Is your album private?

What public actually means

It means anyone with the link can open it. It does not mean the album appears in a public directory or that anyone can search their way to it — there is no browsable list of albums and nothing invites a stranger in. The link is the whole of the access control.

For a party among invited guests that is exactly right, and every extra barrier costs contributions.

1. Decide before you share the link. Public is the default, and that suits a party among invited guests.
2. Add a password if you want a middle option. The link keeps working and the viewer types the word once.
3. Make it private when you are done. The link then shows nothing at all.

The link is the key

Access belongs to the link rather than to a person, so a forwarded message works for whoever receives it. That is what makes the whole thing usable at a party, where nobody is going to register, and it is the trade-off you accept in exchange.

The guest page even offers people the link to pass on after they upload, which is how it spreads through a room.

The 3 switches you have

Making the album private stops viewing for everybody. A password lets the link keep working while adding 1 step for whoever holds it. Review-first means nothing appears until you approve it, which controls what is in the album rather than who sees it.

They work independently, so you can combine them or use none.

Viewing and uploading are separate throughout. An album can be closed to new files and still open to look at.

What a guest can see

Contributions that are approved, prepared and not hidden. Anything waiting in the review queue, anything still processing and anything you have hidden stays out — so the album a guest sees is a subset of what you see in the dashboard.

They cannot see who else uploaded, unless a guest signed their contribution and you left names switched on.

Seeing is not taking

Guests can look at a public album but cannot download from it unless you switch that on separately, and it is off by default. Viewing a picture and holding a copy of the original file are different things, and they are different switches.

If you do open downloads, you can put a second password in front of just that.

What to actually do

For a private party among invited guests: leave it public, leave uploads open, and close both once you have downloaded everything. For anything semi-public, set a viewing password before the link goes out and turn review on.

Deciding afterwards is possible but louder — guests notice a link that stops working.