Households

Reading this in the desktop app? Households are part of Wallie’s cloud service and are managed from the phone app. A frame set up from this computer — Copy photos onto the frame or Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi — doesn’t use Households. This page applies to frames paired with the phone app.

A household lets you share a Wallie with the people in your life. Anyone you invite can add photos, frame favorites, and see what everyone else has added — all from their own phone.

It’s the easiest way to set up a Wallie for a parent or grandparent, or to keep a kitchen frame full of photos from the whole family.

Inviting someone

In the Wallie app:

1. Tap Profile → Household.
2. Tap Add Another Member.
3. Enter their name. This is just so the invitation message reads naturally (“Hi Mom!”) and so you can find them in the member list later.
4. Wallie creates an invitation link and opens your phone’s share sheet. Send it however works — Messages, email, AirDrop.

When they tap the link:

• If they don’t have the Wallie app yet, the page they land on walks them through installing it.
• The app opens to the invitation. One tap accepts.

That’s it. As soon as they’re in, your shared frames and albums start appearing on their phone.

Accepting is also what carries your photo key to their phone — that’s what lets them actually open your photos rather than see empty tiles. The invitation link is what unlocks it, so send it straight to the person you’re inviting rather than posting it anywhere public. Invitations stop working after 24 hours.

→ For what this means for your data, see Sharing with your household.

Who’s in your household

Profile → Household shows everyone you’ve invited — accepted members and pending invitations both.

What you’ll see	What it means
Account owner	The person who set up the household. Has the only “remove member” controls.
Member	A full-access household member. Sees everything.
Limited (purple tag)	A limited-access member. Only sees what the account owner has specifically shared with them.
Invitation pending (orange card)	Sent but not yet accepted.

What members can do

By default, every member has full access. They can:

• Add photos to any household album
• Frame a favorite on any household frame
• See everything everyone else has added

Full access vs Limited access

If you don’t want to share everything, you can give someone limited access instead. The account owner can switch any member between full and limited at any time.

	Full access (default)	Limited access
What they see	All household albums and frames; new uploads automatically	Only the albums and frames the owner explicitly shares
Adding photos	To any album	Only to shared albums
Best for	Partner, spouse, anyone in the same house	Kids, extended family, anyone you want to share some photos with but not all

To change someone’s access level:

1. Open Profile → Household.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu next to their name.
3. Choose Set to limited access or Give full access.
4. If you set someone to limited, you’ll then pick which albums and frames to share with them via Manage shared content in the same menu.

When you flip someone to limited, they lose access to all shared content until you re-share specific items. Flip them back to full and they regain everything.

Removing a member

Only the account owner (the person who first set up the household) can remove members.

1. Profile → Household.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu next to the person you want to remove.
3. Remove from household.

They lose access to shared frames and albums right away. Photos they already added stay where they are.

Need to leave a household someone else set up? Members can’t remove themselves right now. Ask the account owner to remove you.

Pending invitations

After you send an invitation, it sits in Profile → Household as an orange card with the invitee’s name and “Invitation pending.” Tap the ⋮ menu on it:

• Cancel invitation — the link stops working. (You can always send a fresh one.)
• Share again — re-opens the share sheet so you can send the same link to a different app or contact.

If days have gone by and they haven’t accepted, it’s faster to send a fresh invitation than to wonder.

Setting up a Wallie at another house

This is one of the most common reasons to use a household: setting up a Wallie for someone who doesn’t want to deal with apps — a parent or grandparent — and managing it from your own phone.

1. Unbox the new Wallie wherever it’ll live.
2. Connect it to their Wi-Fi during setup, or set it up without the cloud (see Getting Started for the offline path).
3. Pair it from your phone, the same way you’d pair any new Wallie.
4. Send photos to it from your phone like you do your own. They appear on their wall on the schedule you set.

That’s it — they don’t need to install anything. If you eventually want them to add their own photos, invite them as a household member through Profile → Household.

Limits

A few practical things to know:

• One household per account. You can be the owner of one household, or a member of one — not both, and not multiple.
• Already in a household? Tapping a new invitation link won’t do anything until you leave or are removed from the current one.
• No self-remove yet. If you need to leave a household, ask the account owner to remove you.

Privacy

For the full data story, see Your data → Households. The short version:

• Household members see only what’s in your shared household — they can’t see anything you didn’t add to a household album.
• Removing a member revokes their access immediately on their next sync.
• Photos are end-to-end encrypted before they leave your phone, including when they sync to other household members’ phones.

Next

→ Using Your Frame — daily controls, scheduling, and offline use.