Users

Lychee supports multiple users with granular rights, both globally and per album.

• Username and password - the default login.
• Passkeys / WebAuthn - passwordless login with a security key or biometrics, registered from the profile page and usable from the login screen with the k shortcut.
• OAuth - sign in with Amazon, Apple, Authelia, Authentik, Facebook, GitHub, Google, Keycloak, Mastodon, Microsoft, or Nextcloud, once the provider credentials are set in the .env file.
• LDAP - when an LDAP directory is configured, the accounts it manages have their credentials handled outside Lychee.

• Admin setup - the very first visit asks you to create the admin account. v8 moves this onto its own /setup-admin page rather than a dialog.
• Created by an admin - from the Users page.
• Invitation links - an admin generates a signed link that lets someone create their own account. It stays valid for user_invitation_ttl days and cannot be revoked before then; the expiry is baked into the signature, so the only way to invalidate a link early is to rotate APP_KEY.
• Self-registration - when user_registration_enabled is on, anyone can sign up from the registration page.

The Users page lists every account and lets an admin create, edit, and delete them. Per user you control:

Photos held back by the check level land in the Moderation page, where an admin reviews the thumbnails, sees any NSFW findings, and approves or deletes them in bulk. Moderation itself is free; the NSFW scanning that the other three levels rely on requires the Supporter Edition and is described in NSFW Classification.

With the Supporter Edition, users can be gathered into groups, and albums shared with a group instead of user by user. See User Groups.

Every user manages their own account from Profile:

• Change username and password, with a strength estimate.
• Set an email address to receive notifications, or remove it to stop them.
• Register, rename, and delete passkeys.
• Link or unlink OAuth providers.
• Create, reset, and disable a personal API token. The token is shown once, at creation time.
• Choose how albums shared with them appear in their gallery: inherit the server default, inline below their own albums, in separate My Albums / Shared with Me tabs, separate tabs restricted to directly shared albums, or hidden entirely.

Global rights decide what a user may do at all; album rights decide what they may do where. Access to an album is granted per user or per group, with separate permissions for reading, downloading, reaching the original file, uploading, editing, and deleting. Albums can also be transferred to another owner. See Sharing for how the two layers combine.