Trips, weddings, school events, and family weekends usually end the same way: everyone has part of the story, nobody has the whole set, and the best photos are buried in chats, shared albums, or someone else's camera roll.
Shared Spaces turn those scattered libraries into one chronological timeline. Invite the people who were there, let each person add their own photos, and give everyone one place to browse, search, filter, and come back to later.
People still keep their own accounts and their own libraries. A Space is the shared view on top, not a forced merge into one person's collection.
And the same people shouldn't split across libraries either
Group photos are only half of the problem. The other half is the people in them. Once a Space exists with several contributors, every account has its own “Dad”, its own “the kids”, its own “Grandma” — and upstream face recognition has no way to connect them. You search for one person and get a third of what is actually there. You name someone in a Space and the work stays trapped in that Space.
This is the second top problem Shared Spaces solve. Global People resolves people across your personal library and every timeline-enabled Space you can access — one row on the People page, one suggestion in filters, one hit in search — without ever crossing a permission boundary you weren't already on the right side of. It's what finally makes a family timeline feel like one library, because for the people in it, it is.
Why partner sharing and albums weren't enough
Immich already ships two ways to share — Partner Sharing and Albums — and both start showing seams the moment more than two people use them seriously. These are the eight gaps Shared Spaces are designed to close.
Partner Sharing is all-or-nothing. You either hand someone your entire library or you don't share at all — no way to scope it to a trip, a family circle, or just photos of the kids. Spaces let you carve out exactly what's shared, in as many spaces as you need.
Albums are one person's island. Anyone can drop photos in, but the album belongs to whoever created it. Spaces are multi-owner by design — Owner, Editor, and Viewer roles let several people maintain one timeline together without stepping on each other.
Face recognition stops at your account. Your “Dad” and your sibling's “Dad” are two separate person entries that never meet. Spaces run face recognition across every contributor and automatically consolidate look-alike people into one. Global People then resolves that same identity across your personal library and every timeline-enabled Space — with naming and merging that respect permission boundaries instead of leaking between them.
No combined family timeline. Album photos don't merge into your main Photos tab. Space photos show on your timeline by default, and each Space member can disable “show on timeline” individually if they want to keep that shared collection separate.
No “what's new since I last looked”. Reopen a shared album and it's the same screen as last week. Spaces track each member's last visit and surface new photos with a badge on the spaces list and a sticky “X new since [date]” divider inside the timeline.
No way to search or map a shared collection. Smart search and the map view operate on your full library, not a slice of it. Spaces support semantic search and a map view scoped to just that group's photos.
No bulk-share without manual copying. To share 30,000 photos via an album you select 30,000 photos. Spaces support Add all my photos in one click and Connected Libraries that auto-include every photo from a linked external library — all reference-based, with zero storage duplication.
No activity log. Albums don't tell you who added what, when, or who joined. Each Space has a feed of every action — photo additions, member changes, role updates, cover edits — so it's clear what's happening across contributors.
Clear ownership, fewer awkward handoffs
Shared albums often become fragile because one person owns the whole thing. In a Space, contributors add directly from their own library, and role-based access controls who can add photos, manage members, or simply browse.
Owners and editors can keep the shared timeline organized. Viewers can enjoy the collection without accidentally changing it. The result is collaborative without being chaotic.
Face recognition works across the entire Space, so faces tagged by one person become useful for everyone viewing that shared timeline.
You can clean up without breaking the shared view
Shared collections get messy fast when several people upload similar shots. When you resolve a duplicate group, the keeper photo automatically joins every Shared Space the trashed copies belonged to, so cleanup does not quietly remove photos from a space your family or team is using.
Face recognition re-runs on the keeper inside each space, so any people it captured flow straight into the space's people sidebar. The sync is permission-aware: it only touches spaces where you have Owner or Editor role.
Shared Spaces FAQ
Why are Shared Spaces separate from albums?
Albums stay as curated sets: a wedding highlight reel, a hand-picked trip folder, or a group of photos to share by link. A Space is a shared library view with its own members, roles, activity log, timeline behavior, search, map, people, and large-library tools like bulk add and connected libraries. Keeping them split keeps albums simple and lets Spaces handle collaboration without turning every album into a workspace.
When should I use an album instead of a Space?
Use an album when one person is curating a finite set of photos. Use a Space when several people are contributing from their own libraries and everyone expects an ongoing timeline they can browse, filter, search, and revisit.
Do Space photos show in my main timeline?
Yes. Photos from Spaces appear in your Photos timeline by default, so a family or trip Space can feel like one complete library. You can disable that per Space if you want to keep a shared collection separate from your personal timeline.
