How to Leave an iPhone Shared Album or Link Someone Added You To

Someone added you to a shared album and now their photos are showing up in your Photos app with a notification every time they post. What you were added to is one of four different things, a Shared Album, an iCloud link, a Shared Library, or a Messages thread, and each has a different way out. Find the one that matches below.

Unsubscribe from a Shared Album

Open Photos and scroll down to the Shared Albums section. Open the album, tap the people icon in the top right, scroll to the bottom of the sheet, and tap Unsubscribe. The album disappears from your Photos, and the owner sees that you left. Any photos you saved to your own library before leaving stay there.

Turn off just the notifications

To stay in the album but stop the alerts, open the same people sheet and turn off Notifications for that album. To silence every shared album at once, go to Settings, Notifications, Photos and turn off Allow Notifications.

Close an iCloud link

If what you received was a link, whether to a shared album's public website or an iCloud photo link in Messages, there is nothing to leave. You are viewing a page, not subscribed to anything. Close the page and delete the message. If you tapped Save on any of the photos, delete them from Photos, Recents and then from Recently Deleted.

Leave a Shared Library

A Shared Library is different from a Shared Album: it merges photos into one shared pool with up to five other people. To leave, go to Settings, Apps, Photos, Shared Library and tap Leave Shared Library. Choose Keep everything to copy every shared photo to your personal library, or Keep only what I contributed to take back just your own. The other participants keep the library.

Leave or mute a Messages thread

If the photos are coming in through a group text, open the conversation, tap the names at the top, and tap Leave this Conversation. That option only appears in iMessage groups with at least three other people; in smaller or SMS groups, turn on Hide Alerts instead. To stop an unwanted sender entirely, tap their name at the top, then Info, then Block Caller.

Unsubscribing does not delete anything for the owner. It removes the album from your Photos only. The owner's album, its contents, and the other subscribers are untouched.

Invitations can be declined instead of accepted. A pending invite shows up in Photos under Shared Albums with Accept and Decline buttons. Tap Decline and the album never appears.