Find out how to save one, a few, or all photos and videos from a shared iCloud album to your iPhone, iPad, and Mac in just a few quick steps.
iCloud shared albums is not a new feature, but iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 have made some changes to it, with the notable one being that unless you use iCloud Photos (Apple’s native photo backup service), you cannot create permanent shared albums. Instead, you can only create temporary iCloud shared albums that auto-delete after 30 days.
So, if your family member, friend, or other acquaintance adds you as a member/participant of such a shared temporary album, you must act quickly and save those pictures and videos to your own device within 30 days. If you fail to do that, you’ll no longer have access to those shared media, and you may have to ask the original sharer to re-share them with you.
Note that the steps to save photos and videos from both a temporary and a permanent shared iCloud album are the same.
iPhone or iPad
1) Open the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 (currently both are in beta).
2) Scroll down the Collections tab and tap a Shared Album. Temporary albums show a little timer icon in the upper left corner.
3) Once you’re inside the shared album, tap the three-dot menu icon at the top and select Save All Shared Items. This will save all photos and videos from the saved album to your iPhone photo library. If you have already saved some of the items, tap Save Remaining (N) instead.
4) You can view all these items in the “Recently Saved” section of your Photos app or find them in your main photo library.
Mac
1) Open the Photos app on your Mac running the latest version of macOS.
2) Select a shared album from the left sidebar.
3) Click to select one photo in the album, then press Command + A to select them all. Once all photos have a blue highlight around them, follow one of the steps below:
- Control-click or right-click on the selected item and choose ‘Save to Library.’
- Click File in the top menu bar and choose Export > Export N Photos or Export Unmodified Originals For N Photos.
- Click Image in the top menu bar and select Save N Shared Photos.
iPhone or iPad
1) Go to the shared album as shown above.
2) Tap the Select button at the top.
3) Mark all the images you want to download.
4) Tap Save to Library (N).
Mac
1) Go to the shared album as explained in the earlier heading.
2) Press and hold the Command key and select one or more photos and videos.
3) Control-click on the selected item and click Save to Library. You can also use the File > Export or Image > Save options from the top menu bar.
iPhone or iPad
1) Go inside the shared album and tap a photo or video to view it in full screen.
2) Tap the save icon, as shown in the screenshot below.
Mac
Open a photo or just select one. Then, Control-click and save to library.
Once you have saved the items to your photo library, they will stay there even if the original sharer has deleted them from the shared iCloud album or the album has expired automatically after 30 days.
Also, check out: How to see all your ID card photos in one place on iPhone