Google Photos album sharing feature broken on iOS

The Google Photos app has had issues from time to time, so while it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that users are facing a new issue with the app, what’s worrisome is that it’s the album sharing feature – one of the most frequently used functionalities – that’s broken now

The issue in question prevents those operating Google Photos on Apple’s mobile platform from sharing freshly created albums, with a notification stating Can’t change sharing options. Try again in a few minutes.

From our observation – as we were also able to reproduce the problem at our end – the error shows up only while sharing newly-created normal albums (created and shared right away), be it by directly hitting the sharing icon (on the top right corner) or by choosing the Sharing options (in the horizontal three dots menu in the right upper corner).

Following is the error notification that shows up in both cases:

It’s worth mentioning that when we tested multiple times, we also saw a different notification stating “Can’t share album. Please try in a few minutes” (highlighted in one of our earlier stories) popping up when sharing icon was hit directly.

On the other hand when the same album was shared via the ‘sharing options’ (in three dots menu), can’t change sharing options error showed up. Both messages can be seen in the proceeding screen shots:

We can also confirm that in case you create a new album, come out, and then open the same from within the Albums tab, sharing works as intended – so, it’s only immediate sharing after creation which appears broken. Also, the problem rears its ugly head only with normal albums – if you try creating a shared album, then sharing works fine.

After being reported for more than two months, recently the issue got acknowledged by one of the experts on the official Google Photos help forum, who made it clear that the matter has been reported to Google.

Here’s what they said:

There are currently issues with creating and/or sharing albums within the iOS Google Photos app. This has been reported to Google. We don’t usually find out an estimated resolution date

Even the expert has mentioned that the glitch ends up displaying different error messages.

Though the company hasn’t said much officially, it’s a relief that at least the matter has been escalated. We are hoping that Google addresses the problem soon, so that users can continue sharing albums without any issues.

Google Photos Help Forum 1 2

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