Sharing with iCloud Links: working around a bug in macOS Sequoia Photos

I don't write many posts about Apple bugs in the modern era. If I did I'd be putting out several every day. I cannot use a modern macOS Apple product without running into yet another bug. Photos is a particularly rich example of the Tim Cook era bugfest.

Today's bug concerns sharing by iCloud Link. This is theoretically the best way to share photos and videos between iCloud users (full res, esp video, full metadata if you are careful), but there's a bug with assigning them to an album (may depend on volume)

Steps:

1. Open iCloud Link via messages
2. See result in Sharing:iCloud Links. Wait until fully downloaded.
3. Drag and drop to an album
4. The images do not appear.

There's something broken in the drag and drop function. Maybe it's fixed in Tahoe, but Tahoe is a typical Tim Cook era product. Broken by both bugs and bad design.

I tried a few things, I'm not sure yet what worked. That included switching to an instance of my Photo Library that is full resolution download. After the usual long delay due to iCloud throttling the images did appear in my Library, but not in the album they were copied too. I could move them from the Library to an album.

Next time I'll try selecting all images, dragging to "Library", then reviewing in "Recently Saved" and copying to an album. If that works I hope I remember to update this post. I think if you try to copy them to an album it looks like it intends to copy (get the warning about adding xxx images); I think even though they don't make to the album they do end up, eventually, in the Library.

I apologize to everyone I ever shared an iCloud Link with.

Tim Cook should have been fired years ago. The stock would be worth less but the company would suck less.