Users and sharing

Users and sharing

DVinyl works great as a solo tool, but it also lets you share a collection with family, friends or a community. This page explains collections, roles and single sign-on, all in plain terms.

Collections

A collection is a library of items. You can have several, and each one is its own separate container. That means the same item can live in two collections independently, and each collection can have its own enabled media types, themes and members.

Common ways people use multiple collections:

• A personal library, just for you.
• A shared family library everyone can add to.
• A themed collection (for example a club's shared archive).

You can switch between the collections you have access to at any time.

User roles

When you share a collection, not everyone needs the same powers. DVinyl has three roles:

Role	Can do
Admin	Full control: manage items, settings, media types and members.
Editor	Add, edit and remove items, but not change the collection settings or members.
Viewer	Browse the collection, but not change anything.

Give trusted people editor access to help you build the library, and hand out viewer access to anyone you just want to show your shelf to.

Sharing your collection

You can keep a collection completely private, or open it up so others can view or help manage it. Invite people and assign each of them a role from the admin panel. Change or revoke access whenever you like.

Single sign-on (SSO)

If your server already uses an identity provider (Authentik, Keycloak, Authelia, pocketID and other OIDC providers), DVinyl can plug into it so you sign in with your existing account.

SSO is optional and set up by the administrator through environment variables. See the commented block in .env.example. There are two ways it can behave, depending on how the administrator configures it.

Link mode (default)

By default, SSO does not create accounts on its own. You first sign in with your DVinyl password, then link your identity from the Settings page. After that, you can log in with a single click. Only people who already have a DVinyl account can connect their SSO identity.

Automatic accounts from your identity provider

The administrator can also let SSO create accounts automatically on first sign-in, so you do not have to add each person by hand. This is useful when you already manage your users in your identity provider.

How it works:

• Access can be limited to the members of a chosen provider group (for example allow_dvinyl_access). Only members of that group can sign in.
• Membership is checked on every login, not just the first one. If you remove someone from the group in your identity provider, they lose access to DVinyl right away.
• The administrator can map a second group (for example dvinyl_admins) to grant instance administrator rights to its members when their account is first created.
• Accounts created this way sign in through the provider only: they have no local DVinyl password. The rest of DVinyl works the same, and they can still be given roles in any collection.

Instance administrators

An instance administrator manages the whole server: users, collections and backups. This is separate from the per-collection roles above.

Instance administrators are treated as equals. To keep any one of them from locking the others out, an instance administrator cannot delete another instance administrator, nor reset their password. Each admin still manages their own account as usual.

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Ready to add a collection type that does not exist yet? Head to Create a custom plugin (no code).