One Mac, several people, one Photos library

Why it happens

Most family Macs start with one login that everyone shares. That login is signed in to one person’s Apple Account, so Photos shows that person’s whole library, and often their phone’s pictures too through iCloud Photos. Anyone who sits down sees all of it. With iCloud Photos on, your photos and videos are stored in iCloud so that you can reach them on all your devices.

1. Make one account per person

Apple’s Users & Groups page says to set up an account for each person if a Mac has several users, so each can have their own settings without affecting the others. You need to be an administrator to do it.

1. Open the Apple menu, then System Settings, then Users & Groups.
2. Add a user for each family member.
3. Make only the adults administrators. Children get standard accounts.

Each person then signs in to their own Apple Account inside their own login, and their own photos follow them there, as Apple describes.

2. Turn on the guest login for visitors

The same page offers a Guest User. Apple says a guest can log in without access to other users’ files or settings. It suits a cousin who needs to print a boarding pass.

3. Move your photos to your own login

If your pictures live in the shared login today, sign in to your new account and turn on iCloud Photos there, or export the library and import it. Then sign the shared login out of your account, so its Photos app stops showing your pictures. The iCloud syncing guide shows how to stop one device from pulling in your library. With iCloud Photos on, your photos and videos are stored in iCloud so that you can reach them on all your devices.

Before you sign out, check that everything has arrived in your own account. Pictures kept only in a library that isn’t synced are not in iCloud, as Apple’s library page explains.

4. Know what an administrator can still do

Separate accounts are a matter of courtesy as much as privacy. An administrator can reset another user’s password and look at files across the Mac. In most families that’s fine: the goal is that nobody stumbles on someone else’s holiday photos, not that adults are locked out.

If you want a picture that nobody at home can open, a Mac account isn’t the right place for it.

5. A second library, if you must share one login

Photos on Mac lets you make extra libraries. Apple’s library page says you switch between them, that only the System Photo Library syncs with iCloud Photos, and that extra libraries need their own backup. It is tidier than one big library, but anyone at the shared login can switch to yours.

The Mac photos guide covers the Hidden album there and how much it really protects. Photos you move out of the Library into Apple’s separate locked album stay out of the Library, other albums and the Photos widget, and from iOS 16 that album asks for authentication to open.

Where the private ones go

Photos that are yours alone are easier to keep on the device that is yours alone. On an iPhone or iPad, a vault with its own passcode keeps them out of any shared library. In Sealed, Photos and videos are sealed the moment they arrive, and afterwards you can remove the originals from Photos if you like. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode.

To move a batch from the Mac to your phone without a cloud service in between: A USB drop box folder shows up in Finder when you connect your iPhone to a Mac, and it is free.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps keep your own private photos on your phone, away from the family Mac. Your files never leave your iPhone unless you turn on iCloud backup or export them yourself.

It helps bring files across from the Mac over a cable. A USB drop box folder shows up in Finder when you connect your iPhone to a Mac, and it is free.

It doesn’t run on a Mac or split a Mac’s accounts. Sealed runs on iPhone and iPad.

It doesn’t control what other people do with photos already in the shared library. Moving yours out is a step you take on the Mac itself. Until you delete them, the originals stay in Photos, outside the vault.