I noticed a rather strange bug after clicking on an iCloud album invite, and one of the reasons I was compelled to document it was that I was quite shocked that Apple had left such a user-UNfriendly bug in their software. It’s very unlike them.

First, the error message looks as if it would be something an engineer would print out to themselves when testing their feature. What on earth does “ENABLE_IN_ICLOUD_BODY_photos” mean?

It was also not documented elsewhere on the internet how to fix it. The crux of the problem is that after you click through to the iCloud settings, there are two toggles for Photos to be turned on for iCloud.

The first toggle, in photos #3 and #4, seemed to have no impact. Only after scrolling down to the second Photos toggle (photo #5) and turning that on was I able to visit my friend’s iCloud album.

I’m still confused why there are two toggles, but the error message makes more sense to me now: perhaps in the message “ENABLE_IN_ICLOUD_BODY_photos” the “body” refers to the second set of toggles. I can’t imagine Apple expecting a first time user of iCloud albums to know that, however. Hopefully they fix it in the next shipment.

On a higher level, I was surprised by the lack of onboarding and upselling here. Apple’s Photos product is a great way to introduce users to iCloud storage, and having their friend invite them to an iCloud Photos album is a natural and viral way to bring more users into the iCloud Photos ecosystem. It seems like a missed opportunity.