Collections help you store your assets in order and navigate through them fast. You can see your entire tree of collections in the left side panel of the main Pics.io screen. All the collections are arranged alphabetically by default.
When you create a (sub)collection in Pics.io, a corresponding folder automatically appears in your Google Drive Pics.io folder/S3 bucket connected to Pics.io.
💡 Tip: Both the left and right panels in Pics.io — the collections tree panel on the left and the details panel on the right — can be expanded or collapsed for a more flexible workspace. Expand them when you need quick access to your collections, asset details, or metadata, and collapse them when you want a cleaner interface with more space for browsing and managing assets.
What can I do with my collections?
First of all, by using collections you may organize all your assets in a proper way. Once you locate the mouse cursor on the name of the chosen collection in the tree of collections, the whole line becomes gray offering you several buttons to utilize.
The “Add assets” button allows you to upload the assets directly to the chosen collection.
"Download collection" allows you to download all the files from this collection separately or as an archive to organize assets by folders.
The “Create nested collection” button allows the creation of a subcollection within the selected collection.
The “Add to Favorites” button gives a “star status” to the chosen collection and automatically places it into the “favorites” folder so that you can find it even faster.
The “Publish to web" button starts the process of creating a website out of the files in the chosen collection.
The “Delete collection” button allows you to delete the chosen collection and decide what to do with the assets - either delete them from everywhere too, or keep them in other collections.
The “Rename collection” button allows you to edit the name of the selected collection.
The "Move collection" button allows you to place one collection inside another. You can also move collections with the drag & drop action.
NB! Before you do so, make sure that 'Move collection' permission is enabled for both collections: the one you want to move and the one that is your destination.
'Duplicate Collection' allows you to copy a collection's structure with all nested folders.
NB! At this time, it’s only possible to copy a collection structure, but not its content. Still, the content of each collection can be copied with the help of the 'duplicate asset' functionality.
Also, to help you manage your collections, you will be shown the action toolbar appearing at the bottom of your screen each time you select a collection in Pics.io.
The toolbar allows you to:
select all assets
add assets;
publish to the web;
move collection;
download collection;
archive collection;
delete collection;
run AI processes.
How can I manage my collections?
When opening any collection you can click on the Details panel in the top right corner to check the details about this folder. It allows you to do the following:
Rename the collection by double-clicking on the collection name;
Click on three vertical dots to perform different actions on the collection (upload, download assets, delete collection, etc.);
Select all the assets within the collection;
Add a description for your collection;
Check the Main info: the dates when the collection was created and last updated. For newly created collections you will be able to see who from your teammates created this folder;
Roles: see who from your teammates have access to this collection and their roles in your team;
Add color tags for your collection;
Sync a particular collection if there is no need to sync a whole library;
All the data will be synchronized to the original storage folders. In Google Drive, you will be able to see the info about your collections by clicking on the View details button.
NB! All the changes you make to the collection info are updated for all your teammates who have access to this folder.
💡 Tip: You can manually change the order of your collections in the collections tree by dragging & dropping them. It's also possible to move a collection inside another one with the drag & drop action.
How can I duplicate my collections?
The collection can be copied by performing the following steps:
Click the "Duplicate collection" button of the 3-dot button dropdown menu. The option can also be seen in the dropdown menu in the Details panel.
Choose the collection to copy into. If a collection of the same level is being copied into the same level, the indication of (copy) is added before the collection name.
Confirm to copy only the selected collection or copy with its sub-collections.
NB! Only collections are copied; assets will not be duplicated along with collections.
How can I manage assets in my collections?
To upload a file:
Utilize the “Add assets” button after you choose a collection from your collection tree in the left panel or on the Action toolbar.
Choose a collection you want while going through the general file-uploading process.
Simply drag and drop your file into a collection you need.
Besides, it's possible to add or move your files directly to the storage connected to Pics.io (Google Drive folder or S3 bucket). After that, you'll need to make a sync, so assets are synchronized to your Pics.io library.
How can I sort my collections?
It's possible to sort your folders in the collection tree. At the top of the left-side panel next to the search field, just click on the sorting icon. There are 4 sorting modes for collections: name, create time, update time, and custom. In case any changes are made to your assets (title, description, asset marks, share settings, or comments), a collection is considered to be updated.
Implementing custom sorting for collections in Pics.io
There are situations where it becomes necessary to organize collections in a particular custom-based sequence or structure using characters instead of just words in the name.
Note, that in A-Z and Z-A sorting modes, all characters are considered as letters (not as numbers, symbols, etc), so the strings are sorted and will be sorted as 1,10,100,2,3 and not 1,2,3…10…100.
While there is no custom sorting order in the system at the moment, as a custom solution we recommend using specific naming patterns such as #01, #02, #03, or 01, 02, 03 at the beginning of the collection name if you need to arrange collections in a certain custom order.
Can I keep assets in more than one collection at a time?
Yes, you can keep your assets in several collections at the same time. To understand which collection a file belongs to, mouse over its thumbnail or open the Details panel by clicking on the ‘i’ icon placed in the top right corner of the screen.
NB! There’s one important comment here, however, for those who use Team Drive. The latter restricts the location of your assets to only one folder within Team Drive. It means that you can’t keep your asset in more than one collection. Read more about integration with Team drive here.
If you would like to remove an asset from one collection, but keep it in another, you may simply remove the asset from collection by clicking on the 'X' button next to the collection name in the Details panel -> 'Collections' section. Feel free to check more details about removing assets in Pics.io here.
How can I add assets to another collection?
There are several ways to add assets to other collections.
1. By dragging & dropping:
open the collection you need and select the assets you want to add to a different collection.
drag and drop the selected assets to any other collection from the tree of collections you can see on your left;
in the pop-up window select 'Add to collection' and confirm the action.
2. Using the Details panel:
select an asset;
navigate to the Details panel;
click the folder icon to open the collections tree;
choose a collection that files should be added to and confirm the action.
3. By clicking the Add to collection button within the action toolbar at the bottom of the page:
NB! When you add assets to various collections in Pics.io, it's important to note that this functionality is only available in Pics.io and you will not see Pics.io added assets in corresponding folders on the Google Drive end.
How can I move assets from one collection to another?
Open the necessary collection and select the assets you want to move to a different collection.
Drag and drop the selected assets to any other collection from the collections tree on the left side.
In the pop-up window select 'Move selected assets into the collection' and confirm the action.
If you've made the pop-up window hidden, to move files just hold 'Option' (for MacOS) / 'Alt' (for Windows) and drag'n'drop them to the necessary collection.
Is there a way to create a private collection in Pics.io?
Sure. Besides shared collections, you can also create personal collections that are accessible and visible to you alone. These are lightboards. Read more about them here.
How can I restrict access to certain collections?
Sometimes you need to restrict access to certain collections for particular teammates. To do so, you should go to Settings - My team - Roles.
There you should click on the "paperclip" icon and select collections that you want to make visible for particular roles. In other words, in Pics.io you can open access to roles rather than actual teammates.
As well, you can control what a teammate can do in a particular collection. For example, you can allow your co-worker to remove assets from one collection but forbid them to delete anything from a different collection. Read more about allowed collections and granular permissions here.
How can I delete a collection?
In case you want to delete an entire collection, simply mouse over the collection you wish to delete and click on the "Delete collection" button. You will be provided with two options for what to do with the assets inside this collection. This is especially useful if the assets from this collection were also added to other collections in Pics.io:
Remove from this collection only - The assets will be removed only from this collection but will remain in any other collections they are added to.
Delete from all collections - The assets will be removed from all collections they are added to throughout the library.
What will happen on the storage side if I delete a collection with the original asset?
As you may know, adding assets to different collections means displaying them in multiple collections inside Pics.io interface, while keeping only one original file in one corresponding collection inside your Google Drive or S3 storage.
So, if the original assets on the storage side are located inside the collection that you are going to delete, upon removing them from this collection, such assets on the storage side will be moved to another collection where they have been added to inside Pics.io interface.
Here's a detailed example:
Imagine you have Collection A with the original asset on the storage.
On the Pics.io side, this original asset lives inside Collection A, but also in Collections B, C, etc., because it was added to those collections in Pics.io.
On the Pics.io side, you want to delete Collection A and choose the option for assets to "Remove from this collection only."
Collection A is deleted in Pics.io and on the storage along with the assets inside it.
On the storage side, the original asset that belonged to Collection A will be moved to the collection where it was added in Pics.io. If the asset was added to multiple collections, then it will be moved to the one where it was added first (in this case, Collection B).
So in summary, upon deleting Collection A with the option "Remove from this collection only.", on the storage side, be it Google Drive or Amazon S3, this asset will be moved to Collection B.
How can I locate assets that do not belong to a certain collection?
In case you have "homeless" assets in your repository, i.e. assets that do not belong to a certain collection, you have two ways to find them:
Click on the magnifying glass icon in the very left panel of the screen to select Saved Searches. By default, the top folder here will be "Uncategorized search”. You can find your "homeless" assets here.
Use a toggle at the bottom of your collection tree that says Don’t show assets in nested collections. Once you select a collection and turn on this toggle, Pics.io will show you only those assets that do not belong to any nested subcollection within this selected collection. It means that you will see your “homeless” files separately and sort them out the way you think they fit.
You may be also interested to learn more about how to remove files from collections here.