In that scenario, nobody’s media mingles with anybody else’s, and everyone just remembers to log out when they leave the computer. (Apple offers inadequate basic iCloud storage and doesn’t let families pool storage, even if you’re using Family Sharing.) That can wind up adding a few dollars a month in cost to have enough storage for each account. You could set up separate macOS logins so that each family members logged into their own Mac account, which was then associated with a separate iCloud account and thus a separate iCloud Photo Library. With five people, that’s obviously both a pain and didn’t work. You’ve already tried one of the most obvious ways to deal with it, which is creating separate Photos libraries and selecting them on launch.
We tried separate Photos libraries, but it just took a few mistakes-not logging out of one-and our libraries were a mess. Now we’re up to 60,000 photos and when I look at my library, I don’t want to see all my teenage daughter’s headshots. But Photos just puts all the photos together. The iPhones all have separate names, and in iTunes they all are separate entities.
That copy of Photos has iCloud Photo Library enabled, syncing and backing everything up. She and four other people in her family share a single Mac to which everyone uploads their media. Heather Dowdee would like to see less of her daughter-her daughter’s selfies, at least.
