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Albums

LibrePhotos supports several types of albums to help you organize your photo library.

Album Types​

User Albums (My Albums)​

Albums you create manually to organize photos however you like. You can add any photos to these albums.

People Albums​

Automatically generated albums based on face recognition. Each recognized person gets their own album.

Auto Albums (Events)​

Automatically generated albums based on time and location patterns in your photos.

Places Albums​

Automatically generated albums based on the GPS location data in your photos.

Things Albums​

Automatically generated albums based on detected objects and scenes in your photos. Things Albums are filtered by the currently active Tagging Model (configurable in Site Settings), so only tags from the selected model are shown. Switching models instantly updates which Things Albums are visible.

Setting an Album Cover​

You can customize the cover image for People Albums and User Albums. There are two ways to do this:

  1. Navigate to the album you want to customize (People or User Album)
  2. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the selection toolbar
  3. Click "Set album cover"
  4. A modal will open showing all photos in the album
  5. Click on the photo you want to use as the cover
  6. The cover is set immediately
tip

The cover picker loads photos in batches of 50 for better performance. Click "Load more photos" to see additional photos if your album is large.

Method 2: Quick Selection (Shortcut)​

If you already know which photo you want to use:

  1. Navigate to the album
  2. Select exactly one photo by clicking on it (you'll see a checkmark appear)
  3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the selection toolbar
  4. Click "Set album cover"
  5. The selected photo becomes the cover immediately
note

The "Set album cover" option only appears when you're viewing a People Album or User Album. It won't be visible on other pages like the main timeline or auto-generated albums.

Creating User Albums​

  1. Select one or more photos from any view
  2. Click the plus icon (+) in the selection toolbar
  3. Click "Album"
  4. Either:
    • Enter a name for a new album and click "Create"
    • Or click on an existing album to add the photos to it

Sharing Albums​

User Albums can be shared with other users on your LibrePhotos instance, or publicly via a link. For full details on all sharing features, see the Sharing guide.

  1. Navigate to the User Album you want to share
  2. Select any photo to activate the selection toolbar
  3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮)
  4. Under "Album Actions", click "Sharing"
  5. Search for and select the users you want to share with

You can share albums publicly with anyone via a unique link, without requiring them to have an account on your LibrePhotos instance:

  1. Navigate to the User Album you want to share publicly
  2. Go to the Sharing page from the navigation
  3. Click "Create Public Link" for the album
  4. A unique URL slug will be generated that you can share with anyone
  5. Configure privacy settings for the public link to control what information is visible:
    • Location data
    • Camera information
    • Timestamps
    • Captions
    • Recognized faces

Default privacy settings for new public links can be configured in Settings → Public Sharing Defaults.

Public albums are accessible at /public/s/{slug} and include a lightbox viewer with the same navigation experience as the main app.

Removing Photos from Albums​

To remove photos from a User Album:

  1. Navigate to the User Album
  2. Select the photos you want to remove
  3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮)
  4. Click "Remove Photos"
caution

This only removes the photos from the album. The original photos remain in your library.