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A library is a separate collection of photos and videos, together with its albums, people, and photo descriptions. You can keep personal photos in one library and create others for your family, a client, or a shared project. An album organizes photos within a library; a library separates the whole collection and controls who can access it.

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Choose your library

In the web app, open the library switcher to select a library. Choose Manage libraries to create or rename libraries you own. Browsing, searching, and uploads use the selected library, so check it before adding photos. People are grouped within each library, rather than across all your collections.
Manage libraries dialog listing two libraries with Family Library selected

Manage separate collections and choose the library you are working in.

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Share a collection

If you own the library, open Manage libraries and choose Share. Create an invitation for a Viewer or Collaborator, then share its link or QR code. You can set an expiration and a limit on how many people can join. Recipients sign in to Gumnut to accept the invitation. Sharing gives members access to the whole library, not just one album. As the owner, you can change a member’s role or remove their access. Uploads to a shared library count toward the owner’s storage allowance. Sharing access itself does not create more copies or multiply storage use.

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How this differs from Google Photos

Google Photos’ partner sharing lets your partner save shared photos into their own account, and its face labels are private to each account. In Gumnut, members work with the same library: photos, albums, people, descriptions, and saved edits belong to that shared collection. When a collaborator names a person or edits a photo, other members can see that work without saving a separate copy or organizing it again. For permissions, integration scope, and invitation details, see Library Sharing.