Since WWDC 2026 is right around the corner, here’s my Apple Photos grievance that I hope they’ll fix. After culling and editing vacation photos, I want to share them with my friends and family. Since I always have more than one camera with me, those photos turn out to be more than a few.
You would think using the “Copy iCloud Link” and sharing it via Apple Messages would send a link that the recipients could open in a browser. But no, Apple simply puts the photos themselves in the conversation, forcing the user to swipe through each and one of them to get to the end.
Sure, you can press the little logo above the photos (the one stating the number of photos the album has) and you’ll get a two column preview on mobile. But the browser version has three columns, and I don’t know about you, but many people would rather skip to the photos they like, rather than endlessly swiping or scrolling.
And before you shout in the comments I should hit Options, then choose Send As iCloud Link before actually sharing, let me just say it simply does not work. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t.
Luckily for Apple, there’s a simple fix: copy what Google is doing with its Photos service. Is it unethical? Sure. Will it work? Absolutely.
But why not use Google Photos from the beginning? I did, but being in the Apple ecosystem, after a certain point I wanted to eliminate friction. Streamline the whole photography editing and sharing workflow. I’m still working on it.
PS: If Apple is ever going to improve sharing photos via iCloud, it would be a nice touch to add the option to see replies to certain photos as comments in the web interface.
