A collection is a curated set of your files with a title, description and cover image — a portfolio piece, an album, a package. Collections are what turn private files into something people can browse.
Creating a collection
Open My collections from the navbar and create a new one. In the editor you can:
- set the title, description and cover image;
- add files with the built-in picker, which browses your Drive folders and can search;
- reorder items by dragging.
The three visibility levels
| Level | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| Private (default) | only you — even the direct link is closed to others |
| Unlisted | anyone with the link (but they only see the public files, see below); it appears in no listing or search |
| Public | everyone; it shows on your profile and can appear in Explore |
One rule to be aware of: a public collection can only contain public files. Two things follow from that:
- When you add a file to a public collection, the file itself becomes public (it turns "Publicly visible" in your Drive) — so anyone can open it, and Google and other search engines may list it in their results. The editor tells you so after the add.
- If you try to publish a collection that still holds non-public files, saving stops with the message "The collection contains private items — make them public, or remove them." It does not list which files are affected: look for the ones that are not "Publicly visible" in your Drive, then make them public or remove them from the collection.
Visitors of an unlisted collection only see its public files. You can add files to an unlisted collection without making them public, but whoever has the link only sees the files whose visibility is "Publicly visible". Since new shares are unlisted by default, an unlisted collection can easily look empty or incomplete to visitors — if they need to see everything, you have to make the files public (which also lets them appear in search engines). If you only want to send files to a few people, a share link is the better fit.
Where collections show up
- Public collections are listed on your profile page (
filemv.com/u/your-handle) and are eligible for Explore's browse and popular listings. - Unlisted collections are reachable by link but never advertised — and, as described above, they only show their public files.
- Signed-in visitors can like and comment on your collections; visitors without an account can view but not react.
Collections vs. share links
A share link is for delivering files to specific people. A collection is for presenting files to an audience. They coexist happily: the same file can live in a collection and be shared by link at the same time.