Visibility and sharing
Every collection carries a visibility setting that records who it is meant for. This page explains the three levels, and, just as important, how much of that is enforced today, so nothing surprises you in either direction.
The three levels
Visibility is set on each collection individually, so one account can mix all three:
- Private. Meant for you alone. The right choice for anything personal, or for a catalogue still being built.
- Shared. Meant for every member of your account: owners, editors, and viewers alike.
- Public. Meant for anyone you hand the collection's link to, read only, without signing in.
Priya marks "Inherited pieces" private, "Watches" shared with her family, and the club catalogue she wants to show off public.
How much is enforced today
Visibility is currently a recorded preference, not yet a working gate. Two things follow from that, one in each direction:
- Inside the account, every member can browse every collection, whatever its visibility. Marking a collection private does not yet hide it from the other members of your account.
- Nothing is reachable from outside. There is no public collection page yet, so a collection marked public has no link to give out, and nobody outside your account can see it. In that sense your data is even more private than the setting suggests.
Setting visibility today captures your intent, so your catalogue behaves correctly the moment sharing arrives. The maintained home for this status is Feature status and roadmap.
If you share one account with other people, assume they can see every collection in it for now, including private ones. Keep anything truly personal in an account of your own.
What public will mean
When public links arrive, a public collection will be viewable by anyone who has its link, from anywhere, with no sign in. That is worth deciding deliberately, which is why the setting exists on every collection rather than as one big switch.
Visibility and roles work together
Visibility is about seeing. Roles are about changing. A viewer in your account can browse but edit nothing, whatever a collection's visibility. A public visitor will not be a member at all, so no role will apply and nothing will be editable.
Where to next
- Set a collection's visibility step by step in Share a collection.
- Review who is in your account in Manage members and roles.
- Wondering how your data is stored? See How your data is protected.