You scanned a code on a table card, a browser opened, and now your phone is asking for photos. Here is the short version: you are adding to the couple's album, the file that leaves your phone is the full-quality original with the location stripped out of it, and you can browse and download everything anyone else adds, too. Nothing is being installed, and nothing is being sold.
The longer version is worth two minutes, because you are about to hand over pictures.
What just happened
The QR code is a link, and the link is the event. There is exactly one of them: the page you are looking at is the upload form, the live album, and later the finished album, all at the same address. Bookmark it and you can come back.
There is no app. There is no password to invent. Whatever else follows, that part does not change.
What the code asks of you
One of two things, and the host chose which when they set the event up.
If they left Require accounts to upload switched on, which is the default, you will be asked for an email address and then for a code that arrives in it. Tap the code and you are in. That single tap is the entire sign-up: no form, no password, no marketing consent buried in a checkbox. Until you do it, you can see a preview of the newest photos, not the whole album.
If they switched it off, you upload with nothing at all and your photos land as Anonymous.
Why the email step exists at all
It is the host's safety net, not a growth trick. A verified email means every upload in the album has someone behind it, which matters at a wedding where the link travels further than the guest list does. It also means your uploads are attached to you, so you can find them again. If the code does not turn up, try these.
What happens to the photo you send
Your phone uploads the original file, not a copy squeezed down to fit a chat window. That distinction is the whole reason these albums exist: the same photo sent through a group thread comes out visibly softer, and it gets worse with every forward.
Two things happen to the file on the way, both in your browser before anything is sent:
- A small preview is made, which is the version the album grid loads so it scrolls quickly on a phone. It is a thumbnail, and it is never what anyone downloads. Tap into a photo and you get the real one.
- EXIF and GPS metadata are stripped in the browser before a photo ever uploads. Your home address is not sitting in the album because you took a picture of the cake at home.
Size is the only real limit, and it is generous: up to 10 GB per file, which is bigger than anything a phone produces in one go. Photos work on every event. Video only works if the host is on a paid plan, so if the upload refuses a clip, that is the event's plan talking, not your phone.
What the host can and can't do
The host runs the album. Concretely, they can hide a photo, remove one, or hold every upload for approval before it appears, which is why your picture sometimes does not show up instantly. They can see the name and email attached to your uploads in their own view of the album.
They cannot edit your photo, and they cannot re-crop it or compress it: what you sent is what is stored. Who can see the album at all, including whether it is open, locked or private, is a setting they picked: who can see an event spells the options out. The privacy page covers the rest, including the part where event media is never sold and never used to train models.
Getting your photos back
This is the bit guests miss most often. The album is not a donation box. It works in both directions.
- Browse everything. Every photo the room uploaded is in there, including the ones taken from angles you never had.
- Save any single one at full quality, the original file, not a screenshot.
- Take the lot. Download all zips the album so you can keep it, filtered to just photos or just videos if you want.
- Like the ones you love once your email is confirmed. The per-event totals are the host's to see, so nothing you tap becomes a public score.
- Save the event to your account so the link is easy to find again, which costs nothing.
If the host makes a highlight reel out of the album, it appears at the same link once they share it, and you can keep a copy of that too. Here is how those get made.
If something doesn't belong
Sometimes a photo needs to come down: a bad angle of you, someone's kid, a picture that was never meant to leave a private moment.
Ask the host first. They can remove anything from their own album immediately, and it is their event, so this is usually the fastest route. If that is not an option, or the content is worse than awkward, the event page carries a discreet report link, and you can use it without an account. Reporting never pulls anything down on its own, which is deliberate: it queues a review instead, so the album cannot be censored by whoever complains loudest. A report gets reviewed, and the outcome does not depend on the host happening to look at their phone.
Then go back to the album and add the rest of what you shot. How guests join and upload has the full picture if you want it.
