The multi-user features documented on this page will only be available with the upcoming PhotoPrism+ release.

Multiple Libraries

PhotoPrism+ includes advanced multi-user functionality with additional account roles. These roles are intended for applications where multiple users share a single library or, for example, to give family members access to your personal library without granting write permissions or exposing private content.

It is recommended that you set up multiple instances of PhotoPrism+ if you have multiple users, such as a family, who want to manage their own files independently and share only selected content. That way you can avoid problems with conflicting library settings, file permissions, and dealing with duplicates.

In a later version of PhotoPrism+, users will be able to share albums and other content in a decentralized way, regardless of where their library is hosted. We are also working on a dedicated web interface for managing multiple libraries and user accounts, which will be made available as a separate tool.

Our ultimate goal is to make personal sharing compatible with other apps like Pixelfed and Mastodon.

Roles and Permissions

Role View Shared View Private View Library Download Upload WebDAV Full Access
admin optional
user optional
viewer except private except private
guest shared
visitor shared

admin

Admins have unrestricted access to all pictures, albums, and settings.

Regular Admins can lose their privileges due to an intentional or accidental role change. However, accounts with the optional "superadmin" status (can be set with the -s flag) retain their admin privileges even if they are assigned a non-admin or invalid role. This is to prevent them from locking themselves out.

When Super Admins change settings such as the language or theme, these automatically become the default settings for other users, unless they have explicitly made a different choice. In addition, global feature flags can only be changed by Super Admins.

user

Users have full access to the library and can view, edit, and delete all pictures and albums. Unlike Admins, Users cannot view or change the Library and Advanced Settings, only personal preferences such as theme, language, and password. In addition, their WebDAV access can be disabled. Future releases may include more ways to customize user privileges, e.g. with individual account attributes.

viewer

Viewers are similar to regular Users, except that they do not have write access to the library and cannot see content that has been archived or marked private. They also cannot upload/import files or trigger indexing. Like all registered users, Viewers can change and save personal preferences such as theme, language, and password.

guest

Guests have read-only access to view and download the resources that other users have shared with them. They can also change personal settings such as theme, language, and password.

visitor

Visitors cannot be added manually. This special role is tied to a system account that represents anonymous users who use links to view albums or other content that has been shared with them. Visitors can only access these resources and cannot log in with a username or password. Other than guests, they also cannot retain their personal settings for longer than their browsing session lasts.

Command-Line Interface

Local user accounts can be added, modified, and deleted by running the following commands in a terminal:

CLI Command Description
photoprism users ls [search] Searches existing user accounts
photoprism users legacy [search] Searches legacy user accounts
photoprism users add [options] [username] Adds a new user account
photoprism users show [username] Displays user account information
photoprism users mod [options] [username] Modifies an existing user account
photoprism users rm [username] Removes a user account
photoprism users reset Removes all accounts and resets the database

Adding and Changing Accounts

You can combine the add and mod subcommands with these flags to set or change account properties:

Command Flag Description
--name NAME, -n NAME full NAME for display in the interface
--email EMAIL, -m EMAIL unique EMAIL address of the user
--password PASSWORD, -p PASSWORD PASSWORD for authentication
--role value, -r value admin, user, viewer or guest (default: "user")
--superadmin, -s make user super admin with full access
--no-login, -l disable login on the web interface
--webdav, -w allow to sync files via WebDAV
--upload-path value, -u value upload files to this sub-folder

For example, you could do the following to add a new user account with the username "bob" and the password "mysecret":

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism users add -r user -p mysecret -n "Bob" bob

Note that our guides now use the new docker compose command by default. If your server does not yet support it, the old docker-compose command will still work. Users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux® and compatible Linux distributions such as CentOS, Fedora, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux can substitute the docker and docker compose commands with podman and podman-compose as drop-in replacements.

Viewing Account Details

To see all account properties of a particular user, use the show subcommand:

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism users show bob

Searching User Accounts

To list all existing accounts, you can run the following:

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism users ls

This command can also filter the result if you provide a search term as argument:

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism users ls bob

To display a description and the available options for a command, use the --help flag:

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism users ls --help

To ensure the best possible security, user management is currently not available through the user interface. We are working on a dedicated web interface for managing libraries and user accounts.

PhotoPrism® Documentation

For detailed information on specific product features, services, and related resources, see our Knowledge Base, or read the User Guide for help using the web user interface: