One of the best things about the iPhone is the camera. It’s the best way to capture the most interesting and fun moments in your life. Whether you’re taking portraits, capturing a sunset or taking a selfie with your friends, it all goes to the same chronological feed on your Camera Roll.
In the past couple of years, the way we take photos and share them has changed dramatically. But the Photos app on iPhone hasn’t really kept up with the times. Now, when we go out, we take a lot of pictures. And the first thing I do after getting home is picking the best photos and share them with my friends. This is always a confusing mess. If you send them using WhatsApp or Messenger, the images are heavily compressed. And Google Photos sync support on iPhone isn’t exactly great. The iCloud shared album experience has been iffy at best.
In iOS 12, Apple is taking a leaf from Google Photo’s playbook and is bring the same sharing experience to make it a seamless workflow.
Must read: iOS 12: All the New and Hidden iOS 12 Features
Viewing a Suggested Collection’s Settings
There aren’t many improvements from iOS 11’s Photos app but in the latest iOS 12, there’s a new For You tab which groups all the pictures together from a specific location, date and an occasion and displays it together making it easier to share with your contacts. For You is also where you’ll find iOS 11’s Memories feature.
From the top, you can see the Sharing Suggestions that iOS has created for you and all of the albums that are shared with you as well. For a shared album, the other user also needs to be using iOS 12.
Sharing suggestions show up as a collection. Tap on a collection to see all the photos in a collection. Tap on the menu button and you’ll get a choice to remove the sharing suggestions, to add it to Memories or to play the movie based on the collection.
Sharing a Suggested Collection
You can share photos with any contact as long as they’re running iOS 11, iOS 12 or macOS 10.14. The whole interaction happens via iMessage.
Sharing suggestions appear by location, date, event and so on. Tap on a collection to view all the photos in the collection.
Usually, it will have a lot more photos than what you want to share. So first tap on the Select button and tap on the photos you actually want to share. This will select all photos. Tap to deselect to photos you don’t want to share. Or tap on Deselect All and only select the ones you actually like. You can tap and drag to select multiple photos.
Tap on Next. Here you’ll see a list of suggested contacts. iOS will show you previews of people who are in the photos with you. You can add a contact for each person. Or you can add a different contact altogether. Then tap on Share in Messages and the shared collection with a rich preview will be sent to the Messages app.
Creating a New iCloud Album to Share with Family & Friends
You can also share any photos from the Photos app itself, it’s not necessary for it to be only a Suggested collection.
Select the photos and tap on the Share button. You’ll find a new Shared Albums button here. Tap on it and an iCloud Popup will open where you can Post it to the last used shared album or you can also create a new album and/or rename it and then hit Next.
Then you just have to enter an email ID or phone number to send it to someone, then press on Next again, add a comment if you want in the main popup screen and hit Post to send it.
Viewing Shared Albums That Are Received
When an iMessage is sent to the recipients, they will receive a link to download the collection from the iCloud in their messages app.
Opening the link, a Mini gallery will open up where they can save/share Photos as they wish.
They can also find the shared collection in their own photos app in the For You tab under Recently Shared section.
Shared items can be viewed only for a month after it is sent so it has to be downloaded right away so that you can view it any time in future.
Removing Shared Album Access
Shared collections can always be taken down early by scrolling on the bottom of the shared collection and tapping on the Revoke Now button and confirming on it again.
Will You Be Using This Feature?
What do you think of the new photo sharing features in iOS 12? Do you think this will make your life a bit easier? Share with us in the comments below.
