Roles and Permissions

Role View Shared View Private View Library Download Upload WebDAV Full Access
admin optional
user optional
viewer except private except private
contributor uploaded shared & uploaded upload path optional
guest shared
visitor shared

Sharing Between Users

To share resources e.g. with Guests or Contributors who do not have full access, Admins and Users can create share links. When a user with limited privileges opens such a link while being logged in, their account will get read-only access to the shared resources. It will later also be possible to share content with other users directly through the web interface without creating links first.

Standard Account Roles

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are similar to regular Users, except that they do not have write access to the library and cannot see content that has been archived or marked private.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.

Contributor

Contributors have read-only access (view and download) to the resources that are in their configured base path, and to the albums that an admin or regular user has shared with them via a link (see below). The Contributor role does not have access to the entire library, but does have the right to upload files to the directory specified as the upload path. Contributors can also change their personal user preferences such as theme, language, and password.

Guest

Guests do not have access to the entire library. They only have read access (view and download) to the resources that are in their configured base path (if any) and to the resources that other users have shared with them, e.g. via a link. Guests 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. They also cannot retain their personal settings for longer than their browsing session lasts.

We will be happy to provide you with configuration recommendations and information on customization options as needed.

User Management Commands

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

CLI Command Description
photoprism-pro users ls [search] Searches existing user accounts
photoprism-pro users legacy [search] Searches legacy user accounts
photoprism-pro users add [options] [username] Adds a new user account
photoprism-pro users show [username] Displays user account information
photoprism-pro users mod [options] [username] Modifies an existing user account
photoprism-pro users rm [username] Removes a user account
photoprism-pro 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, contributor or guest (default: "user")
--attr ATTRIBUTES, -a ATTRIBUTES custom user account ATTRIBUTES
--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
--base-path value,-d value` restrict search to this originals folder
--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-pro 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-pro users show bob

Searching User Accounts

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

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism-pro users ls

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

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism-pro users ls bob

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

docker compose exec photoprism photoprism-pro users ls --help

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: