[Feature] Granular folder/library permissions for Partner Sharing and External Libraries

[gdanilo71]

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

• Yes

The feature

Hi Immich team and community,

First of all, thank you so much for your incredible work on Immich—it is truly an amazing project!

Before opening this thread, I searched through the existing discussions regarding folder-based permissions and granular sharing controls. I noticed that similar ideas have been brought up by other users in the past, but I wasn't entirely sure if these proposals are currently planned, under active consideration, or held back due to architectural trade-offs.

Because this is a crucial feature for setups like mine, I would like to softly re-open the topic with a specific real-world use case to highlight why it would make a huge difference.

My Use Case & Challenge
I manage a large historical archive of 100,000+ photos structured in directories on a NAS (e.g., /volume/photos/Family, /volume/photos/RAW, /volume/photos/Personal).

Currently, Partner Sharing is an "all-or-nothing" feature at the account level. When I share my library with another family member, they gain access to everything associated with my profile.

While mapping the same NAS folder as separate External Libraries for different users is a potential workaround, it requires indexing, face recognition, and AI processing to run twice for the exact same files—which adds unnecessary system overhead on large archives.

Feature Request
Library-Level / Folder-Level Partner Sharing: Allow users to choose which External Libraries (or specific sub-folders) are included in Partner Sharing, rather than sharing the entire account.

Selective Exclusion: Enable an Admin user to keep private/RAW libraries unshared while seamlessly sharing main family archives with partners.

Unified Indexing: Allow multiple users to access shared External Libraries without needing duplicated scans and AI processing jobs.

Thank you again for your patience, dedication, and open communication with the community!

Reference to previous discussions I stumbled upon: #4500

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

#4500