv4251]

@krazyleb

You are not alone. I had also created a test shared library, which is now being deleted for eight hours already and blocking the iCloud photosync. I test reset my iPad completely and it doesn't start loading photos from the library at all, because it also says "Deleting shared Library".

Since the shared library was empty except for about 30 pictures, all 30,000 pictures are still in my main library (and Onedrive) and i'm downloading them in 1,000 packs from icloud.com right now for additional safety.

I hope that the problem will resolve itself, because I don't want to have to create a new Apple ID.


EDIT:

I just created a new clean system photo library on my MacBook Airs Fotos App, which is not running Ventura Beta, but Monterey, and enabled iCloud Sync.

The MacBook downloaded all my iCloud photos without any problems and uploading in the other direction also works as expected.

It looks like only my iOS 16 devices (iPhone and iPad) are affected because they kind of know that there is something like the shared library in the Background. I will now test downgrade the iPad back to iOS 15 to see, if i get it syncing.

 

[W£S]

So for now, we should manually shift the shared photos to personal library before deletion?

 

[krazyleb]

@krazyleb

You are not alone. I had also created a test shared library, which is now being deleted for eight hours already and blocking the iCloud photosync. I test reset my iPad completely and it doesn't start loading photos from the library at all, because it also says "Deleting shared Library".

Since the shared library was empty except for about 30 pictures, all 30,000 pictures are still in my main library (and Onedrive) and i'm downloading them in 1,000 packs from icloud.com right now for additional safety.

I hope that the problem will resolve itself, because I don't want to have to create a new Apple ID.


EDIT:

I just created a new clean system photo library on my MacBook Airs Fotos App, which is not running Ventura Beta, but Monterey, and enabled iCloud Sync.

The MacBook downloaded all my iCloud photos without any problems and uploading in the other direction also works as expected.

It looks like only my iOS 16 devices (iPhone and iPad) are affected because they kind of know that there is something like the shared library in the Background. I will now test downgrade the iPad back to iOS 15 to see, if i get it syncing.

Yeah so Im trying something like this right now but its going to take me a few Days. my photo backup on my iMac was already upgraded to macOS 13 so I cant downgrade the photo library and reupload. I dont want to reupload my raw data base of photos and loose albums and such.

So to get around that I created a new Apple ID, added to my family so I have space and now I’m reuploading on my photo library On my Ventura Mac on that new account. Once done I’ll downgrade my Mac to 12.5 and redownload my iCloud library onto a non-beta restored mac. Once i have a library that is compatible with macOS 12.5 I’ll try reuploading in my account to see if I can get stuff back in there. Will take at least 2 weeks to do that I would imagine between uploading, downloading and reuploading Given my 200gb library.

 

[krazyleb]

So for now, we should manually shift the shared photos to personal library before deletion?

Honestly I dont have a safe way to do this. I think the place where I messed up was deleting my shared library before the transfer from my library back into my wife’s happened on the backend. So as long as you dont do that you are probably OK.

 

[W£S]

Honestly I dont have a safe way to do this. I think the place where I messed up was deleting my shared library before the transfer from my library back into my wife’s happened on the backend. So as long as you dont do that you are probably OK.

Thanks. Appreciate your sharing so that others do not.

 

[W£S]

@krazyleb

You are not alone. I had also created a test shared library, which is now being deleted for eight hours already and blocking the iCloud photosync. I test reset my iPad completely and it doesn't start loading photos from the library at all, because it also says "Deleting shared Library".

Since the shared library was empty except for about 30 pictures, all 30,000 pictures are still in my main library (and Onedrive) and i'm downloading them in 1,000 packs from icloud.com right now for additional safety.

I hope that the problem will resolve itself, because I don't want to have to create a new Apple ID.


EDIT:

I just created a new clean system photo library on my MacBook Airs Fotos App, which is not running Ventura Beta, but Monterey, and enabled iCloud Sync.

The MacBook downloaded all my iCloud photos without any problems and uploading in the other direction also works as expected.

It looks like only my iOS 16 devices (iPhone and iPad) are affected because they kind of know that there is something like the shared library in the Background. I will now test downgrade the iPad back to iOS 15 to see, if i get it syncing.

Glad to see that your iCloud Photos are intact once you moved back to iOS 15!!!

 

[dtv4251]

OK iPad is back on iOS 15 and Photo Library works like a charm. Seems that i have to go back to iOS 15 on my iPhone as well which means a lot of work :/

I’m glad that the main library seems ok anyway.

 

[krazyleb]

Yeah as soon as I can get a non-beta working photo library I’m going to do the same.

Thanks for confirming.

 

[Devin Breeding]

I had a similar issue just playing around with the new feature. I was able to see the photos in each shared and personal libraries on beta.icloud.com. You may have some luck in there restoring your wife's photos as all of hers are likely under shared library. I was only on the mobile site and the destop site should have more options. They are not lost so my bet is a future beta will fix the issue.

 

[dtv4251]

@Devin Breeding

You are my hero, i didn't know about the beta.icloud.com site!

There i still was able to see the shared library and could delete the leftovers (one image in recently deleted) that apparently caused the stuck deletion of the shared library on my iPhone.

The shared library is now completely gone and my iPhone with iOS 16 (could not downgrade to iOS 15 because my Apple Watch also is on non-downgradable Beta 9) syncs again without problems.

 

[Devin Breeding]

@Devin Breeding

You are my hero, i didn't know about the beta.icloud.com site!

There i still was able to see the shared library and could delete the leftovers (one image in recently deleted) that apparently caused the stuck deletion of the shared library on my iPhone.

The shared library is now completely gone and my iPhone with iOS 16 (could not downgrade to iOS 15 because my Apple Watch also is on non-downgradable Beta 9) syncs again without problems.

Awesome! definitley worth reporting to Apple for sure. In my case, I’m stuck on”Leaving Shared Library” on the account that joined the shared library and “Deleting Shared Library” on the original owner of the Shared Library. I’m not worried because the photos are all there and it will be fixed with future updates, however I cleared all photos from both accounts’ recently deleted folder and both are still stuck not syncing.

When you cleared out the recently deleted, did you have to do anything to get things moving along with a sync?

 

[dtv4251]

Awesome! definitley worth reporting to Apple for sure. In my case, I’m stuck on”Leaving Shared Library” on the account that joined the shared library and “Deleting Shared Library” on the original owner of the Shared Library. I’m not worried because the photos are all there and it will be fixed with future updates, however I cleared all photos from both accounts’ recently deleted folder and both are still stuck not syncing.

When you cleared out the recently deleted, did you have to do anything to get things moving along with a sync?

Now that you mention it, i did one more thing:

The shared library view in beta.icloud.com contained all my albums from the main library, but empty. I deleted all these empty albums as well, so the Shared Library view was completely empty. I don't know if that was the trigger for the successful deletion, since I did both at the same time (empty recently deleted and delete the albums).

But that's all i had to do, i didn't have to trigger the deletion again. In my case, however, I had only sent an invitation, but my wife has not yet accepted it, because she (obviously wisely) said to leave her alone with my beta junk So i was the only "member" of the shared library.

Unfortunately, this deletion also deleted my albums in the main library, but there were only about 10, which can be rebuilt relatively easily and i made a screenshot before.

 

[krazyleb]

Well that is new information

3 apple support reps and none of them mentioned beta.iCloud.com

I see both libraries yes, not sure if it helps me or not but I’m going to try and play around.

Thank you!