Approving & moderating photos

Content Moderation is your command center for everything that goes public in the gallery: reviewing new uploads (approve or hide), running bulk actions, handling reported content, banning guests and – with AI enabled – organizing detected person clusters. This guide is for hosts, admins and moderators.

Two ways in, one screen

Moderation lives in two places – with exactly the same interface:

• Hosts and admins find it in the admin area under Review & Reports (/admin/moderation). The entry sits in the sidebar under the Gallery group.
• Moderators without admin access have no admin area. For them the page stays in the gallery context at /moderation, reachable from the profile menu in the top right.

Both routes show the same four sections and the same actions. Only the frame around them differs – and the parameter in the address: ?tab= in the admin area, ?section= on the guest-side page.

When photos land in moderation at all

Two paths put a photo in the queue:

• Approval is required: With content moderation switched on, every new upload first arrives as pending in moderation and only becomes public after you approve it. You’ll find this switch under Moderation & safety.
• Orphaned content: Even without required approval, the Media tab appears as soon as there are pending or unpublished photos – for example because the AI content filter (NSFW) automatically unpublished an upload, or you hid something earlier.

If approval is off and there is no such orphaned content, the Media tab simply isn’t there – that’s normal. The page then opens on Reports instead.

How to reach moderation

As a host or admin: in the admin area

1. Open your event’s admin area (profile menu top right → Admin Portal).

2. In the sidebar, under the Gallery group, click Review & Reports. A red counter on the entry shows what is still waiting for a decision: waiting uploads plus open reports. Already published or unpublished photos deliberately don’t count – otherwise the number would never go down.

3. The page is called Review & Reports, subtitle “Approve waiting uploads and handle what your guests reported.”. Its four sections – Media, Face Clusters, Banned Users, Reports – also appear as sub-entries in the sidebar, so you can jump straight to one.

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In the admin area moderation is called “Review & Reports” – same screen, just inside the admin frame. ① the tab row Media, Banned Users and Reports – Media only appears when review is part of your plan or uploads are still queued; Face Clusters slots in between as soon as face recognition is part of the plan and switched on for the event, ② the status row Pending, Unpublished and Published, each with its count next to it, ③ Review one by one starts the run with keyboard shortcuts; while the current list is empty the button stays greyed out.

As a moderator: through the profile menu

Moderators without admin access move around in the same gallery as the guests. For them the route goes through the profile menu – and that route always works.

1. Tap your profile picture or avatar in the top right. The profile menu opens.

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   You reach moderation through the profile menu in the top right. ① your points and solved tasks, ② Profile options with My Profile, Language, Theme and Help, ③ Management with Account Settings, Moderation and Admin Portal – this section is missing until you hold a role for it, ④ Account with Sign out.

2. Under Management, choose the Moderation entry (flag icon). You only see this entry with the moderator role or higher. A red counter on the entry shows the combined number of open reports and pending media.

3. You land on the Content Moderation page with the subtitle “Review and manage submitted content”.

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The same screen in the gallery context – the route for moderators without admin access: ① the tabs “Media”, “Banned Users” and “Reports”; a fourth tab “Face Clusters” only appears when the plan allows face recognition and it is switched on for the event. ② the status filter with its counters. ③ “Review one by one” starts the review mode where you approve or hide one photo at a time.

The counter is current everywhere

The profile menu itself is attached to the real-time moderation connection – so the red counter updates on every page of the gallery, not just on the moderation page. You never have to go and check whether something came in.

Caution

If you instead see Access Denied (“You need moderator permissions to access this page.”) with a Back to Gallery button, you don’t have the moderator role. The owner has to assign it – see Roles & permissions.

What sits at the top of the page

There is no longer a Moderation Overview card with three big counters. The numbers now sit where you need them:

• As a badge on every status tab inside Media: Pending (yellow), Unpublished (gray), Published (green).
• As a red counter on the Reports tab, as long as reports are open.
• If a yellow warning banner sits at the very top (“N pending report(s) need your attention.”), there are open reports – one click jumps straight to the Reports tab.

A page-wide Refresh button is gone too. It now sits in the toolbar of the section you are in: in Media next to Review one by one, in Reports only while the status is Pending.

Tip

The page works in real time: it subscribes to the moderation room, so new uploads and reports appear without reloading. That lets several moderators work in parallel without stepping on each other.

The tabs at a glance

Depending on feature and role you see up to four tabs:

1 Media – the photo queue, 2 Face clusters – only shown when AI processing is on, 3 Banned users – who is currently restricted, 4 Reports – what guests have flagged.

• Media: review new photos. Visible when approval is required or orphaned content exists.
• Face Clusters: organize detected people. Only when your plan includes AI face processing and face recognition is switched on for the event.
• Banned Users: manage restricted guests. Always present.
• Reports: handle content flagged by guests. Always present; a red counter shows open reports.

Everything can be linked to

The outer tab is stored in the address bar – under ?tab= in the admin area, under ?section= on the guest-side page. The inner status inside Media has a key of its own: ?mediaStatus=pending, unpublished or published. That is exactly what the dashboard and the global admin search link to, e.g. /admin/moderation?tab=media&mediaStatus=pending. In Reports the key is ?reportStatus=. So a reload puts you right back where you were.

The “Media” tab – approve or hide photos

This is the core. Inside Media there’s a second tab bar by status: Pending (clock, yellow counter), Unpublished (crossed-out eye, gray counter) and Published (checkmark, green counter).

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The queue: six waiting uploads. Every card carries Deny (red X) and Approve (green checkmark), with Review one by one above them.

How a decision plays out

The rule is: nothing moves under your hands. Your decision is recorded locally and instantly, the card stays exactly where it is and turns into its own receipt. The requests leave in batches behind you.

• The decided card is dimmed and labelled: Approved (green) or Denied (gray).
• As long as the decision hasn’t been sent yet, Undo sits next to it. While it is being sent a small spinner turns.
• Once it is through, the card offers the opposite action – Hide instead or Approve instead. There is no way back to pending, so the button is named for what it actually does.
• If something failed, the card gets a red ring and a Retry button.

There are no confirmation toasts for this anymore. Instead a floating bar at the bottom keeps the tally for your session: “N approved”, “N hidden”, “Saving N…”, on trouble “N failed – retry”, plus the buttons Undo last and Clear decided. Only Clear decided tidies the list – that is the single moment the grid is allowed to re-flow.

Reviewing a single photo

Each card shows the uploader name (or Anonymous), the upload time and possibly a purple Live badge – then the photo came from a photo booth or camera via live upload, not from an app guest. Clicking the image or Expand opens the fullscreen single review; clicking the card around it selects it.

Which buttons you get depends on the status tab:

Status tab	Buttons on the card
Pending	Deny (red X) · Approve (green checkmark)
Published	Hide (crossed-out eye)
Unpublished	Publish (green checkmark)

Deny deletes nothing: the photo moves to Unpublished, becomes invisible to guests and can be published again at any time.

“Review one by one” – the fast pass

For longer queues there’s a second working mode. Above the list sits the Review one by one button (play icon).

1. Click Review one by one. A fullscreen mode opens with exactly one photo.

2. Top left shows the progress n / N and, once you get going, “N decided”. Exit sits on the right.

3. At the bottom you decide with Deny / Undo / Approve; the arrows left and right step through. The next image is preloaded in the background.

4. On a computer the keyboard legend sits underneath: A approve · D deny · Z undo · ← → browse · Esc exit.

Fullscreen mode: 1 / 6 and Exit in the top corners, Deny, the undo arrow and Approve at the bottom – with the legend A approve · D deny · Z undo · ← → browse · Esc exit.

The grid listens to the keyboard too

You don’t have to enter fullscreen to work by keyboard. In the grid, arrow keys, J/K, Home and End move the focus, A approves, D denies, Z takes the last decision back, Enter opens the single review and Space selects. Shift-click selects a whole range.

Several photos at once (bulk actions)

Click cards to select them (selection ring + checkmark overlay). As soon as at least one card is selected, that same floating bar at the bottom switches to “N items selected”:

• Publish Selected – in every tab except Published.
• Unpublish Selected – in every tab except Unpublished, so under Pending as well.
• Clear – clears the selection.

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Selected cards get a ring and a checkmark – at the bottom the same bar switches to the three bulk actions.

Note

A bulk action is one single request, not a one-by-one crawl. The selection is drawn as decided immediately; sending happens in a batch once you pause for a moment or enough decisions have piled up, with a short gap between two batches so the rate limit doesn’t bite. So there is nothing to wait for and no risk in clicking – progress shows as “Saving N…” in the bar at the bottom.

State model & empty states

A photo goes through: pending → published (approve) or pending → unpublished (deny). Unpublished photos are not deleted – they stay in the Unpublished tab and can be published again anytime. Permanent deletion only happens via reports or the recycle bin.

Inside Media the three states sit side by side: 1 Pending – waiting for your decision, 2 Unpublished – hidden by you, 3 Published – visible to everyone. A photo only moves between these three buckets; nothing is deleted here.

Once everything is handled, each tab reports “All caught up! No pending items.”, “No unpublished content.” or “No published content yet.”. The list loads more photos as you scroll (“Loading more…”).

Example: 120 photos the morning after

After the party, 120 shots sit under Pending. The fastest route: open Review one by one and just tap A (approve) and D (deny) – the counter in the top left runs up from 1 / 120. Hit the wrong key? Press Z right away. The three blurry dance-floor shots go to the Unpublished tab with D – that does not delete them, you can publish them again from there at any time. Finish with Esc, and the tab reports “All caught up! No pending items.”

The “Reports” tab

This tab is always present. Here too there are inner status tabs with counters: Pending (clock, red counter), Action taken (checkmark) and Dismissed (warning triangle). The status is stored as ?reportStatus= in the address.

Each report shows a thumbnail, a reason badge – Person in image, Inappropriate, Copyright or Other –, an optional message from the reporter, plus the reporter name (or Anonymous) and date. Clicking the thumbnail opens the single review at exactly that report.

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In the Reports tab you handle content that guests have flagged.

The three actions

For open reports you have three options – as buttons in the row and, via right-click or long-press, as a context menu:

1. Dismiss – dismiss the report, the photo stays online. For mistaken or trivial reports.

2. Unpublish – takes the photo out of the gallery without deleting it. This button only appears with content moderation active.

3. Delete – the photo moves to the recycle bin and can be restored from there.

No confirmation dialog on delete anymore

The former Delete media? prompt is gone. It was belt and braces: the decision first sits in the undo window, and the media goes to the recycle bin anyway. The row stays put and carries Deleted plus Undo for as long as nothing has been sent.

The same session flow as media

Reports are worked through just like photos:

• Above the list (only while the status is Pending) sit Review one by one and Refresh.
• A decided row stays in place and shows Dismissed, Hidden or Deleted – with Undo while that is still possible. Moderator toasts are gone.
• At the bottom, the floating bar adds up “N dismissed”, “N hidden”, “N deleted” and offers Undo last and Clear decided.
• A click selects a row, shift-click a range; the bar then offers Dismiss, Unpublish and Delete for the whole selection.
• Keyboard: D dismiss, H hide, X delete, Z undo, Enter single review, Space select. In fullscreen the legend reads D dismiss · H hide · X delete · Z undo · ← → browse · Esc exit.

Tip

GDPR practice: handle reports with the reason Person in image (data-subject rights) promptly – usually with Unpublish or Delete. See how guests flag content in Reporting & moderating content.

If nothing is open, “No reports to review” appears.

Reports also live on the Photos page

As long as reports exist, the very same view hangs on the admin area’s gallery page as an extra tab: /admin/gallery?tab=reports. Same screen, second entry point.

The “Banned Users” tab

Here you manage restricted guests. At the top you’ll find the heading Banned Users and a search field (“Search users…”). Five filter tabs, each with a red count, narrow the list: All, Uploads, Comments, Nickname and Profile Picture. The counts come from the same query as the list, so switching filters costs no extra loading.

Each user card shows the avatar, name (or Anonymous User), the active ban badges – Upload Ban, Comment Ban, Nickname Ban, Profile Picture Ban – and, if set, the stored reason per category.

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In the Banned Users tab you see all restricted guests and manage their bans.

Two clicks, two destinations

Manage opens the profile dialog on top of the moderation page – you stay where you are and set or lift the bans right there. Only clicking the person’s name actually navigates to their profile page.

If no one is banned, it reads No banned users with the addition “All users are currently in good standing”.

Note

The actual banning – with the categories uploads, comments, nickname changes and profile pictures, an optional reason, and the option to clean up the person’s content in the same step – is described step by step in its own guide, Ban & restrict users.

The “Face Clusters” tab

This tab only appears when your plan includes AI face processing and face recognition is switched on for the event. It shows the automatically detected person clusters as a grid – there you name people, merge duplicate clusters, split wrongly grouped ones, hide irrelevant ones and set preview images.

Managing the clusters is covered step by step in its own guide, Managing face clusters. Background: AI processing.

The moderation panel in the gallery

The Moderation Panel is a card of its own that sits directly above the gallery grid for moderators. It is not an overlay on a photo but a switch bar for the whole gallery:

• On a computer the card carries the heading Moderation Panel (shield icon) and, on the right, the link Open Full Dashboard →.
• On a phone, a large Open Moderation Dashboard button sits above the panel instead of the heading and link.
• Below them are three status tabs with counters: Published, Pending and Unpublished. A click switches which photos the gallery grid below shows – so you work through pending uploads in the familiar gallery layout. The chosen tab lands in the address bar (?filter=…).

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What it looks like: the Moderation Panel card sits between the filter bar and the photo grid – here the Published tab with 23 photos is in front.

Note

Link and button always lead to the guest-side route /moderation, even when you are the host. If you want to stay inside the admin frame, use the sidebar entry Review & Reports.

The host can switch the panel off

The switch is called Show approval bar in the gallery (“Show the moderation status tabs directly on the gallery page”) and sits in Settings → Moderation & Safety, right below the approval question. The bar is on by default; if the host turns it off, the card, the status tabs and the mobile button are gone.

That is not an access problem: moderators still reach moderation from the profile menu, hosts from the admin area. Details under Moderation & safety.

The approval overlay on a tile

Something different from the panel: a photo that isn’t approved yet shows you – and only you as a moderator – two round buttons on the tile itself, to approve and to deny. Both ask first (“Do you really want to publish this image?” or “Do you really want to deny this image?”). At the same spot, guests only see a clock icon with the note “This image is waiting for approval”.

An already unpublished photo carries a button to publish it after all instead.

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The gallery with the Pending filter: every waiting tile carries the red X (deny) and the green checkmark (approve) – in the polaroid wall they sit in the white border below the photo.

Not in every gallery layout

Which layout the gallery uses is chosen by the host under Customizing the look. The tile overlay exists in Modern Grid, Uniform Grid, Seamless Mosaic, Featured, Justified Rows, Polaroid Wall and Vintage Collage.

In the Timeline layout there is no overlay – there the actions live in the ⋮ menu of each card, as the entries Approve, Deny, Publish and Unpublish. So if you can’t find the buttons on the tile, look in the ⋮ menu.

Moderating in fullscreen

Open a photo large and the ⋮ menu of the fullscreen/slideshow view carries an extra moderation section with Publish / Unpublish and Delete (recycle bin). The exact entries depend on status and feature.

Tip

For the systematic pass – queue, bulk actions, reports – the moderation page (or Review & Reports) stays the right tool. The panel and the overlay in the gallery are meant for quick single decisions while browsing.

Troubleshooting

• No Media tab visible → approval is off and there is no orphaned content. That’s normal; the page then opens on Reports. To enable: Moderation & safety.
• I can’t find the old overview card with the three counters → it no longer exists. The numbers are badges on the status tabs.
• No Refresh button at the top → it sits in the toolbar of the section you are in, and in Reports only under Pending.
• No moderation panel in the gallery → the host has switched Show approval bar in the gallery off. You still reach moderation through the profile menu or the admin area.
• No approve buttons on the tile → the event uses the Timeline layout; there the actions sit in the card’s ⋮ menu.
• Unpublish button missing in Reports → only with content moderation active. Without it, Dismiss and Delete remain.
• Face Clusters tab missing → AI face processing not in the plan, or face recognition off for the event.
• Access Denied → your role is lower than moderator. The owner has to grant it.
• Purple Live badge on cards → the upload came from a photo booth/camera (live upload), not from an app guest.
• Decided cards don’t disappear → that’s by design. They stay as a receipt until you hit Clear decided in the bar at the bottom.

Tip

Recommended workflow: first clear the warning banner and Reports, then work through Pending – for larger batches use Review one by one with the A and D keys. Rule of thumb: “When in doubt, unpublish rather than delete” – Unpublished is reversible, Delete goes to the recycle bin. For large events use several moderators; the real-time queue prevents duplicate work.

Related help

• For moderators – the entry point to this section
• Ban & restrict users · Managing face clusters
• Reporting & moderating content – how guests report a photo
• Moderation & safety – required approval, the AI filter and the approval bar in the gallery
• Roles & permissions – who is allowed to moderate