If this sounds familiar, tell me. You’ve shared a Google Photos album with your parents or someone less tech savvy, and the next thing you learn is that the album link is on social media. Anyone and everyone can see the photos and no authorization is required. There is countless stories like this and surprisingly there is no fix yet. This is one of Google Photos’ biggest flaws, and Google has done little to bridge this glaring gap.
In fact, Google Photos doesn’t even notify users that the album link is public by default and anyone with the link can view, save, and join the album. With no solution in sight, we came up with a simple trick that can keep your photos private on Google Photos. With that in mind, let’s move on to the steps.
Keep Your Photos Private on Google Photos
1. First of all, share the link of the album with your friends and family. After everyone joins select the shared album, go to the “Library” tab and open the album. After that, tap on the three-dot menu and open “Options”.
2. Next, Disable the “link sharing” toggle and your album becomes private. Don’t worry, all existing members will stay as they are. Now no one will be able to see your photos or join the album, even if anyone shares the previous link. To keep your photos private, you should get into the habit of disabling link sharing after everyone joins the album.
Note: This can only be done by the owner of the album. If you’re not the owner, ask the album creator to disable link sharing.
3. Apart from that, you can use the quick share menu of Google Photos to privately share photos and videos. This way, Google Photos not connectinginstead it adds members internally.
But the downside of this approach is that the shared photos are not available as albums and you can’t customize anything. You can find such shared media only under the “Chat” menu in the upper left corner.
Keep Your Memories Safe on Google Photos
This is how you can keep your photos and videos private in Google Photos. I highly recommend using the regular shared album as it lets you keep track of everything. You can search for albums, automatically add photos based on similar faces, remove or add members, and more. However, you’ll also need to learn to disable link sharing after everyone joins the album. Anyway, that’s it for us. If you found the article helpful, comment below and let us know. Also, you can find more Google Photos tips here.
