Synology NAS tip | Create a Shared Space for Synology Photos

Play

When you install Synology photos onto your NAS, it will by default store all photos and videos in an individual users home folder. While this behaviour is by design, it is a problem if you want certain family memories to be accessible to all users of your NAS.

So to get around this problem we can have Synology Photos create something called a shared space. A shared space is a centralised location on our NAS, that all instances of synology photos can see either from the Synology photos web portal or the Synology photos app.

However as this network share has to be created through the Synology photos web portal. We are going to show you the settings you need to enable in order to make shared space work.

Sign into Disk Station Manager using your administrators credentials.
Select Main Menu and open Synology Photos.
In Synology Photos select the profile icon and choose Settings.
Click on the Shared Shape tab in Settings.
Enable Shared Space.

Note: The Shared Space is a legacy folder called “photo“, used by previous photo apps created by Synology. It’s worth noting that this location can not be changed to a different folder.

After enabling Shared Space click on Save and exit Synology Photos.
Reopen Synology Photos and return to Settings.
Under the Permissions heading choose Set Access Permissions.
In User/Group choose Users, in Custom choose Full Access.
Click on the Add button (+) and select Save.
Choose Save again and close Synology Photos.
In DIsk Station Manager open Control Panel – Shared Folder.
Highlight “photo” and choose Edit.
Set permissions to the “photo” network share. For convenience we used the Users group and that group Read/Write permission.
Save and sign out of Disk Station Manager.

Note: A separate shared space has now been created that can be viewed from within either the Synology web portal or from the Synology Photos app. If you have family photos and videos in other places on your NAS. You now need to move them to your “photo” folder in order for them to be viewable in Synology Photos.