Everything the app does, all in one place. It's long, because Albumer does a lot of stuff. If you came here for one specific thing, scroll to the bottom, grab the how-to that covers it, and get on with your day.

Everyone else: bring a sandwich.

Getting in

Make an account

You need an account. There's no wandering around the shop without one, sorry.

1. Open Albumer. The sign-in screen shows up.
2. Tap Sign Up.
3. Type your email and a password, then confirm it.
4. Or tap Google or Apple and skip all that.

Email and password is the only one that also works on our account-deletion page, so if you're the sort of person who likes an exit route, use that. Google is one tap and no password to forget. Apple will hand you a Hide My Email address, which is great if you don't trust us yet. That's fine. We'll grow on you.

You forgot your password

Of course you did. Everyone does.

1. On the sign-in screen tap Forgot your password?
2. Type the email address on the account.
3. Submit, check your email, follow the link.

This only works if you signed up with an email and password. If you used Google or Apple, there's no Albumer password to reset, because you never made one. Go yell at Google.

Home

The first thing you see when you get in. Everything worth doing is about two taps away.

• Hey, {your name}: that's your first name, pulled from your profile. If it says the wrong thing, that's on you, go fix your profile.
• Create an album: the big blue banner. Hard to miss. That's the point.
• Have an event code?: for joining somebody else's album.
• My Albums: the ones you made.
• Shared: the ones other people dragged you into.
• Memories: photos you took around this date in years gone by. It uses the day you actually took the photo, not the day you got round to uploading it. It stays hidden when there's nothing to show, so a brand-new account doesn't get an empty box taunting it.

Albums

Making one

1. Tap the big blue Create an album banner.
2. Give it a name. That's the only bit we insist on.
3. Add a description if you're feeling thorough.
4. Tap create. It opens straight away.

Name it something you'll recognise at 2am. "Album 1" will haunt you.

Finding one later

Two rows on the Home screen is fine right up until it isn't. Then you want the Albums tab.

1. Type in the search box to filter by name.
2. Use the chips to flip between All, My Albums, and Shared with Me.
3. Tap sort and pick: newest, oldest, A to Z, Z to A, most photos, or recently added to.
4. Tap the grid/list toggle if you prefer one over the other.
5. Tap the star on an album to nail it to the top of every view forever.

Your sort, filter and layout stick between launches, so you only have to set them the once. Starred albums stay on top no matter how you sort. That's the whole point of starring them.

Inside an album

What you can do in here depends entirely on whether it's yours or you were invited.

Anyone in the album can look at the photos and videos, add their own, make folders and fill them, comment, like the album, leave a voice note in the Audio Guestbook, see who else is in there, and save the whole lot to their own phone.

Only the owner can rename it, write the description, pick the cover photo, invite and remove people, make the QR code, open the Live Photo Wall, hook up a photo frame, delete anybody's photo, delete the whole album, or make it secret.

Folders

Albums inside albums, basically.

Say you've got a week in Spain. That's one album, and about four hundred photos. Make folders for each day and suddenly nobody has to scroll past the airport to find the good beach.

1. Open an album and find the Folders row.
2. Tap New folder, name it.
3. Open it and use Add photos in there.
4. Rename or bin it from the folder's own menu.

Members can add photos to a folder the owner made, and everyone else can see them. That's how it should work.

Press and hold an album

Press and hold any album and you get the quick menu.

If it's yours: delete it, make it secret, take it out of secret, or mute it.

If you were invited: leave it, archive it to get it out of your lists, or mute it. Archived ones live in Profile → Archived Albums when you want them back.

Muting and archiving are entirely private. The owner has absolutely no idea you did it. Mute away.

Photos and video

Putting them in

1. Open an album, or a folder inside one.
2. Tap Add photos & videos, or the floating +.
3. Let it see your photos when it asks.
4. Select as many as you like.
5. Confirm, and watch the counter tick up.

On iPhone, pick as many as you want. On Android, the picker caps you at 100 at a time. That's Google's rule, not ours, so just pick again for the next hundred.

While that's happening, a few things sort themselves out. The first photo in a new album becomes the cover. Duplicates get spotted and you get asked about them. The screen stays awake so your phone doesn't nod off halfway through. And if the app dies on you, the rest carry on next time you open it.

Free accounts get 5 GB and 30-second video clips. Premium gets 50 GB and videos as long as you like. Either way, one video maxes out at 300 MB.

Duplicates

Add a photo that's already in there and Albumer notices.

You get a review sheet with the new photo sat right next to the one already in the album, so you can see they're the same thing. Toggle each one to skip it or add it anyway, or hit Skip all or Add all anyway and move on with your life. Only what you picked gets uploaded. Nothing already in the album is touched, ever.

Looking at a photo

Tap a photo, it goes full screen. Swipe or use the arrows to move along. Press and hold for the menu:

• Download to phone: into your camera roll.
• Set as album cover: owner only, and photos only. You can't make a video the cover, no matter how good the video is.
• Delete photo: the album owner, or whoever uploaded it.
• Members can download: secret albums only, and only for the person who uploaded that photo.
• Report this photo: on anything you didn't post yourself.

Photo quality

This is the bit we're smug about, so bear with us.

Original is the default, and always will be. Full resolution. Never cropped. Maximum quality.

Space Saver also keeps the full resolution and still never crops. It just makes a smaller file so you can fit more in.

A normal iPhone photo is about 5 to 8 MB on Original, or 2 to 3 MB on Space Saver. In the free 5 GB that's roughly 700 to 1,000 photos, or 1,700 to 2,500. Switch it in Profile → Photo Quality. It only affects photos you add afterwards. Everything already uploaded stays exactly as it is.

Now the smug part. Apple's Shared Albums chop your photos down to 2048 pixels and your video down to 720p. Google Photos' Storage Saver resizes anything over 16 megapixels. They do it quietly, because smaller photos cost them less. You took a 48-megapixel photo and they handed you back a postcard.

We don't do that.

When the app dies mid-upload

It used to lose everything after the point it fell over. It doesn't now.

The whole batch gets written down before it starts. If the app closes, crashes, or your phone decides it's had enough, just open Albumer again. The rest go up and you get an Uploads finished message telling you how many. Anything that keeps failing gets skipped instead of jamming up everything behind it, and there's a Stop button if you change your mind.

One honest catch: uploads pause while the app is shut. They don't quietly carry on in the background. Leave it open if you're in a hurry.

Grabbing several at once

Press and hold any photo in an album or folder, tap more to add them to the pile, then delete or move the whole lot together.

Moving sends them to another album, into a folder, or into a brand-new folder you invent right there on the spot. Secret Albums are left out of this in both directions, so nothing sneaks in or out by accident.

Sharing

This is the entire reason the app exists. An album on one phone is just a phone.

Inviting people

1. Open an album you own and tap Add Members.
2. Pick from your contacts, search for people already on Albumer, or just type an email address.
3. Choose email, text, or a link you can paste anywhere.
4. Send it.

You can also go straight at your address book. Tap Add Members, scroll to From your phone, let it see your contacts, tick everyone you want, and tap Text N invites. Your own Messages app opens with the invite ready to go, and it comes from your number, not from some robot at Albumer. It costs nothing because your phone is doing the sending.

Anyone already on Albumer is hidden from that list so you don't invite them twice. And if the album is secret, the album name is deliberately left out of the message, because that's rather the point.

The QR code

For a room full of people, this is the one.

1. Open your album and tap Event QR Code.
2. Tap Create QR Code.
3. Put it on a screen, or print it and stick it on the table.
4. Guests point their camera at it and land on the join page.

Everyone who scans it becomes a member who can see the album and add to it.

Printable signs for the day

You can have Albumer make you actual signs with the code on.

1. Tap Hosting an event? Print QR signs on Home, or open the album's QR code and tap Print posters & table cards.
2. Pick a shape: wall poster, table cards, or tent cards.
3. Pick a theme: Elegant, Party, Spooky, Classic, Floral, Rustic, Retro or Festive.
4. Write your own headline, host line and message, or leave ours alone.
5. Check the preview, then print it or save a PDF.

A wall poster is one big page for the door or the gift table. Table cards come four to a sheet so you can cut them up. Tent cards fold over and stand up by themselves.

All eight themes still read fine printed in black and white, which matters at 7am on the morning of the wedding when the colour cartridge is dry and the shop isn't open.

Joining by code

Sometimes you just tell someone over the phone.

On Home, tap Have an event code? Join an album, type the code, submit. The album opens and turns up under Shared.

The Live Photo Wall

Open the album, tap Live Photo Wall, then open that link on a laptop or the venue's TV. It's a slideshow that updates on its own as people add photos. No refreshing.

Stick it on a big screen and watch how many more photos people suddenly upload once they can see their own face on the wall.

The Audio Guestbook

Open the album, find Voice Guestbook, tap Record a voice note, let it use the microphone, say your piece, then Stop & save. Tap any note to play it back.

It's the guest book nobody ever reads, except this one people actually listen to.

One thing to know: guests need the free app. There's no adding photos or recording messages from a web browser. The join page sends everyone to install it.

Secret Albums

Some photos are nobody's business but yours.

Secret Albums are a separate section behind a PIN, and the photos in it are scrambled on your phone before they're uploaded. Our servers only ever hold gibberish. We can't look at them. Not "we promise not to", we genuinely can't.

1. Open Profile → Secret Albums.
2. First time only, set a PIN. Four digits minimum.
3. Type the PIN to unlock the section.
4. Tap New secret album, or press and hold a normal album and choose Make secret.
5. Add photos and videos exactly like anywhere else.

Secret albums vanish from Home and All Albums for everyone in them, not just you. Somebody who hasn't unlocked the section doesn't even know the album is there. Videos work too, and unscramble when you open them. Photos can be looked at in the app but not saved, unless the person who uploaded one decides otherwise, they can press and hold their own photo and switch Members can download on.

Now the serious bit, because this one really matters.

Your PIN lives on your device, not on our servers. That's exactly why the encryption means anything. It also means a forgotten PIN is a genuine disaster. This is not a password reset. If nobody has the PIN, those photos are gibberish forever, to us and to you. Pick something you'll remember. Write it somewhere sensible. We cannot rescue you.

And to be straight with you: encryption stops our servers and other people reading your photos. It does not stop someone you personally invited from taking a screenshot of their own screen. Invite people you trust.

People

The Connections tab is one list: your phone contacts and your Albumer people, together, no toggling. Anyone already on Albumer gets a green badge instead of an Invite button.

Search by name or email, tap someone to open or edit their card, and hit Invite on anyone not on Albumer yet.

To bring your address book in, tap Add contacts, choose From phone, allow it, and pick who you want. Anyone already using Albumer gets flagged so you don't double up.

A contact doesn't have to be an Albumer user at all. Grandma can be nothing but an email address pointed at her photo frame, and she never needs to know an app was involved. Tap the photo circle to give someone a picture, and fill in first name, last name, email, phone, and a note.

If two contacts look like the same person, a banner shows up at the top of the list. Tap it, see them side by side, and pick Merge or Not the same.

Notifications

You'll get one when someone shares an album with you, adds photos to an album you're in, comments on or likes your album, or joins your album.

Tap the bell for the notification centre. Press and hold one to start selecting, tap more to add them, then delete. Clear all empties the lot.

Profile → Notification Settings turns push, album shares and comments on or off. And if one particular album is going off like a fire alarm, press and hold it and choose Mute. It won't know.

Photo frames

Albumer will email every new photo in an album straight to an Aura, a Skylight, or whatever frame Grandma has on the sideboard.

1. Find the frame's email address in its own app.
2. In Albumer, open the album and tap Send new photos to a photo frame.
3. Tap Add frame and paste the address in.
4. Every photo added from then on turns up on the frame by itself.

Set it up once at Christmas and she gets new pictures of the grandkids all year without anybody lifting a finger.

Getting everything back out

Open the album, choose Save album to phone, confirm with Save all, let it into your photos, and the entire album lands in your camera roll.

Owners, members, invited people, everyone. There's no lock-in here and there never will be. It's your stuff.

Worth knowing: this is an app thing. The website can't do bulk saves.

Your account

Your profile

Profile → My Profile is where you set a picture and edit your first name, last name, username, phone and bio. Pick a username somebody else has already taken and it'll tell you.

The Profile tab also shows how much storage you're using and how many albums and folders you've got.

Albumer Premium

Premium takes you from 5 GB to 50 GB, swaps 30-second clips for full-length video, gets rid of the ads, and offers an add-on if 50 GB somehow isn't enough for you.

1. Go to Profile → Subscription.
2. Pick monthly or yearly.
3. Confirm it through the App Store or Play Store.
4. Already paid on another phone? Hit Restore purchases.

Two things people get caught by. Cancelling happens in the store, not in Albumer. And deleting your Albumer account does not cancel your subscription. Cancel first, then delete, in that order.

Album Admins

Running a big album on your own is a lot. Hand some of it over.

1. Open an album you own.
2. Tap a member.
3. Choose Make Admin and confirm.
4. Changed your mind? Tap them again, Remove Admin.

Admins can invite people. They can't promote anyone else, so there's no chain reaction where your cousin makes six of his mates admins. Only you can hand out the badge, and only you can take it back.

Reporting and blocking

Press and hold any photo you didn't post and choose Report this photo, or tap the flag next to a comment.

Pick a reason, add detail if you want, and there's a switch for Also block this person while you're there. Send it.

Blocking wipes their photos and comments out of your view immediately and stops them sharing anything with you again. They're not told, and they can't tell. You can undo it whenever you like in Profile → Blocked People.

Deleting your account

We'd rather you didn't, but it's your account.

Profile → Delete My Account shows you exactly what's about to disappear. You can tell us why you're off, if you want. Then type DELETE, confirm, and that's that.

Two things survive: albums other people shared with you aren't deleted, you just lose access, and photos you added to somebody else's album stay in their album.

If you've already deleted the app and can't get at that screen, the same thing lives at albumer.com/account-deletion.

Language and the odds and ends

Profile → Language flips the app between English and Spanish. That's our text only, your album names and your comments are never touched, because nobody wants a robot rewriting what they called their dog.

Archived Albums brings back anything you filed away. Blocked People lists everyone you've blocked, with an Unblock button next to each one.

That's the lot. Go make an album.