[Feature] Shared Albums in Search Results

[andrewgdunn]

Shared Albums in Search Results

With #2900 added it would be nice to include albums shared with the user in the search results.

I'd discussed a bit here, but my use case is that I would rather digest historic images into immich directly (rather than use the "read-only/existing library"). For my implementation I've got 500+ albums that my administrative user has added to the server and shared to the other users based on relevant participation.

Those users have to scroll through a lot of albums to find what they are looking for, search would be great.

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[andrewgdunn]

I've moved over my family now and have closer to 1000 albums. I'd happily pay a bounty for this to be implemented!

[xamino]

Would it be worth to split this into two tasks?

1. Search for a shared album: if you have a lot of shared albums at least allows you to jump to one that you know exists (by year, name, etc). Having this in the mobile app would be great because there is no way to find an album without a lot of scrolling (since you can't filter or sort the "Sharing" tab in any way).
2. Search that works across shared content, which some commenters here seem to be looking for, which is different if not even more useful, though likely harder to implement.

[bentrnr21]

Very nice good job

[GhostDog98]

This issue still seems to be open, which is a shame... I'd also be willing to set a bounty for this issue to be implemented, or help in any way I can.

[bo0tzz]

@GhostDog98 We don't really want bounties (see ziglang.org/news/bounties-damage-open-source-projects for some reasons). Of course, you're welcome to hire someone directly to implement a feature (but please check in beforehand if you're not sure whether we would accept it).

[GhostDog98]

While I don't necessarily agree with that point of view myself, I respect that's how you would like to develop this project, so with that I will withdraw the bounty offer 👍.

[DonRichie]

My use case is that I want to filter for only videos in a shared album, that I am not the owner of.
It has ~2000 files, which is so much, that I miss the videos when scrolling through.

[jeanius7]

I would love this to be a feature to be worked on! I have easily 12,000 pictures all organized by album. Being able to share some of these folders to my family and them being able to search would be a HUGE quality of life improvement to shared albums.

[haoenz]

Will this feature be added to the roadmap?

[miguelbrandao]

Just chiming in to say this feature would really be appreciated. I use Immich for two main purposes:

• as photo and video manager for myself (Google Photos/iCloud replacement);
• as a simple, centralized service for friends/family members to access and explore our memories.

Immich accomplishes the former better than any other solution I've found, but it's sorely lacking in the latter: because my friends/family members are just viewers of media I upload and manage, with no photos of their own, all their content is in the form of shared albuns.
Currently, this means they can't use the features that truly distinguish Immish:

• the timeline;
• the explore page;
• smart search;
• map;
• people;

And it is a shame, as the experience I have with my administration account (the owner of all files) is so superior to the experience a friend has, that one could mistake it for different software!

I'll definitely add to the bounty if anyone develops this!

[rmarkus]

I would also like to have this supported. We share family photos from a central "family" account; these are the by far the most images. To have the search available for each account would really be great. On the other hand we cannot just use "1 account" since the members have additionally their "own" photos that they don't want to share.

[DevonMark]

Immich is so far great, but not having search available for shared assets albums is a major showstopper and means it is almost unusable. Use case: Family members have all taken photos on a holiday and have uploaded to own accounts and then shared to a "Summer Holiday" album. Search only finds your own pictures in that album. I can't see any way around it aside from only having one account (as commented above). I am, sadly, looking for other self-hosted software solutions, but hoping that some form of global search might be implemented before I find one!

[Jakiezweers]

Hi!
Are there any plans to add search support for shared albums?
I just started using Immich and would really love to be able to search within shared content — it feels like a natural feature to have.
Thanks for all the great work!

[mikebakke]

Immich is almost perfect but I find this topic really confusing together with a related one.

Direct topic first - the lack of image search when an album is shared really is (as multiple others have already stated) a show-stopper for me to adopt. It's great for me to manage collections but practically it's pointless giving others access because photos in any moderate sized libraries are impossible (pretty much) to find - repeated scrolling is unpleasant and a time sink.

I 've tried every work around and the closest I've come to is curate as admin, then create another user, create the target album and import as that user. If I share those credentials then users can search. However (related issue) no admin function can be performed on the album because the owner is non admin and there's no capabilty to grant admin privs to another user.

The priority really has to be (IMO) to let admin enable search privileges for any photos in a shared album if desired.

Not shouting for it "now" but would be fantastic if it was at least confirmed as a firm roadmap item.

[ashok-dangol]

First of all, thank you for the amazing work on Immich — it’s an outstanding platform!

We’ve been in the process of deploying Immich across our organization, and two feature requests have come up consistently from our end users that would significantly improve usability:

🔍 1. Search Support within Shared Albums
Currently, search functionality works great within personal libraries, but it doesn't seem to support shared albums. Being able to search within shared content (e.g., by filename, tags, or AI-detected objects) would be incredibly useful, especially in collaborative environments where multiple users contribute to shared albums.

Use Case:
Team members collaborating on media-heavy projects (e.g., marketing events, research photos) need to quickly find specific content within a shared album without scrolling through hundreds of items.

📁 2. Folder Support within Albums
We also received requests for the ability to create folders within albums for better organization. As some albums can grow quite large, a simple folder hierarchy would allow users to categorize content (e.g., by event, location, or contributor) and streamline access.

Use Case:
In large shared albums from multi-day events, being able to sort media into folders like “Day 1”, “Behind the Scenes”, or “Keynote” would help users locate content much faster and keep things clean.

🙏 Request
We’d love to know if either of these features is on the roadmap or open for contribution. Both would greatly enhance the user experience in team-oriented deployments.

Thanks again for all your work — Immich is a fantastic project, and we’re excited to support and adopt it across our organization!

[Chaoscontrol]

New user here, getting used to Immich current limitations.

Just voted for this, but just wanted to clarify that this request is specific for Shared Albums, right? I mean, this works when done via "Partner Sharing", and after enabling "Show in Timeline", you can search for everything as well.

Maybe it serves as a workaround for some of you.

[Nuvial]

This allows searching and filtering features but doesn't translate over to the facial detection which would be useful.

[orgildinio]

Bumping this request.

Creating individual albums for each person is too troublesome, and managing a family album with more than 50 uploaders gets nerve-wracking after reaching more than 200,000 images and videos.

I’d like to put a bounty on this one — whoever builds this feature and gets it merged, I’d love to say thanks and send over some coffee money to support you!

@alextran1502 @jrasm91 ❤️

[bo0tzz]

You're welcome to engage with someone directly, but we prefer not to have open bounties. The zig project explains it well: https://ziglang.org/news/bounties-damage-open-source-projects/. There's also no need to ping maintainers.

[orgildinio]

If I hire a third-party developer to do this, will it be accepted for merging?

Or can someone earn money with immich code base to make custom jobs?

thank you for clarification on bounty thing <3