Top 7 Solutions to Fix the Shared Albums Not Working on the iPhone or iPad

It might be annoying when the iCloud Shared Album is not working or showing up on your iPhone or iPad. If this happens to you, you've come to the right place. In this guide, we will show you some simple and quick solutions to solve your problem.

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Myra

Updated on Feb 27, 2024

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With Shared Albums in the Photos app, you can share photos and videos with your friends, family, or other devices over WiFi. As convenient as it is, iCloud Shared Album has become a popular way to share pictures. But before we get into the main topic of how to fix the Shared Albums not working issue, such as Shared Album not showing up or Shared Album Invite not working, let's go through the following reasons that may cause Shared Album not to work on iPhone or iPad.

Why Shared Album Not Showing Up/Working on iPhone or iPad:

  • 🔧There is something wrong with Apple's System Status.
  • ⚙️The iCloud photo link has expired.
  • 🔗There is no internet connection, or the iPhone internet is slow.
  • 📱You're under Low Power Mode, which will force some functions to shut down.

Whatever the reason is, you'll learn some feasible solutions in this guide.

One more thing: If you want to disable the iCloud Shared Album feature on your iPhone, you can refer to the steps listed in our final part.

7 Solutions to Fix the "Shared Albums Not Working" Issue

In this part, we will show you some simple solutions to fix the iCloud shared album not working on iPhone. The first thing to remind you is that if you want to share albums or join other Shared Albums, you have to turn on the iCloud Shared Album feature; otherwise, you may encounter Shared Album Invite not working or showing up. If the following solutions fail to help you fix the Shared Albums not working problem, you can directly jump to Part 2 to use an alternative way to share pictures.

1️⃣Check if you've enabled the "iCloud Shared Albums" feature on your iPhone: Go to Settings on your iPhone > iCloud > Photos > Shared Album.

2️⃣Check your system status. To do this, you can go to Apple System Status to check if the service is down.

3️⃣Check the network connection on your iPhone. If necessary, reset network settings by going to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

4️⃣Ensure the iCloud photo link hasn't expired. If it expired, it would prompt you with the "Failed to retrieve" message. In that case, you can go to use a new sharing link.

5️⃣Disable and re-enable the Shared Albums feature by going to Settings > [your profile] > iCloud > Photos > Shared, turn it off, and re-enable it.

6️⃣Restart your iPhone or iPad. This will refresh your system and fix some small issues.

7️⃣Update your iOS system to the latest version. Updating your iOS system will fix some bugs on your device.

The Easiest and Quickest Way to Share Photos and Albums

Though the Shared Album is a great way to share photos with your friends or between different devices, it has some frustrating quirks/features, such as:

  • It may take forever to import photos from iPhone, no matter how many pictures they are.
  • The recipient needs to download the photos over the WiFi.
  • It doesn't support Android devices.
  • It will compress the size and quality of your images or videos.

All of these features make it frustrating to share pictures via iCloud. If you want some recommendations for other services for transferring photos between different devices, try this iPhone data transfer software - EaseUS MobiMover. This transfer tool lets you transfer photos or albums by date, place, people, and more without compressing their quality. The transfer speed is top-notch - moving a bunch of pictures will only take a few minutes to complete.

To transfer a non-compressed full picture from one iPhone/iPad to another iOS device, Android device, or computer, download this program on your computer and follow these steps to do it.

Step 1Connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac. Start EaseUS MobiMover and go to "Content Management" > "Pictures" > "Albums."

How to transfer photos from iPhone/iPad to Mac - Step 1

Step 2. Select the albums you'd like to copy from your iPhone/iPad to Mac. You can select specific items or select all, depending on your needs. You can choose "Original" and "JPG" as the format of the transferred photos in "Preference".

How to transfer photo albums from iPad to Mac - Step 2

Step 3. Click the "Transfer" button, and MobiMover will start transferring albums from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac automatically. When it has completed, go to the destination to check the files.

How to transfer photo albums from iPad to Mac - Step 3

In addition to transferring photos, EaseUS MobiMover is also capable of doing things like:

If you find the solutions for fixing Shared Albums not working useful, or you consider EaseUS software as a powerful and multi-functional helper, please share this post with more friends on social media platforms!😄

 

Bonus: How to Enable or Disable iCloud Shared Albums on iPhone

Considering that some of you may want to enable and disable Shared Albums on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, we compile the steps.

Step 1. On your device, open the Settings app.

Step 2. Tap [your profile] > "iCloud" > "Photos, " enable or disable "Shared Albums."

Tips: If you want to know how to share photos with the Shared Album features, you can follow these steps:

  • Open the Photos app on your iPhone and select the photos you wish to share.
  • Tap the share icon and tap "Copy iCloud Link."
  • Paste the link to your Message app and choose a friend to send it to.

Enable Shared Album

The Bottom Line

You can quickly solve the "Shared Albums not working" issue with the seven solutions introduced above. If none of them works to help you or you don't want to use the iCloud sharing feature, get EaseUS MobiMover to your computer and let it help you transfer data between two iOS devices or between an iPhone/iPad and a computer.

Shared Albums Not Working FAQs

1. Why am I not receiving my Shared Album invite?

If you are invited to a Shared Album, there should be a notification for that, but sometimes not receiving a shared album invite will occur due to the following reasons:

  • iCloud Photos and Shared Albums are not turned on.
  • Poor Wi-Fi or cellular data. You should connect to a good network to allow iCloud to send or receive invitations.
  • Software glitches. A glitch or software issue may result in a shared album invite not showing up.
  • There may be something wrong with the Apple server.

2. How to create a shared album on my iPhone?

  • Go to Albums and click the Add icon.
  • Click New Shared Album, name it, and click Next.
  • Choose the people you want to invite from your contacts. Or, you can type the email address/iMessage phone number directly to invite them.
  • Finally, tap Create.

There you go, you create a brand new shared album. Then, you can select the photos and videos and tap on the share icon to add them to the Shared Album you just created.

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Updated by Myra

Myra joined EaseUS in 2017. As a big fan of Apple products, she mainly focuses on iOS data transfer and iOS troubleshooting tips. Meanwhile, she is expanding her knowledge and skills in other fields like data recovery and disk management.

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