After a family vacation or a group event, collecting everyone’s photos is usually a frustrating process involving compressed text messages, massive email attachments, and messy group chats. Google Photos provides a far more elegant solution: Shared Albums. By creating a single, collaborative gallery, everyone in the group can upload their high-resolution photos to one centralized location.
How to Create a Shared Album
You can create a shared album using the Google Photos mobile app on iOS/Android or via the desktop web browser.
- Open Google Photos.
- Navigate to the Sharing tab (located at the bottom of the screen on mobile, or the left sidebar on desktop).
- Tap or click Create shared album.
- Type a descriptive title for the album at the top of the screen (e.g., “Summer Camping Trip”).
- Tap Select photos to add your own initial photos to the album. You can select a few to start or add your entire batch. Once selected, tap Add.
How to Invite People to the Album
Once the album is created, you need to invite your friends and family.
- Inside the album, tap the Share button.
- Google Photos will suggest contacts based on your Gmail history. If you see the person you want to invite, simply tap their name and hit send. They will receive a notification inside their own Google Photos app.
- If you prefer to invite people via a group text message or a different messaging app (like WhatsApp), look for the Create link option. Tap it, and Google will generate a secure URL. Copy this link and paste it into your group chat. Anyone who clicks the link can view the album.
Configuring Collaboration Settings
By default, anyone you invite can add their own photos. However, as the owner of the album, you have complete control over what participants are allowed to do.
- Open the shared album and tap the three-dot menu icon in the top right corner.
- Select Options.
- Here, you will find several toggle switches:
- Collaborate: Turn this off if you only want people to view your photos, but you do not want them to add their own.
- Comments & likes: Turn this off to prevent people from leaving text comments on specific photos.
- Link sharing: If you turn this off, the URL you generated earlier will immediately break, and only people you specifically invited via their Google Account will be able to access the album.
How to Save Photos from a Shared Album
This is a critical, often misunderstood point: photos in a shared album do not automatically belong to your personal Google Photos library. If the owner deletes the shared album, all those photos disappear from your view.
If someone uploads a fantastic photo of you to the shared album, you must save it to your own library to keep it permanently. To do this, open the photo, tap the three-dot menu (or look at the top toolbar), and select Save (or the cloud icon with a downward arrow). The photo will now be safely backed up to your personal account.