Find out how to save one, several, or all photos and videos from a shared iCloud album to your iPhone, iPad, and Mac in just a few quick steps.
Shared albums via iCloud is not a new feature, but iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 have made some changes to it, the most notable of which is that unless you use iCloud Photos (Apple’s native photo backup service), you cannot create shared albums permanently. Instead, you can only create temporary iCloud shared albums that automatically delete after 30 days.
Therefore, if your family member, friend, or other acquaintance adds you as a member/participant of a temporary shared album, you should act immediately and save those photos and videos to your personal device within 30 days. If you fail to do so, you will no longer be able to access that shared media, and you may have to ask the original sharer to re-share it with you.
Note that the steps to save photos and videos from both temporary and permanent iCloud shared albums are the same.
iPhone or iPad
1) Open the A photo app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 (both currently in beta).
2) Scroll down to Collections tab and touch Shared album. Temporary albums show a small timeline icon in the upper left corner.
3) Once you’re inside a shared album, tap the menu icon with three dots up and select Save All Shared Items. This will save all the photos and videos from the saved album to your iPhone photo library. Once you have saved some of the items, click Save Remaining (N) in turn.
4) You can view all these items on “Recently Saved” section of your Photos app or find them in your main photo library.
Mac
1) Open the A photo app on your Mac running the latest version of macOS.
2) Select a shared album in the left sidebar.
3) Click to select one photo in the album, then press Command + A to select all. Once all images have green highlights around them, follow one of the steps below:
- Take control-click or right-click on the selected item and select ‘Save to Library.’
- Click File in the top menu bar and select Export > Send pictures of N or Extract Original Unmodified N Images.
- Click A photo 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 that Select button up.
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 previous article.
2) Press and hold i Command key and select one or more pictures and videos.
3) Take control-click on the selected item and click Save to Library. You can also use the File > Export or A photo > Save it options from the top menu bar.
iPhone or iPad
1) Go inside a shared album and tap a photo or video to view it in full screen.
2) Tap that save the iconas shown in the screenshot below.
Mac
Open an image or select one. Then, Take control-click and save to library.
Once you’ve saved things to your photo library, they’ll stay there even if the original sharer has removed them from the shared iCloud album or the album has automatically expired after 30 days.
Also, check out: How to see all your ID card photos in one place on iPhone