Keepr Five ways to be in an album, and they don't all mean the same thing.
The table#
| View | Comment | Add photos | Download | Share it onward | Delete photos | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Own + others' |
| Contributor (invited by name) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | Own only |
| Viewer (invited by name) | ✅ | ✅ | — | ✅ | — | — |
| Circle member | ✅ | ✅ | If allowed | If allowed | If allowed | Own only |
| Hub member | ✅ | ✅ | If allowed | If allowed | If allowed | Own, if allowed |
"If allowed" means the album's owner or a hub admin decides — see Sharing an album with a circle and Admins and members.
The rule underneath all of it#
Whoever uploaded a photo keeps control of that photo. Their photos are theirs to delete, wherever they put them, and nobody else can delete them except the album's owner.
That's why an album can be genuinely collective without anyone losing their own pictures to someone else's tidying.
Ownership and storage travel together#
A photo belongs to whoever uploaded it, and uses their storage — unless the album is in a Family Hub, in which case it uses the hub's.
So if someone adds fifty videos to your personal album, that's their storage, not yours. And if you'd rather own a photo somebody else added, that's a request they can agree to: see Ask for photos of you.
That's also why inviting someone into a hub album is an admin decision rather than the album creator's: what they add comes out of the hub's shared storage, which the billing admin pays for. In your own personal albums, inviting people is entirely your call.
Contributor or viewer#
Both are for inviting one person to one album, by name, without putting them in a circle.
Contributor — for someone who has photos to add. A relative who was at the wedding.
Viewer — for someone who should see it and nothing more.
Neither gets access to any of your other albums, and neither joins a circle.
Checking what you can do in someone else's album#
Every album shows your role next to the owner's name — Contributor, Viewer, or the fact that you created it. Tap it. It opens a list of what you can actually do there: add photos, download, share the album, delete your own — each marked allowed or not, and it names the person who decides.
Worth knowing because the answer isn't always the same for two albums that look identical. There are four ways to end up with permission — you created it, you were invited to it by name, you're in the hub it lives in, or you're in a circle it's shared with — and each of them comes with its own settings. If an album is missing a button you expected, that badge is the fastest explanation.
Where albums other people shared with you live#
In Your Albums, under Shared with me. It's a filter next to All Storage and Personal, and it appears only once at least one album has been shared with you.
They're deliberately not under Personal. That tab means your own storage, and an album sitting in someone else's Family Hub isn't in it — including it would make the storage figures on that tab wrong.
When someone loses access#
Removing a circle's share, removing someone from a hub, or removing an invitation stops that person seeing the album.
Photos they added stay. They put them in your album, and their leaving doesn't withdraw them. If you want them gone as well, that's a separate action — and worth a thought, because they're someone else's photographs.
In a Family Hub there's a 30-day window after removal where the person keeps read access, so they can take copies. See Leaving or being removed from a hub.