How to share photos of your children without posting them online
Plenty of parents would rather not post photos of their children online, but grandparents still want to see them
Lots of parents keep their children off social media, or share the odd photo with faces turned away. Whatever your reasons, it's a reasonable choice, and it shouldn't mean the people who love your children miss out.
Here are the main ways to share photos privately, and what each one does and doesn't keep private.
A family group chat
The easiest, and probably what you do already. With an end-to-end encrypted app, such as WhatsApp or Signal, only the people in the chat can see the photos.
Worth knowing: every photo is saved on everyone's phone, and anyone in the chat can forward it on. It works best for a small group you trust. It works less well for finding a photo again in a year's time, by which point it's buried under everything since.
A shared album
iPhones and Google Photos both let you make an album and invite people to it. New photos appear for everyone, and they stay together in one place instead of scattered through a chat.
Worth knowing: the album is kept by Apple or Google, on their servers. Some shared albums can be opened by anyone who has the link, so check who yours is shared with and how.
Prints and photo books
The oldest way still works well, especially for grandparents who'd rather not use an app. A print or a book can't be forwarded, and it's seen by the people in the room, not by anyone with a link.
A book also does something the others don't: it puts a year, a holiday or a first birthday together, in order, so it gets looked at again rather than scrolled past.
Two things that help, whichever you choose
- Turn off location on your camera. Phones usually record where each photo was taken, inside the photo itself, so a photo you send can carry your address. On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. On Android, look in your Camera app's settings for an option called something like Save location or Location tags.
- Tell family what you'd prefer. A quick word that you'd rather photos stayed off social media saves an awkward conversation later. Most grandparents are glad to keep them private once they know.
Making a book with RGBloom
Add your photos from your phone or your computer and we lay out the pages, in date order. It takes about five minutes to get a designed book. Every copy is £10 including UK delivery, and one order can send copies to several addresses, so each set of grandparents gets their own.
How we handle your photos. There's no account to make. Your photos stay on your device while you design, and nothing about you or your photos is kept on our servers until you order. To print the book we need the photos, so they're uploaded when you start ordering, and we may look at your book to check it printed properly. We take out the location your phone saved in each photo when you add it. Then, 30 days after you order, we delete your book, your photos and your details. Where your photos actually go has the whole story.
Our photo books are 21×21cm stapled softbacks with 28 pages. Ready to start? Have a look at some photo book ideas.