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🔗 Sharing

LibrePhotos offers multiple ways to share your photos and albums — with other users on your instance, or publicly with anyone via a link.

The Sharing Page​

The Sharing page (accessible from the navigation) is your central hub for all sharing activity. It provides an overview of:

  • Public photos — Other users on your instance who have made their profile public
  • Shared with you — Photos and albums that others have shared with you
  • You shared — Photos and albums you have shared with others
  • Public Links — Albums and photos you've shared publicly via link

Sharing Albums with Users​

You can share any user album with other users on your LibrePhotos instance:

  1. Navigate to the album you want to share
  2. In the toolbar above the photo grid, open the three-dot menu (⋮) and, under Album Actions, choose "Sharing" — no photo selection is needed
  3. Search for users and toggle sharing on or off for each

You can also open the same dialog from the share action on the album's card under Albums. The toolbar only appears on albums that already contain at least one photo.

Shared albums show up in the recipient's sharing area: they open Sharing, click the Shared with you tile, then the Albums tab (the page is titled Albums others shared).

Sharing Photos with Users​

You can share individual photos (or a selection of photos) with other users:

  1. Select one or more photos from any view
  2. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) and, under Photo Actions, choose "Sharing"
  3. Search for users and toggle sharing on or off for each

Shared photos show up in the recipient's sharing area, grouped by the person who shared them: they open Sharing, click the Shared with you tile, then the Photos tab (the page is titled Photos others shared).

You can create a public link for any user album, making it accessible to anyone — even people without an account on your LibrePhotos instance.

  1. Navigate to the album you want to share publicly
  2. Open the sharing dialog (three-dot menu → "Sharing")
  3. Toggle "Public sharing" on
  4. A unique URL slug is generated automatically

The public album is accessible at https://your-instance/public/s/{slug}.

When public sharing is enabled, click Show settings in the sharing dialog to expand the configuration panel. From there you can configure:

Custom Slug​

Change the URL slug to something memorable — 3–64 characters using only lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. Capitals you type are converted to lowercase automatically; spaces, underscores and other punctuation are rejected. Slugs must be unique across the instance, and the field checks availability as you type. For example: summer-vacation-2025 → /public/s/summer-vacation-2025.

Expiration​

Expiration is optional. Pick any expiry date and time with the date picker (down to the second), or use the built-in 7 days, 30 days or 90 days presets in the picker's dropdown for a quick choice. Click Never (or clear the field) to remove the expiry so the link never expires. After expiration, the link no longer works.

Photo Details​

The Photo Details panel fine-tunes what information visitors can see when they open a photo in a public album:

SettingWhat it controls
Share photo timestampsWhether photo dates and times are visible
Share location informationWhether GPS coordinates and place names are shown
Share camera informationWhether camera model, lens, focal length, aperture, ISO, and shutter speed are shown
Share captionsWhether AI-generated or manual captions are visible
Share detected facesWhether recognized people's names are displayed

Each of these settings can be toggled independently per album. When left unset, the user-level defaults from your settings are used; you can configure those in Settings → Public Sharing Defaults.

All five are off by default — both as the built-in fallback and as the initial value of your user-level defaults, following a privacy-first, opt-in approach. So on a brand-new public link, visitors don't see any of these per-photo details until you turn the relevant options on.

caution

Changes to the slug, expiration and Photo Details settings are not applied until you click "Save link settings" at the bottom of the settings panel. That button stays disabled until you change something; the Public sharing toggle itself only saves the on/off state.

The Public Album Experience​

Visitors to a public album link see:

  • A photo grid with the album's photos
  • A lightbox viewer for browsing individual photos
  • Photo details (subject to the album's Photo Details settings)
  • No login required

Making Individual Photos Public​

Besides sharing whole albums, you can make individual photos public without putting them in an album:

  1. Select one or more photos from any view
  2. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) and, under Photo Actions, choose "Make Public"

When you select photos individually, direct image links (https://your-instance/media/photos/<hash>.jpg) are copied to your clipboard so you can paste them straight away. In select all mode the photos are still made public, but no links are copied.

These are raw image-file URLs, so they behave differently from public album links. There is no album page, no custom slug, no expiration and no Photo Details toggles — anyone with the link can open the image file directly. If you need those controls, share a public album instead.

Public photos appear under the Photos tab of your Public Links page, on your public profile at https://your-instance/public/<username>, and in your own My Public Photos view.

To reverse this, select the photos again and choose "Make Private" from the same menu.

caution

Making a photo private stops it from being served through the public views, but it cannot retroactively invalidate a direct link that someone has already opened or saved a copy of the image from.

Managing Your Shared Content​

Shared By Me​

Open Sharing and click the You shared tile (the pages are titled Photos you shared and Albums you shared) to see:

  • Photos tab — All photos you've shared, grouped by recipient
  • Albums tab — All albums you've shared, grouped by recipient

Shared With Me​

Open Sharing and click the Shared with you tile (the pages are titled Photos others shared and Albums others shared) to see:

  • Photos tab — Photos others have shared with you, grouped by sender
  • Albums tab — Albums others have shared with you, grouped by sender

Open Sharing and click the Public Links tile to see everything you've made publicly accessible. It has two tabs: Albums (albums with a public link) and Photos (individual photos you've marked public).

Public User Profiles​

Users can make their profile publicly accessible by enabling Public Sharing in their profile settings. Other users on the instance can then find them in the Public photos section of the Sharing page, which lists every user with public sharing enabled along with their public photo count. A user's public photos are browsable at https://your-instance/public/<username>.