How To Hide Shared Photos On Iphone

Apple rolled out iOS 15 for everyone last week, bringing new features to make your daily routine easy. Among the new features that are available to you is 'Shared With You' – a new section that highlights content shared by others over the Messages app. If you don't like this new feature or you don't want content from others segregated into different sections, then you may want to turn it off.

In this post, we'll help you disable Shared with you from Photos and Messages in all the different ways possible.

Why should you Turn off Shared Photos on iOS 15?
How to stop Shared Photos from someone: Disable 'Shared with You' from the contact
How to Remove Shared Photos in the Photos app completely: Turn off 'Shared With You' for Photos app
How to Remove Shared Photos on your device completely: Turn off 'Shared With You' everywhere
How to Remove Photos Shared by You that others see under 'Shared with you' on their devices

Why should you Turn off Shared Photos on iOS 15?

'Shared with You' is a useful option inside the Photos app on iOS 15, but you may want to hide content that's sent to you by others for several reasons, like:

Some shared media may be private to you; you may not want others to know who sent them to you when they check your Photos app.
You find that the content shared by some of your contacts is irrelevant to you and you don't want them to appear inside your Photos app or other apps on your iPhone.
You don't want your Photos app to be cluttered with additional sections than the ones that you already see.
You simply don't care about Apple's 'Shared with You' feature and you don't want to use it at all.

How to stop Shared Photos from someone: Disable 'Shared with You' from the contact

If you no longer want someone's shared media to appear under the new 'Shared with You' section on the Photos app, you may want to hide this contact from appearing inside 'Shared with You' entirely. This doesn't only remove their shared content from the Photos app but also prevents their shared stuff from appearing inside any of the other supported apps like Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple News, Podcasts, and Safari.

To hide someone from 'Shared With You', open the Messages app, select the person you want to hide and then tap on their contact picture at the top. On the screen that appears next, tap on the (green) toggle adjacent to 'Show in Shared with You'. The toggle will turn grey once you turn it off.

Alternatively, you can hide someone from 'Shared With You' by tapping and holding on the person's thread inside the Messages app and then selecting the 'Hide in Shared With You' option from the overflow menu that appears.

When you hide someone from 'Shared with You', the content that they shared from apps other than the Photos app will also cease to show up in their respective 'Shared with You' sections.

How to Remove Shared Photos in the Photos app completely: Turn off 'Shared With You' for Photos app

If you want none of the pictures or videos that are shared with you on Messages to appear inside the Photos app, you can simply disable the 'Shared with You' feature for the Photos app on your iPhone. To do this, open the Settings app on your iPhone and select the 'Messages' section.

Inside Messages, select the 'Shared with You' option.

On the next screen, tap on the (green) toggle adjacent to the Photos app to disable 'Shared with You'. The toggle will turn grey once you turn it off.

How to Remove Shared Photos on your device completely: Turn off 'Shared With You' everywhere

Media that someone shares with you on Messages always ends up appearing inside Photos but if you want none of that to occupy additional space inside other Apple apps, you can entirely disable the 'Shared with You' feature on your device. To do that, open the Settings app and go to Messages.

On the next screen, select 'Shared with You'.

Inside the 'Shared with You' screen, tap on the (green) toggle adjacent to 'Automatic Sharing' to turn off 'Shared with You' on your iPhone. The toggle will turn grey once you turn it off.

How to Remove Photos Shared by You that others see under 'Shared with you' on their devices

If you want to remove the content you sent to someone and prevent it from appearing inside the 'Shared with You' section on others' iPhones, then we hate to break it to you; you cannot do that. Media once sent to someone on Messages will appear on the recipient's iPhone the moment you tap on the Send button. It's up to how the recipient has set up their device and they will have whole control over which media and content appear labeled as 'Shared with You' and which ones don't.

You can only remove the files and media that you receive from someone else on your iPhone and not on others'.

Using Messages

The easiest way to remove the content you've received from someone is using the Messages app. For this, open Messages on your iPhone, go to the conversation where you want to remove shared content from.

Inside the selected conversation, tap on the contact's picture or name at the top.

Next, tap on the 'See All' option inside the Photos section on the screen and find the media you want to remove.

Tap and hold on the media you want to remove and select the 'Delete' option in the overflow menu.

This will delete the selected media from the Messages app.

Using Photos

To remove shared content from the Photos app, open the app and select the 'For You' tab at the bottom.

On the next screen, select the 'Shared with You' section and open the media you want to delete. When the media is open, tap on the Trash icon at the bottom right corner to remove it from your iPhone.

That's all you need to know about turning off Shared Photos on iOS 15.

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