# Google Photos shared albums: how to create one, and where they fall short for groups > How to make a shared album in Google Photos, and the four catches groups hit: link privacy, where photos live, storage and compression. By The Huddled Team · 29 Sept 2026 · Topic: [Shared Albums](https://huddled.cloud/blog/topics/shared-albums) · Tags: [Shared albums](https://huddled.cloud/blog/tags/shared-albums), [Google Photos](https://huddled.cloud/blog/tags/google-photos), [Photo sharing](https://huddled.cloud/blog/tags/photo-sharing) Canonical: https://huddled.cloud/blog/google-photos-shared-album-guide ## The weekend your photos got scattered Six of us went to the coast in September. Between us, there were maybe nine hundred photos of the same sunset, taken from six phones, and by Tuesday every one of those photos lived somewhere different. Three people posted a selection to the group chat. Two sent Google Drive links with names like `IMG_2734.zip`. One person just never sent anything, and the rest of us are still too polite to ask. If you have tried to collect everyone's photos after a trip, a wedding or a birthday, you know the pattern. The photos exist. They are good. Getting them into one place is the problem, and Google Photos shared albums are the answer most people reach for first. ## How to create a shared album in Google Photos The steps are short. In the app, open Photos, select the pictures you want, tap Share, then choose [New shared album](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6131416). Give it a name, add the people you want in it, and you are away. On the web, it is the same flow under the Share button. ![Creating a shared photo album on a phone — how to create a shared album in Google Photos](https://huddled.cloud/blog/images/85e4bc82cd1d00ac472131a66b734930.webp) Once the album exists, the people you have added can add their own photos to it. One album, everyone contributing, no sending files one by one. Most of the time, that works. ## What it gets right Credit where it is due. Google Photos is free to start, almost everyone already has the app, and the shared album concept is sound. If your group is small, everyone keeps their photos in Google Photos, and nobody minds the link settings, a shared album will do the job. Your photos land in one place, and the people in them can see the ones they missed. For a lot of groups, that is the end of the story, and it is a good one. ## The catches At the time of writing (September 2026), these are Google's current sharing rules. Google changes them often, so treat this as a snapshot. The first catch is privacy. When you create a link to a shared album, [anyone with that link can view the album](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6131416), not just the people you thought about when you made it. Links get forwarded. They end up in bigger chats than you intended. I would think twice before tapping Create link on photos of my friends' children at a beach weekend. ![A shared album link breaking away — shared album link privacy](https://huddled.cloud/blog/images/f6700898996f6b2d0ee582639bb8b2c7.webp) The second catch is what the app asks for in return. Almost everyone has a Google account, so the account is not the obstacle. To put photos in a shared album, those photos have to be in Google Photos first: backup turned on, the account logged into the phone that took them. Google Photos works best as the home for your whole library, and asking a friend to move their photo life into Google for one group album is a bigger ask than the install screen suggests. Most iPhone users' photos live in iCloud, and running two photo libraries for one weekend trip is not something most people will do. Storage is the third catch, and the quietest. Photos backed up to Google Photos count against a [15 GB quota shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos](https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9312312). Every person who adds photos to the shared album pays for their own uploads out of that quota, and [everything you save in Google Photos uses it](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10100180). A group of six people each adding a few hundred photos is six separate people burning their own email storage to make one shared album work. The fourth catch is quality. Unless every contributor pays for storage or switched their settings years ago, photos get compressed. [Storage saver resizes anything above 16 MP down to 16 MP and videos above 1080p down to 1080p](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791). Fine on a phone screen. Noticeable if you ever want to print the big group shot, and you only find out which photos were compressed when it is too late to fix. ![A photo compressed through a funnel — photo storage and compression limits](https://huddled.cloud/blog/images/782948c949421673e4d23b21eb20ddc8.webp) ## What I would do If your group fits the happy path, use the shared album. It costs nothing and it works. If your group does not fit it, because half the group keeps their photos in iCloud and is not about to move their library into Google for one album, or the photos are of people who did not sign up to be viewable by anyone with a link, or the album matters enough that you want the photos at full quality without anyone rationing their Gmail storage, you want a different shape of tool. You want one private place that everyone contributes to, that keeps the photos at the quality they were taken, and that nobody can peek into just by holding a link. Yes, Huddled is another app, and like Google Photos it has a web version for anyone who would rather not install anything. The difference is what the tool asks for. Google Photos wants your library: backup on, quota attached, your photos in their cloud as the price of one shared album. Huddled wants your trip: one Space, invited people only, the photos from the weekend at full quality, and no claim on anything else on your phone. The album belongs to the event, not to anyone's email allowance. [Start a Space](https://huddled.cloud/sign-up) for your next trip, and this time, everyone's photos land in the same place.