During the WWDC 2027 keynote, Apple announced that it's making iCloud Shared Albums more useful. This feature will now support Android and Windows, which was not the case until now. This means that Android and Windows users will be able to add photos to iCloud Shared Albums, starting with the release of iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate this fall.
This brings Apple's iCloud Photos on par with other photo-sharing services, such as Google Photos, where anyone can view and add photos easily. Once you're done with an event or back from a trip, you can now create a shared album and allow people outside the Apple ecosystem to join in. Up until now, Android users had no way to view or join shared albums, but there is limited support for viewing shared albums in the iCloud for Windows app. Once you enable iCloud Photos in the iCloud for Windows app, you'll see an option to enable shared albums too. When you enable iCloud Shared Albums, the app allows you to view shared albums that you have access to. On Android, a web link to iCloud Shared Albums lets you view albums in a browser.
The current limitation is that you can't add Windows or Android users to your shared albums—that is about to change with the release of iOS 27 and macOS 27. I think it's a game-changer, and it may actually force me to consider using iCloud Shared Albums, which is something I just ignore by default. It'll be interesting to see how this feature is implemented by Apple and how user-friendly it is.
What do you think so far?
I'd also be interested in learning more about how it handles iCloud storage. If it uses the storage of the person who created the album, that could prevent any issues with people running afoul of iCloud's measly 5GB of free storage. That's among the lowest free cloud storage tiers offered by anyone in the industry, and has not been increased in over a decade.
