Every day (for years) I do the same thing at the end of the day: I open Photos, select the photos I have taken that day, and choose “Copy iCloud Link.” When the link is prepared, I paste it into an email. After updating from 18.01 to 18.1, the link is no longer prepared. It says it’s preparing a link and I get the Walmart spinner (all normal behavior), but the spinner never ends and the process never completes. I am logged in to iCloud, and I have completely restarted my iPhone. FWIW, when I go into Settings –> iCloud –> iCloud Backup –> My iPhone, it tells me that my phone has not been backed up to iCloud since it was upgraded to 18.1 (the date and time of the last backup just precede the moment I upgraded the phone). Assuming there’s nothing wrong with iCloud or 18.1, I am looking for hints as to what I can try to get the phone to reset my iCloud connection.
I should add that I have tried signing out of my iCloud account altogether, and signing back in. That hasn’t fixed the Photos problem.