Fine-grained access controls are live
24 Jun 2026
Every album now has three separate permissions instead of one: view, add, and download. Previously, being in a group meant you could see and save everything in every album. Now an album owner can share something viewable without automatically making the originals downloadable.
This came up most often with kids' photos and events with a wide guest list — people you're happy to have look through an album, but not necessarily download full-resolution copies of every image in it. The new controls let an album stay shared without that tradeoff.
Permissions are set per album, not per group, so the same group of people can have different access to different albums depending on what makes sense for each one. A wedding album might be view-only for guests but fully downloadable for the couple and their immediate family.
Changing a permission takes effect immediately for everyone in the group — no need to re-share or re-invite anyone. If you tighten an album from downloadable to view-only, anyone who already saved a copy keeps it, but no further downloads are possible from that point on.