[Feature] Let album owners remove photos uploaded by others from a shared album

[HolyMacarony]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Hi everyone,

I'd like to propose a feature inspired by Ente: the ability for an album owner to remove a photo from a shared album even when someone else uploaded it.

Problem

When I enable collaborative upload for a shared album, contributors tend to add everything from the event rather than picking their best shots. That defeats the purpose of an album, which is to end up with a curated selection. At the moment the only way to clean this up is to ask each contributor individually to remove their own uploads.

Proposed solution

Album owners (and optionally admins/collaborators, configurable per album) can remove any photo from the album, regardless of who uploaded it. The photo stays untouched in the uploader's own library — only the album association is removed. Nobody loses their media, and no confirmation flow is strictly necessary.

Reference: how Ente does it

Ente calls this "Suggest deletion". There, album owners and admins can flag a photo owned by another participant: the photo is immediately removed from the shared album, and the owner separately receives a suggestion to delete it, which they can accept or reject. Deletion from their library only happens if they accept.

For Immich, the removal half is the part that actually solves the curation problem. The deletion suggestion could be added later as an optional extra, but it isn't needed for the core use case — which also keeps the initial implementation simple and avoids giving anyone destructive rights over other people's media.

Benefit

Shared albums stay curated without manual coordination, and without any risk to contributors' own photos.

Thanks for considering it!

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

#12614