Share Images Attic View

You’re busily sharing vacation photos in an iCloud Photo Stream when somebody announces they don’t have an iPhone and can’t participate. What do you do?

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Like just everything Apple, iCloud Photo sharing is both super simple to use when everyone is using Apple products and also propriety. That means your pals with Android phones and the like just aren’t going to tap into the full iCloud photo sharing experience. You can, somewhat, share the experience but you’ll end up with a situation like you do with iMessage—where some people have green bubbles, some have blue, and it’s the difference between enjoying the iMessage group chat experience or getting left out.

Thankfully there is a way to bring non-Apple users into the fold (sort of) by making a simple tweak to the settings of your shared iCloud album. Unfortunately, however, that solution isn’t without its shortcomings. What shortcomings, exactly? Well…

Non-Apple friends only can view the shared photos (in a clunkily-designed web-based viewer at that). They cannot add photos to shared albums, leave comments, or otherwise interact with the album like your friends with iPhones can.
There is no user control when you share outside of Apple’s walled garden—Apple outsiders just get a URL to the aforementioned web-based viewer. Even though the URL is a long randomized string, there is no user validation. Anyone with the URL can look at all your shared photos.
The randomized URL is permanently assigned to the specific album and you cannot regenerate it. This means if you turn the feature off because the URL is leaked to someone you don’t want to have access, you’ll need to delete the whole shared album (losing all the shared comments and contributions) and make a new shared album if you ever want to use the URL sharing feature again.

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In other words, the iCloud photo sharing feature is good enough for simple use solutions—say, you want to send the URL to grandma back home so she can your family vacation photos—but not so great if you’re trying to create a true secure and shared collaborative experience between your friends.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to share an iCloud album with non-Apple users as a quick and dirty solution. We’ll then look at a better cross-platform solution if you want your friends to partake in the social and collaborative experience.

Open Up iCloud Photos to Non-Apple Users

By default, iCloud Photo albums are not set up for sharing with non-Apple users. Not only do we need to make a little tweak to the album we want to share, we also need to notify our friends of where to find the album.

To get started open up the “Photos” app on your iOS device. Tap the “Shared” cloud icon located on the bottom navigation bar.

RELATED:How to Create Shared and Collaborative Photo Albums on Your iPhone

Select any of your shared albums. We’re using an album named “Pet Photos” that we already shared during our previous tutorial on configuring shared iCloud Photo albums. If you don’t have any shared albums yet, hit up that tutorial and share an album before proceeding.

After you open the album, tap the “People” button at the bottom.

Here you’ll find all the settings for this specific shared album. At the top, you’ll see your Apple-product-using-friends because their Apple accounts are associated with the shared album. For everyone else, we need to turn on the “Public Website” option.

Once you turn “Public Website” on, you’ll see a URL under the entry plus a “Share Link” option. All the shared album URLs look like this:

We’ve blurred the string in this screenshot because, as we noted above, each URL is permanently associated with the shared album and doesn’t change unless you delete the album entirely and start over.

You can share this link from your iPhone anyway you want to—text it, email it, share it via an instant messaging platform, whatever. The recipient just has to visit the URL in a browser to view the photos.

They’ll see your photo album as a simple slideshow that includes the album name, the captions of your photos, and a link that allows them to download individual photos. As we noted above, non-Apple users cannot leave comments or upload photos which. Media center alternative windows 10.

Using Third Party Tools to Collaborate with Non-Apple Friends

RELATED:How to Create and Share Collaborative Albums in Google Photos

If you want to set up a simple and free collaborative album between your iOS and Android—and even desktop—friends, we highly recommend you use Google Photos. It captures the same experience—shared albums, collaborative album building, shared comments, and more—in a way that is totally cross-platform. Google Photos even boasts an identical look and functionality across both iOS and Android. For help setting up a collaborative Google album, check out our full guide.

While the simple (and someone ugly) shared URL method might be fine for some dead simple file sharing with relatives who just want to view the photos and maybe download them to print off for the fridge, if you want to create an integrated experience for everyone we can’t recommend Google Photos as iCloud Photo Sharing alternative strongly enough.

Instagram

If you’re looking for an easy to use alternative to Facebook in terms of simple photo sharing with a social media feel, Instagram is a logical alternative. (Yes, we know it’s owned by Facebook, but for now, it’s a separate service—and one much more focused on photos.) The service is completely free, easy to install and setup on your mobile device, and while Instagram may have made a name for itself in terms of hashtags and public photos, it’s very easy to set your account to private (which you should do right from the start!) and use it only to share with friends—effectively creating a tiny photo-centered social network just for the people you care about. On the downside, the private account feature only works if everyone has an account, which means your whole band of friends and family have to sign up if you wish to keep your photos private. Further, if the people you’re sharing with want a traditional look-at-albums experience, Instagram isn’t it, as photos flow down the feed and looking at old photos requires lengthy scrolling.

While your photos are uploaded to Instagram at full resolution, they are not displayed at full resolution, nor is there any built-in way for the viewer to save the photos at all—which might be an issue for grandparents hungry for physical photos to put on the fridge. Additionally, if your primary photo workflow is more of a sit-down-at-your-PC one (as opposed to snapping pics on the go and uploading them right from the park where your kids are playing), you’ll probably want to skip Instagram altogether. Instagram has been, and remains, a mobile app, and the only official way to upload photos to Instagram is via their mobile app. The desktop site is…lacking, to say the least.

Best for: People who want a social media experience centered around photo sharing.

Flickr

Flickr remains one of the highest profile photo sharing sites on the internet, and with good reason: the entire service is oriented around high quality photo sharing, and the free tier of the service has a lot to offer. A free Flickr account will get you 1TB of storage (more than even most prolific shutterbugs could fill up in years of shooting) as well as flexible privacy settings. Photos are uploaded and stored at full resolution, and you can easily configure your account so the viewers are able to download the full resolution photos (or at home printing or sending them off to a photo service).

Your friends and family can either sign up for a free Flickr account (and you can use their Flickr username to manage their access to your photos) or you can share individual photos, albums, or even your entire photo stream through a guest user pass delivered to them via email. By default, Flickr photos are public (unsurprising given Flickr’s history as one of the earliest photo sharing platforms) so be sure to pay attention to privacy settings before uploading your personal photos.

Best for: Photography enthusiasts who want to mix hobby and family time—you get plenty of storage for both your hobby projects as well as sharing albums with family.

Google Photos

Previously known as Picasa Web Albums, Google Photos is a pretty appealing option thanks to the unlimited storage for photos under 16 megapixels (which make up the vast majority of snapshots taken by home photographers) and ease of sharing. Your photos are uploaded in their full resolution and once shared with friends and family (via a mobile number or email address), they can be downloaded in the same resolution. Furthermore, you can give those same people upload rights to your album which makes it useful for gathering together all, say, the family Christmas party photos in one place from all the different photographers in the group.

Google Photos is one of the services we recommended in our guide to bulletproof photo backup thanks to the cost and how easily you can automate your mobile and desktop photo backups. Add in the ease of sharing with friends and family, and you’ve got a compelling option that both secures and privately shares your photos.

Best for: People with lots of photos on their PCs and phones. Google Photos for mobile devices and the Google Photos uploader make automatic uploading of all your photos a snap regardless of where they’re stored.

Amazon Photos

If you’re one of the 63 million Amazon Prime subscribers, you’ve got a solid photo backup and sharing system right at your fingertips (even if you didn’t realize it). Amazon Photos gives you unlimited full-resolution photo backup, the ability to add up to five family members to their “Family Vault” to collect and share photos, and—like Google Photos—you can also share individual photos or albums by email or a shareable link, no Amazon account needed.

With their shared access, they can upload photos (if they’re part of the Family Vault) or download your photos at full resolution for personal printing. Amazon Photos includes competitively priced print ordering (including photo products like photo books and holiday cards) right through Amazon with free delivery. If you’re already a Prime member, it’s almost foolish not to take advantage of this membership perk.

Best for: People with Prime accounts that want to maximize the value they get out of their Prime Subscription and offer easy photo pooling for family members.

Photobucket

For readers who are most interested in sharing photos in a way that makes it dead simple for the recipients to order prints, Photobucket is a worthwhile option. While it’s a bit light on storage in the free tier (you only get 2GB free plus an 8GB bonus if you install the Photobucket mobile app), it works well as a place to put your best pictures.

What Photobucket lacks in terms of storage and extra features (like albums multiple family members can contribute to), it absolutely makes up for in ease of use for physical prints. Your family members will be able to not only easily download the original images without an account (just using the shared link to your password protected album), but also order both prints and even photo products. If grandma wants a mug with Junior’s face on it, she won’t have to bug you to make that happen.

We do have one strong word of caution about Photobucket, though. For some inexplicable reason, the default setting on a new Photobucket account is public (even though Photobucket doesn’t have the same public sharing vibe that Instagram and Flickr do), and if you don’t set your account to private in the privacy settings before you begin uploading your photos, then they’re simply out there for the world, accessible to anyone–definitely take a moment to dig around in the settings before you jump right into filling up the default “bucket” with your photos.

Best for: People who want a photo storage/printing service that allows the user and guests to download full resolution photos.

Shutterfly

Like the premise of Photobucket (easy sharing + easy printing), but want a little more bang in your free account? Consider Shutterfly like Photobucket on steroids. First, Shutterfly offers unlimited photo storage—the promise to never delete a photo unless the customer deletes it is a prominent part of their business model.

Second, not only can you easily share albums with your friends and family through the same method we’ve seen repeatedly throughout this list—emailing them a shared link—but you can also create a format website for your shared photos with a vanity url like fitzpatrickphotos.shutterfly.com. The only downside to the custom site route is that the only way to make it private is if all users have a Shutterfly account. One ding against Shutterfly is that, unlike the rest of the services listed here sans Instagram, there’s no way for the user or guests to download the full resolution files.

Finally, it’s dead simple, regardless of which sharing method you use, for your family members to easily order both prints and any of the numerous photo products from Shutterfly.

Best for: People who want unlimited photo storage combined with a very large print/product marketplace for ease of ordering.

However you choose to share your photos with friends and family, we hope you’re also taking the time to ensure they are backed up safe and sound so everyone can enjoy them for years to come.