Shared album not appearing in Photos Shared Library on wife's Mac

A Shared Library will achieve the "one central shared location where we can view edit delete (yes delete on one = delete on all) them easily" part. Both iOS 26 and iOS 27 support the Shared Library function.

Both iOS 26 and 27 support the duplicate removal function, though I find that the Shared Library function complicates it somewhat. (If a set of potential duplicates came from multiple donor libraries, that becomes an additional factor in resolving which duplicate to retain, for example.)

What a Shared Library does not do is support shared structure (Folder/Album organization). Each partner is responsible for maintaining whatever Folder/Album organization they want applied to their view of the Shared Library.

On the other hand, a Shared Library does allow all sharers to see and search on the keywords attached to the photos in the Shared Library.

I guess the fact that I can achieve this on my devices running macOS27, means that I should update my wife's device to macOS27 as well. Hopefully that will solve my issue

It is the same on macOS27: When we share photos to a Shared Library, we can still see the photos in their original albums, but the other subscribers will only see a flat stream of photos and videos without structure.

When I share photos to a shared library, I tag them with the name of the album they are in as a keyword.

Then the subscribers can recreate the structure with smart albums using the rule "Keyword is ...".

Two facts that may be related to your problem:

The concepts "Shared Library" and "Shared Album" are disjoint and generally not used together. What are you trying to accomplish?

The way Shared Albums are implemented changed between macOS 26 and macOS 27. Old-style albums can be viewed on newer systems, but the new-style albums work only indirectly on older systems (when sent as links into iCloud).

Thanks for the response.

I am trying to achieve:

Move all of the 30000 or so images that we have scattered on our computers to one central shared location where we can view edit delete (yes delete on one = delete on all) them easily;

Remove all of the duplicates

Have them in a structured manner so that we don't have to scroll through the 250 odd folders that we currently have to find an event

I guess the fact that I can achieve this on my devices running macOS27, means that I should update my wife's device to macOS27 as well. Hopefully that will solve my issue

Very many thanks for your input - it is much appreciated

Just to be sure, do you and your wife have separate Apple accounts?

Also, Macs can have more than one Library. So you can have one smaller Library for iCloud Photos, and other Archive Libraries. Since you have an iMac, you can keep Photos Libraries on external drives.

You might want to see this:

Organizing Photos with Folders & Albums - Apple Community