[Feature] Improved Sharing, Permissions, and Face Management for Community Photo Libraries

[aharder3]

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

• Yes

The feature

First of all, thank you for developing Immich. It is a fantastic open-source project with great potential as an alternative to commercial photo management platforms such as SmugMug.

I am currently migrating a community/scout organization photo archive containing approximately 17,000 photos across 130 albums to Immich.

During this process, I noticed several limitations that make it difficult to use Immich as a shared photo archive for larger communities, clubs, and organizations.

I would like to suggest the following improvements.

1. Face name suggestions directly in the naming dialog

Current limitation:

When assigning a name to an unidentified person, suggestions for existing people are not conveniently available in the initial naming interface. Users have to open the person first to access relevant suggestions.

Requested improvement:

• Display matching existing people directly in the initial name-entry dialog.
• Provide autocomplete suggestions based on existing person names.
• Allow users to assign an unidentified face to an existing person without additional navigation.

This would make managing thousands of detected faces significantly faster.

2. Global duplicate-person detection and merging

Current limitation:

Potential duplicate people are difficult to identify across the entire library.

Requested improvement:

• Provide a central overview of potentially duplicated person profiles.
• Automatically suggest people who may represent the same individual.
• Allow administrators to review and merge suggested duplicates in batches.

This would be particularly useful for historical photo archives containing thousands of faces.

3. Share multiple albums using a single public link

Current limitation:

A public shared link can provide access to one album or a collection of selected photos, but not to multiple separate albums while preserving their individual structure.

Requested improvement:

• Allow users to select multiple albums and generate one public sharing link.
• Display the selected albums in an album overview.
• Preserve individual album names and organization.
• Support optional password protection and expiration dates.
• Allow administrators to add or remove albums without changing the shared URL.

Example:

A scout organization wants to share 130 historical albums using one link. Visitors should be able to browse the albums by name or year without receiving 130 separate links.

4. Face/person search for public shared links

Current limitation:

Users accessing photos through public shared links cannot search or browse photos by recognized person.

Requested improvement:

• Optionally enable face/person search for public shared links.
• Allow visitors to browse the people appearing within the shared albums.
• Restrict person search results to photos included in the shared link.
• Keep this functionality disabled by default for privacy reasons.
• Allow administrators to enable it individually for each shared link.

This would be extremely valuable for historical community archives, where visitors often want to find pictures of themselves or their friends.

5. Granular read-only permissions for people and face management

Current limitation:

Immich does not provide sufficiently granular permissions for all person-management workflows. Depending on the sharing configuration, users may have more editing capabilities than intended.

Requested improvement:

Introduce separate permissions for:

• Viewing photos and albums
• Viewing recognized people and their names
• Searching photos by person
• Renaming people
• Editing person information, including dates of birth
• Merging or deleting person profiles
• Managing face recognition

For example, a viewer should be able to browse the photo archive and search for people without being able to modify names or other person information.

6. Group-based and email-domain-based sharing

Current limitation:

Managing access for a large organization requires too much individual user administration.

Requested improvement:

• Create user groups with predefined access permissions.
• Share albums or entire libraries with these groups.
• Automatically grant access to users with a verified email address belonging to a specific domain.
• Support rules such as @example.org with configurable viewer or editor permissions.
• Ideally, integrate with existing Google OAuth or other SSO group memberships.

Example:

Every member signing in with a verified @pfadis.ch Google account should automatically receive read-only access to the organization's shared photo archive.

There should be no need to manually invite each new member to every album.

7. Automatically share relevant person data alongside albums

Current limitation:

Sharing photos and granting access to recognized people are separate processes.

Requested improvement:

• Optionally make recognized people available automatically when sharing an album.
• Restrict visibility to people appearing in photos the user can access.
• Apply read-only permissions by default.
• Ensure that people and face metadata from private albums remain inaccessible.

This would simplify account and permission management considerably.

8. Improved handling of historical photo metadata

During the migration, I also encountered difficulties with older photos that did not contain original EXIF timestamps.

Immich initially displayed their download/import date rather than the historical date. Even after correcting the recording date through the API, the timeline was not immediately updated.

Possible improvements include:

• Easier bulk date correction using album information.
• An option to assign an approximate date to all photos in an album.
• Better synchronization between edited recording dates and timeline dates.
• Clearer feedback about metadata and XMP processing failures.

For historical archives, assigning an approximate year is often more useful than displaying the import date.

Why these features matter

Immich is already excellent for personal photo libraries. However, organizations, scout groups, sports clubs, associations, and community archives have different requirements.

They often need:

• Hundreds of albums
• Thousands of photos and recognized people
• Many viewers but only a few administrators
• Simple group-based access
• Public browsing without individual accounts
• Strong privacy and read-only permission controls

Improving these areas would make Immich an even stronger alternative to platforms such as SmugMug for larger shared photo archives.

I understand that some of these requests may already be under discussion or planned. I would appreciate feedback on which features are currently supported, planned, or suitable for separate feature requests.

Thank you for your great work and for considering these suggestions!

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[github-actions[bot]]

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[aharder3]

Hi, thanks for the feedback!

I understand the need to prevent duplicate feature requests, and I appreciate the work involved in managing this project.

I have looked into existing discussions, including #12614 and #2073, and I agree that some of my suggestions overlap with previously requested features.

However, my discussion covers several distinct requirements based on a real-world migration of approximately 17,000 photos across 130 albums for a scout organization.

In particular, I would like to highlight:

• Read-only permissions for facial recognition data: Users should be able to search and browse recognized people without being able to rename, merge, or modify them.
• Domain-based or group-based access: Automatically provide verified organization members with appropriate access permissions.
• Multiple albums through one public link: Preserve individual album structures and allow visitors to browse all selected albums.
• Person search within public shared albums: Allow optional, privacy-controlled face searching without requiring an Immich account.
• Improved face naming suggestions: Show existing person suggestions directly in the initial naming dialog.

I realize these may need to be discussed as separate feature requests rather than one combined discussion.

Could a maintainer please confirm which of these requests are already tracked and where I should contribute additional feedback?

If some are not covered by existing requests, I would appreciate having this discussion reopened or guidance on creating focused individual requests.

Thank you for your time and for the great work on Immich!