Jendk3r OP t1_its3ejh wrote on October 25, 2022 at 9:58 PM

Reply to comment by -bobak in Does saving iMessage image to iCloud double the size footprint? by Jendk3r

That's all very helpful, thank you! Do you think that saving the shared album photos will use the referencing mechanism instead of copies when sharing?

-bobak t1_its42a3 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 10:03 PM

It depends on what you mean by “saving”. If you mean accepting the shared album request, it’s possible that this isn’t duplicating the storage, though I’m not 100% sure how that works (it may only “exist” once in iCloud, but it’s still taking up room when it’s viewed from the phone anyway, since the device needs to at least temporarily store the photo to show it).

If you’re talking about saving a photo from a shared album into your own library, that is without a doubt not referencing the original and is now a separate file in your own photo library