How to Turn Off Shared with You Photos on iPhone

To turn off Shared with You photos on iPhone, open Settings, tap Apps, then Messages, then Shared with You, and turn off Photos. Photos people send you in Messages will stay in the chat and stop showing up in your Photos app. To switch it off for every app, turn off Automatic Sharing on the same screen instead.

“Shared photos” can mean a few different things on an iPhone, so this guide covers each one: Shared with You, a single conversation, Shared Albums, and a Shared Library.

Which kind of shared photos are you seeing?

• Shared with You: photos and videos someone sent you in Messages. They show up in a Shared with You section in the Photos app, even though you never saved them.
• Shared Albums: albums you created and invited people to, or albums someone invited you to.
• Shared Library: an iCloud Shared Photo Library, where up to six people add to one combined library.

Each has its own switch. Turning off one doesn’t touch the others.

Turn off Shared with You for Photos

1. Open Settings and tap Apps.
2. Tap Messages, then Shared with You.
3. Turn off Photos.

Photos from Messages now stay in Messages. Links, music and other shared items keep appearing in their apps, unless you turn those off too.

To stop Shared with You everywhere at once, turn off Automatic Sharing at the top of that screen.

On iOS 17 or earlier, there’s no Apps step: go to Settings, then Messages, then Shared with You.

Turn it off for just one person or group

Maybe you like the feature, but not for one particular chat: a group with lots of memes, or a person whose photos are private.

1. Open Messages and tap the conversation.
2. Tap the person’s name or the group icon at the top.
3. Turn off Show in Shared with You.

Their photos stay in the conversation, but they no longer appear in Photos or other apps.

Remove one photo from Shared with You

To clear a single item without changing any settings, open the Shared with You section in the app where it shows, touch and hold the photo, and tap Remove. Depending on the app, the option may look a little different.

What turning it off does and doesn’t do

• Nothing is deleted. The photos are still in the Messages conversation.
• Saved photos stay saved. If you tapped Save on a photo, it’s in your photo library now. Delete it from Photos if you don’t want it there, and remember it then sits in Recently Deleted for 30 days unless you delete it from there too.

Turn off Shared Albums

To remove all shared albums from this iPhone:

1. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Photos.
2. Turn off Shared Albums.

This only affects this iPhone. The albums still exist for everyone else, and on your other devices.

To leave or delete one shared album instead, open it in Photos, tap the More button, tap the album name, then tap Unsubscribe. If you created the album, tap Delete Shared Album, which removes it for everyone in it.

Leave a Shared Library

1. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Photos.
2. Tap Shared Library, then Leave Shared Library.
3. Choose to keep everything or only what you added, then confirm.

If you leave within 7 days of joining, you can keep only the items you added. Stay signed in to iCloud with iCloud Photos on until the copy finishes.

Keeping private photos private

People often go looking for this setting after a private photo from a chat pops up in Photos at the wrong moment, like while showing someone a vacation album. Turning off Shared with You for that conversation stops it happening again. If you’ve saved the photo, it now lives in your library and syncs with iCloud Photos like any other.

For photos you want to keep but never want to see by accident, Easy Vault moves them into an encrypted vault on your iPhone with its own pattern or password, then offers to delete the originals from Photos. You can also add Face ID or a decoy vault that opens with a second passcode. For the built-in options, see how to hide photos on iPhone.