APRIL 2020 MACWORLD 127data on the same drive alongside Time
Machine backups. But it’s preferable to
create separate partitions for your own
data and Time Machine backups to avoid
conflicts and other problems.
WHY YOU SHOULD USE
GOOGLE PHOTOS OVER
iCLOUD PHOTOS: SHARING
PHOTOS AND MOVIES
iCloud Photos is a fantastic way to sync
your images and videos across all the
devices you own that use the same Apple
ID for iCloud, have access anywhere via a
web browser to the same media at
iCloud.com, and let Apple effectively
perform a backup (or extra
backup, depending on
your configuration) of
all your media.
But iCloud Photos
is for devices, not people.
When it comes to sharing
pictures and movies with other
people, it’s not a robust solution.
You can use Shared Albums (go.
macworld.com/shab), which let you
invite people or create a publicly
accessible album that anyone with the
URL can access. This is great for an event
or a pool of photos that families might
share of each other’s kids and pets.
It’s not manageable beyond a relatively
small number of images and videos,
however. Many readers send us email
asking for help sharing their entire Photos
library. It’s simply not possible currently
with Apple’s device- and account-centric
approach. (Family Sharing increases the
amount of services and features it
encompasses with each new operating
system release, but pooled photos are still
not part of the option.)
The best bet for most people is Google
Photos. Instead of being device-centric
with a cloud-based sync part, Google
Photos—like many Google products—is
cloud focused, allowing you access,
download, or sync data on devices
or via Google’s web apps. With
Google Drive for macOS and
Google Photos for iOS and
iPadOS, you can automatically
sync images you
import to specified
folders. (You’d need to
export your Photos Library
and then import it; Google
doesn’t have an automated method.)
If you have an existing Google
account that you want to share from,
Google has an option that lets you share
all photos with a single person (go.
macworld.com/shsn), who it calls a
“partner.”
If one person isn’t enough, you could
create a new, separate Google account
that you and others all log into and use for