Share Photos Without iCloud or Google Drive
Sharing through iCloud or Google Drive means putting the photos into your permanent library first, then managing who can see them. If you only wanted to hand a few pictures to one person, that is a lot of machinery — and it usually asks them to have an account too.
Share photos now — no sign-up →How it works
- Upload only what you are sending — The photos go to a link, not into a library. Nothing is added to your camera roll, your Drive or anyone's storage quota.
- Choose when it should stop working — 24 hours to 30 days. There is no permissions panel to revisit later, because the expiry does that job.
- Send the link — It opens in any browser. No Apple ID, no Google account, no "request access" screen.
- It deletes itself — At expiry the files are gone. You do not have to remember to revoke anything.
The "request access" problem
A Drive link shared with the wrong setting shows the recipient a request screen, which they then have to send, which you then have to approve — often while standing next to them. An iCloud link asks non-Apple users to work through a web version that many of them will not have used before.
Both are designed around an account system that assumes everyone involved is inside it. A plain URL has no such assumption: there is nothing to be signed into, so there is nothing to be locked out of.
Sharing without adding to your library
To share from iCloud Photos or Google Photos, the pictures generally have to be in the library first — which means they are synced, counted against your storage, indexed, and included in whatever the service does with your collection.
Uploading to a link keeps the photos out of that entirely. They exist at one URL for a set period and are then deleted. Nothing is scanned, tagged, face-matched or used as training data — that commitment is written into the privacy policy rather than only into marketing copy.
When the cloud account is still the right answer
For a permanent family album, an ongoing shared library, or anything you want to still be there in five years, use iCloud or Google Photos — that is what they are for, and this is not a photo library.
This is for the handover: getting a specific set of pictures to a specific person now, without either of you taking on an account relationship to do it.
Common questions
- Does the recipient need a Google or Apple account?
- No. There is no account on either side of the link — it opens in any browser.
- Do the photos get added to my iCloud or Drive storage?
- No. They are uploaded to a link and deleted when it expires. Nothing touches your library or your storage quota.
- Can I share from an iPhone without iCloud?
- Yes. Pick the photos from your camera roll in the browser and upload them directly. HEIC files are converted to JPEG so they display for everyone.
- How do I stop someone seeing the photos later?
- The expiry handles it automatically, and you can expire a link early from the device that created it.
- Are the photos scanned or analysed?
- No. No face recognition, no object tagging, no content indexing, and no use of uploads as training data.