Groups

A group is networks with a standing arrangement, such as a family’s, or a club’s. Each network in it has a role. The group has Collections of its own, which every member holds. Members can also lend each other storage.

Find your groups on the Devices tab, under Groups, between My network and Known networks.

Making a group, and inviting others

New group makes one, with your network its home and you its first Owner. The home keeps the list of members, and the others keep up with it.

On the group’s page, Invite makes a link. First choose who it’s for:

A network you know, from the list: the invitation is for them alone, and it’s sent to them too, so it shows on their Groups page and in their Notices.
Another network, by its card: paste their network card, and send them the link. It’s for their network alone.
Anyone with the link: whoever uses it first joins. Turn on Approve users to make it a link that only asks to join, for as many as you send it to. Each who asks shows on the group’s page under Asking to join, and in Notices, for an Owner or Caretaker to approve, with a role, or decline. Once approved, they join the next time their app asks, which it does by itself.

Then choose the role they join with. They open the link, or paste it into Join a group.

Roles

Owner: anything, including removing other Owners and disbanding the group.
Caretaker: invites, makes the group’s Collections and looks after them, and changes the roles of members below it. It can’t make Caretakers, or delete the group’s Collections.
Contributor: adds to the group’s Collections and changes them, and deletes to the trash. It can’t empty the trash.
Member: sees the group’s Collections.
None: sees none of the group’s Collections, but may use and add to the storage its members lend.

A member can have a different role in one of the group’s Collections. Owners are Owners everywhere.

The group’s Collections

An Owner or Caretaker makes them from the group’s page. They’re at the top of Files for everyone who can see them, and kept in step through the group’s home, which keeps them safe. Your devices keep what you open. To keep copies of them on your own devices too, choose Keep copies of its Collections on the group’s page, and how safely: every Collection of the group is kept so, unless you choose otherwise for one of them, or a folder or file in it, with Keep a copy.

Lending storage

Under Your storage on the group’s page, you can lend storage:

for the group’s Collections: they’re then kept on what members lend, rather than as a copy on each member’s devices;
for members’ own Collections: each member may keep copies of theirs on your devices, encrypted, so you can’t read them.

You set one total for all of it. Lending is off until you turn it on.

Leaving

Leaving, or being removed, takes away access to the group’s Collections at once. You stay listed as leaving for up to 14 days, while anything of the group’s on your devices moves elsewhere.

The group’s last Owner can’t leave. It offers someone else an Owner’s role first, which they can take or decline. The group’s home can’t leave either: it hands the group to another Owner, whose network keeps it from then on. An Owner can also disband the group. Its Collections then stay with its home, and go from everyone else’s devices.

On the command line, iceblock groups and the group-… commands do the same (see iceblock --help).