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Check and change Flickr photo privacy in bulk

Years of family photos sit on your photostream as public, and you want them seen by Family only without opening thousands of photo pages.

Cotlet does it in your own Flickr account with list_photos, get_photo and set_photo_privacy, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

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Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Flickr do this on its own?

Flickr has manual privacy tools only (checked 17 Oct 2026): a setting on each photo page and bulk changes in Camera Roll and the Organizr. The Flickr API can change privacy, but new keys are for Pro subscribers only, and there is no official MCP server. Nothing on Flickr changes privacy by a rule such as "older than 2024".

How you do it in Flickr today

  1. For one photo, scroll to the Additional info section on its photo page, select Viewing privacy and choose a setting.
  2. For many photos, hover over You and select Camera Roll, or use You > Organize, and drag photos into the batch area.
  3. Select the photos, use the privacy icon in the bar at the bottom of Camera Roll and select Change.
  4. Flickr lets you set each item to everyone, no one, or only the contacts you marked as Friends or Family.
  5. After the change you still need to check which photos are in groups or albums, because those spread visibility.

How to check and change Flickr photo privacy in bulk

Prompt

List my public photos from before 2024 in the album Family trips. Make them visible to Family only, and tell me how many photos are still public afterwards.
  1. 01

    Select by rule

    list_photos filters by album, upload date and current privacy, so the set is exactly "public photos in Family trips from before 2024". The agent shows the count before it changes anything.

  2. 02

    Check what spreads visibility

    get_photo shows the groups and albums a photo is in. A photo in a group is flagged, because members of that group see a non-public photo too, and the agent asks what to do with it.

  3. 03

    Check the free-account cap

    On a free account, the agent counts non-public photos first. If the change would pass the 50 non-public items Flickr allows, it stops and tells you the number instead of making a partial change.

  4. 04

    Change in small batches

    set_photo_privacy runs once per photo with public, friends, family, friends_family or private. It asks for your OK by default, because a wrong value can hide or expose a photo.

  5. 05

    Report the remainder

    The agent lists what is still public, what moved to each setting and what it skipped, so you can open one photo and compare.

What you get back

Example data

Public photos in Family trips before 2024: 212
Changed to Family only: 204
Skipped 6 (in the group "Street Lisbon", your call)
Skipped 2 (would pass the 50 non-public limit)
Still public in this album: 8

Other ways to ask

  • Make every photo tagged "kids" private and list the albums it appears in.
  • Show me which of my photos are in groups while set to Friends or Family.
  • Switch the album Product shoot to public once I say go, and nothing before.
  • Count my non-public photos and tell me how close I am to the free limit.

What Flickr allows, and what to know first

  • Flickr gives each photo its own setting: everyone, no one, or only Friends or Family contacts.
  • Adding a non-public photo to a Flickr group makes it visible to all members of that group.
  • A guest pass, or an album that the photo is part of, lets anyone with the link see the photo.
  • Free accounts are limited to 50 non-public items, and Pro accounts have no such limit.
  • Free accounts can post only Safe content, and a Pro account can also upload moderate or restricted content.

set_photo_privacy asks for your OK by default. To run it on a schedule without you, switch confirmation off for that tool in your dashboard.

Sources: Flickr Help: Change your privacy settings · Flickr Help: Privacy Settings vs Safety Levels · Flickr Help: Reasons to upgrade to Flickr Pro · Flickr Help: Add or remove photos in Flickr groups

Call set_photo_privacy from a script

curl

curl -X PUT https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/flickr/photos/53917620088/privacy \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"privacy":"family"}'

Example response

{
  "photo_id": "53917620088",
  "previous_privacy": "public",
  "privacy": "family",
  "status": "updated"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is flickr_write → set_photo_privacy. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Flickr tools this automation uses

Cotlet Flickr tools used to check and change Flickr photo privacy in bulk
Tool Parameters
list_photos album_id, uploaded_since, privacy, untagged, in_album, limit, cursor
get_photo photo_id
set_photo_privacy photo_id, privacy
All 13 Flickr tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to connect Flickr to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Flickr yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Flickr once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

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