Gallery activity
How to Tell if a Client Has Viewed Their Photo Gallery
You can answer the opened-or-not question at a glance, per gallery. You cannot follow one named client around their photos, and this page says so plainly rather than selling you a trail that does not exist.
Updated 5 September 2026
This question gets asked two ways, and both mean the same thing. Can I see if my client has viewed their gallery. How do I tell if a client has looked at their photo gallery. Underneath either phrasing is the same worry: you sent a link, nothing has come back, and you do not know whether the problem is the client or the email.
The answer on clientgallery.io is yes for the part that matters, and no for a part that some marketing pages imply. Yes: every gallery tile in your studio dashboard carries an opened indicator, so opened or not opened is a glance, not an investigation. No: there is no per-client behaviour trail, no per-client time on page, and no report that tells you which individual photos one named person looked at. Both halves are set out below, along with what Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time and CloudSpot document today.
The short answer, in one table
Four different questions hide inside "did they look at it". They are answered in four different places.
| What you actually want to know | What you get | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Did this gallery get opened at all | An opened indicator on the gallery tile | Studio dashboard |
| Has anything happened inside it | The pick count and the comment count for that gallery | Clients page |
| Did they finish and send | A push on your phone, and an email stating how many were loved and how many starred | Phone and inbox |
| How is the whole account doing | Gallery visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, picks sent, ZIP downloads, shares | Analytics dashboard |
Note the last row carefully. The analytics dashboard is account-wide. It is not a report for one gallery and it is not a report for one client. The per-gallery answers are the first two rows, and they are enough for the question you came here with.
Can I see if my client has viewed their gallery? Where to look
Open your studio dashboard. Each gallery is a tile, and a tile that has been opened is marked as opened. That is the whole procedure. You do not filter a report or cross reference a visitor list, because the signal sits on the object you were already looking at.
Then open the clients page. Each gallery there carries its pick count and its comment count. If either is above zero, someone has not only opened the gallery, they have worked in it.
One thing to understand about who that someone is. Picking is authenticated by the share link alone, so clients never create an account, never set a password and never get asked to register an email before they can look. That is deliberate, and it is the reason a gallery opens on the first tap. The trade is exactly what this page is about: an anonymous visitor cannot be labelled with a name.
A name does arrive, but later. The "Send my picks" dialog requires a name and a validated email, and the server rejects a submission without both. So the sequence is anonymous open, anonymous picking, then an identified handoff at the end.
How to tell if a client has looked at their photo gallery when nothing has come back
The practical value of the opened indicator is not curiosity. It is that it separates a delivery problem from a decision problem, and those two need opposite responses.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Tile not marked opened | The link never landed, or never got clicked | Send the link again, check the address, check spam, and if you set an access code on the gallery, confirm the client has it |
| Opened, counts at zero | Delivery worked. The decision has not been made | Nudge with a number and a date, not another link. Tell them how many to choose and by when |
| Opened, counts above zero | They are working through it | Leave it alone. Silence here is progress, not stalling |
| Picks sent notification arrived | Finished, with a name and an email attached | The completed-gallery banner exposes Export picks (.txt) for that gallery |
Most of the anxiety in this workflow comes from not knowing which of the first two rows you are in. Chasing a client who never received the link is wasted effort, and sending the link again to a client who is halfway through choosing is worse than doing nothing.
What the account-wide dashboard adds
The analytics dashboard covers your whole account, not one gallery. Read it as a monthly business view, not as a way to inspect a client. Seven counters sit across the top, each with a comparison against the previous period and a sparkline.
| Counter | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Gallery visits | Visits across your galleries |
| Unique visitors | Distinct visitors behind those visits |
| Photo views | Individual photos opened |
| Favourites | Photos marked by clients |
| Picks sent | Completed pick submissions |
| ZIP downloads | Archive downloads taken |
| Shares | Times a gallery was shared onward |
Below the counters the dashboard adds four things:
- Average time per visitor, computed as time spent divided by unique visitors. Dwell under three seconds is discarded as a bounce, so an accidental tap does not drag the average down.
- A device split across mobile, desktop and tablet, drawn as a donut. Useful when you are deciding how much a gallery needs to work in one hand.
- A top five photos list, with views and likes.
- A most-shared and most-opened gallery ranking, which is the closest thing to a per-gallery leaderboard.
Two honesty notes about these numbers. Your own visits are excluded from tracking entirely, so the figures are your clients and not you walking through your own work. And the product itself warns that device and visitor data only start from the point that tracking was added, so an older gallery can look quieter than it was.
What you cannot see, said plainly
This is the section other pages leave out. Everything below is a real limit, not a setting you have missed.
- There is no per-client behaviour trail. You cannot open a client and read a sequence of what they did in what order.
- There is no per-client time on page. Average time per visitor is an account-level average. It does not resolve to a person or to one gallery.
- You cannot tell which individual photos one named client looked at. The top five photos list is account-wide and is not attributed to anyone.
- The opened indicator is per gallery, not per person. A gallery link forwarded to two parents shows as opened, and cannot tell you which parent opened it.
- There is no analytics screen for a single gallery. The signals that exist per gallery are the opened indicator and the pick and comment counts. That is the complete list.
All of this follows from one design decision stated earlier. No client account means no identity to attach behaviour to until the moment picks are sent with a name and an email. If a named-visitor trail is the thing your business runs on, you should read the comparison below and choose accordingly.
The fastest way to stop wondering is to be told
Checking a dashboard is a habit you have to maintain. Being interrupted is not. The iOS app has been live on the App Store since 30 August 2026, and push fires on exactly two events: picks sent, and a full-resolution ZIP download. Each has its own per-device toggle, so you can put the pick alert on your phone and leave the download alert off.
Email fires only on picks. It goes to your address, the subject reads "name sent their picks" followed by the gallery title, and the body states how many photos were loved and how many were starred. There is no email on download; that one is push only.
That pairing is the practical answer to the question in the title. For the galleries that matter, you are told when the work is done rather than checking whether it has started. None of the four platforms compared below documents a push notification to the photographer when a client finishes picking.
How four other platforms report gallery activity
Every line below is quoted or paraphrased from the platform's own documentation, fetched on 5 September 2026 and listed in Sources.
| Platform | What its documentation says | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| clientgallery.io | Opened indicator on each gallery tile, plus pick and comment counts per gallery on the clients page. Seven counters, average time per visitor, device split, top five photos and gallery rankings on the dashboard | Opened or not per gallery. The dashboard is account-wide |
| Pixieset | "The Activities Tab allows you to review the Download, Favorite, Private Photo and Email Registration Activity" | An activity tab covering those four event types |
| ShootProof | "Galleries > Gallery Visitors ... you can see favorited photos, Free Digitals downloaded, items in the cart, and orders", plus a Visitor Activity view inside a gallery | Per visitor, and per gallery |
| Pic-Time | A Main Dashboard recent-activity feed with Active and History tabs, and activities also visible in "each gallery's Gallery Dashboard tab" | Account feed, and per gallery |
| CloudSpot | "Collection Analytics ... where captured emails, client favorites, and statistics on Gallery views and downloads are stored" | Named for the collection it belongs to |
Say the uncomfortable part out loud. ShootProof and Pic-Time both surface per-gallery visitor activity, and that is more granular than our per-gallery signal. ShootProof lists visitors against a gallery with what each one favourited and downloaded. Pic-Time puts a feed of gallery activities inside each gallery. If your work depends on seeing named visitors listed under one gallery, they document that and we do not.
Pic-Time goes further on the exact question in this title. Its app documents a push when "Main Clients view your galleries", and its activity feed shows a notification when the Main Client views their gallery for the first time, limited to views after May 2026 when the feature was released. That is an open-event push, which we do not have. What Pic-Time does not document is a push when a client finishes picking, and neither do Pixieset, ShootProof or CloudSpot.
So the honest recommendation splits. If your studio lives inside a print store, a CRM and an order pipeline, and you want visitor rows attached to a gallery, stay with Pixieset or Pic-Time. Their reporting is built for a shop. If what you want is a fast yes or no on whether the link landed, a count of what has been chosen, and a phone alert the moment picking is finished, the smaller set of signals here does that job with less to read.
How to talk to a client about this without sounding like surveillance
A gallery visitor is not identified by name. They are a link that was opened. Keep your language on the link and you will never have an awkward conversation about tracking.
Say: "I want to make sure the link reached you, let me know if it did not." That is a delivery check, it is true, and it invites a reply. Do not say: "I can see you opened it on Tuesday." Even where a platform could support that sentence, it changes the relationship, and it makes the client feel watched inside what is supposed to be a private look at their own photos.
There is a second reason to keep it simple. Because your own visits are excluded from tracking, the numbers you see are the client side of the gallery, not a mixture of you and them. That makes the opened indicator trustworthy enough to act on, which is exactly as much certainty as this conversation needs.
Sources
Product behaviour was verified in the clientgallery.io studio dashboard, clients page, analytics dashboard and notification code on 5 September 2026. Every competitor page was fetched on 5 September 2026.
- clientgallery.io (opened indicator on the gallery tile, per-gallery pick and comment counts, the seven account-wide counters, average time per visitor with the three second bounce rule, device split, top five photos, gallery rankings, owner visits excluded, tracking start caveat, push on picks sent and ZIP download, email on picks only, name and validated email required to send picks, Export picks (.txt) in the completed-gallery banner, iOS app live 30 August 2026), verified in the product 5 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io
- Pixieset, Activities Tab ("The Activities Tab allows you to review the Download, Favorite, Private Photo and Email Registration Activity"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003783091
- ShootProof, How do I view and track gallery visitor activity ("Galleries > Gallery Visitors", favorited photos, Free Digitals downloaded, items in the cart and orders, the per-gallery Visitor Activity view), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051209934-How-do-I-view-and-track-gallery-visitor-activity
- Pic-Time, Where can I find my recent gallery activities/notifications (Recent activity on the Main Dashboard, Active and History tabs, "each gallery's Gallery Dashboard tab", the Main Client first-view notification limited to views after May 2026), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/15282322-where-can-i-find-my-recent-gallery-activities-notifications
- Pic-Time, How do I turn notifications on and off in the Pic-Time Mobile App (the six documented push triggers, including "Main Clients view your galleries" and excluding any finished-picking event), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/11972011
- CloudSpot, Collection Analytics ("Collection Analytics ... where captured emails, client favorites, and statistics on Gallery views and downloads are stored"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/5164319-collection-analytics
Frequently asked
Can I see if my client has viewed their gallery?
Yes. Every gallery tile in your studio dashboard carries an opened indicator, so opened or not opened is visible at a glance without running a report. The clients page then shows that gallery's pick count and comment count, which tells you whether anything has happened inside it.
How can I tell if a client has looked at their photo gallery when they have not picked anything?
Check the tile first. If it is not marked opened, treat it as a delivery problem: send the link again, check the address and spam, and confirm the client has the access code if you set one. If it is marked opened and the counts are still at zero, the link worked and the decision has not been made, so nudge with a number and a date rather than another link.
Do I get a notification when a client finishes picking?
Yes. Push fires on picks sent, and an email goes to your address with the subject line naming the sender and the gallery. The body states how many photos were loved and how many were starred. Push also fires on a full-resolution ZIP download, but there is no email for that event.
Can I see which photos one specific client looked at?
No. There is no per-client behaviour trail and no per-client time on page. The top five photos list on the analytics dashboard is account-wide and is not attributed to a person. Picking is authenticated by the share link alone, with no client account, so there is no identity to attach behaviour to until picks are sent with a name and a validated email.
Is the analytics dashboard per gallery?
No, it is account-wide. It shows gallery visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, picks sent, ZIP downloads and shares, each with a previous-period comparison and a sparkline, plus an average time per visitor, a device split and a most-shared and most-opened gallery ranking. The signals that exist per gallery are the opened indicator and the pick and comment counts.
Do my own visits show up in the numbers?
No. The owner's visits are excluded from tracking entirely, so what you are reading is client activity rather than your own passes through your work. Separately, the product warns that device and visitor data only start from when that tracking was added, so an older gallery can look quieter than it actually was.
Should I tell a client that I can see they opened the gallery?
Frame it as the link, not the person. "I want to make sure the link reached you" is a true delivery check and invites a reply. "I can see you opened it on Tuesday" changes the relationship and makes a private look at their own photos feel watched.
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