hey! i've seen a lot of posts abt frustrations with organizing pics and vids on iphones. up until a couple of days ago i was feeling the same way. idk if this is common knowledge or not (i haven't seen anyone else post abt it) but there is a feature that allows u to make a shared library. this is different than a shared album. the shared library allows u to manually add pre-existing photos or there's the option to have photos saved to the shared library when ur shooting. u can change this when u open the camera on ur phone after u've set up the library but i like adding them manually so i know what's been added to my OF folder and what hasn't.

so, what i've done is i've added all of my sw content to the shared library. it will give u the option to share the library with someone and i just shared it with myself but i think that was an unnecessary step. when ur looking through ur library, in the top right corner, it gives u the option to view content that is in your personal library, your shared library or both. this has made it soooooooo much easier to organize and also hide photos that u don't want popping up when ur just trying to show someone a picture of ur dog lol. if there is sw content that i see in my personal library i know i haven't added it to my unedited album in my OF folder. it could also come in handy if u have someone that helps with editing ur content bc u can just add them to the library.

i highly suggest having an OF folder with different albums in ur photos to make organization easier (e.g. unedited/edited stills, clips, vids, watermarked, etc). these albums will be accessible in both libraries but u will only see the photos that are in whichever library u have toggled. for instance, if i am only viewing my personal library and i go into my OF folder, all of the albums are empty bc that content is all in my shared library. unfortunately u can't make separate albums in the shared library. i'm happy to show u what mine looks like if u need some guidance ᵔᴗᵔ.

to make a shared library go to settings > photos > shared library. here's a full breakdown on the whole thing.

another thing i want to add is my love for darkroom. this is for folks who can't afford adobe lol. i'm sure this isn't new to a lot of u but for those that aren't familiar it's an apple integrated editor. it works on iOS and macOS and it's great for batch editing. in conjunction with the shared lib it has helped tremendously with streamlining content editing. ur able to alter original photos with ur edits so that u don't have the og photo, the edited photo, and the watermarked photo saved in the cloud. nor do u have to go through and delete all og photos (but if u wanted to u can do that directly in the app). i know many other apps do this and are integrated with apple (photomater is another one) but darkroom lets u edit metadata, mass add watermarks, move content around from folder to folder directly in the app, and edit videos and it's just been a godsend.

i feel like being able to stay organized can really make or break ur experience in sw and hope this helps some of u out ‹𝟹

edit: added and removed some details for clarity