Who sees what — privacy settings for your hangout

Feature overview

Brunchie has a visibility model with three audience states, five badges, and a composer picker. Together they answer the question your planning group chat could never quite nail: who's actually supposed to see this?

I used to share everything in one group chat and then panic when I realized the DJ just saw our internal run-of-show with the budget line. This is the thing that fixes that.

The three audience states

What: Every shared resource in a hangout — checklists, seating charts, spreadsheets, itineraries, posts, docs, polls — has one of three audience states:

• Hosts only — visible to the host team, cohosts, and (when an uploader other than the host sets it) the person who uploaded it. Guests don't see it.
• View only — everyone invited sees it; nobody can change it. Guests, vendors, the whole room. Read access, full stop.
• Editable — everyone invited sees it and can act on it. Guests can add rows, tick boxes, and post.

Why: Before this model shipped, "private" meant nothing or everything. You couldn't share a load-in plan with the photographer without also sharing it with 150 wedding guests. You couldn't let a vendor upload a contract without every other vendor on the hangout being able to read it. The three states carve up that problem cleanly.

So What: You pick the audience once when you create or upload the resource. Everything downstream — who sees the badge, who can click in, who finds it in which channel — flows from that single choice. No settings buried three menus deep.

Think of it like Google Drive's share settings, but scoped to the people already on the hangout — not the entire internet.

The five badges

What: Everyone on the hangout sees a badge on every resource they have access to. The badge changes based on who you are and how the resource was uploaded.

Here are all five, in plain English:

These are the actual badges, exactly as they appear on a resource card in the app:

Why: An earlier version of Brunchie showed two badges side by side — one for guest access, one for vendor access. On a phone screen they overflowed the resource title. The single role-aware badge tells you exactly what you can do with that resource, in two or three words, without making you decode a matrix.

So What: You never have to wonder why you can't open something. If a resource isn't shared with you, it doesn't show up in your view at all — no badge, no locked icon, no explanation required. The absence is the answer.

The "Only you and the hosts" badge is the one people ask about most. It's not a bug. It's telling you: your upload is genuinely private, and only the couple (and you) can see it.

Who sees what — four real scenarios

What: The model covers four named use cases that come up at every wedding and most group events.

Host briefs the vendors (team-shared coordination)

The host uploads a day-of run-of-show — load-in times, ceremony cues, vendor contacts — and marks it Hosts only. Every vendor on the hangout (photographer, DJ, venue coordinator) can see it. The 150 wedding guests cannot.

Why: Vendors need the internal runbook. Guests don't — and seeing it would spoil the flow. One upload, one audience state, done.

So What: You stop forwarding the same PDF to six people over email. It lives in the hangout, always current, and the vendors find it in their Hosts channel without asking you for a link. See the seating charts guide for a specific example of sharing a floor plan this way.

Vendor contract (vendor-private)

The Grand Hall (your venue) uploads their signed contract and marks it Hosts only. Only the host team and The Grand Hall see it. The DJ has no idea it exists. The photographer doesn't see it.

Why: Vendors come and go between hangouts. Their contract is between them and the couple — not a document the rest of the vendor team should see. The uploader-private logic makes the Hosts only state do double duty: team-sharing when the host uploads, privacy-by-default when the vendor uploads.

So What: If you're a vendor, mark your contract Hosts only when you upload it. That's it. You'll see the "Only you and the hosts" badge on your card confirming it's scoped right. Nobody else on the hangout can see it.

Signed waiver (guest-private)

A guest uploads their signed liability waiver and marks it Hosts only. Only the host team and that guest can see it. Other guests don't. Vendors don't.

Why: A waiver is personal. The guest is submitting it to the host, not publishing it to the group. The same uploader-private logic that protects a vendor's contract protects a guest's waiver.

So What: If you're a guest uploading something sensitive — a medical waiver, a dietary disclosure, anything just for the host — pick Hosts only. Your upload stays between you and the host team.

Day-of itinerary (host-only schedule, vendor-visible)

The host creates a second itinerary — the internal day-of runbook with florist arrival at 9:00, photographer at 10:30, ceremony cue at 14:55 — and sets it to Hosts only. The photographer, DJ, and coordinator (all external guests) see it. The couple's 150 invited guests see only the public itinerary with rehearsal dinner, ceremony, and reception times.

Why: The public schedule and the internal runbook serve different audiences. Guests don't need to know the florist arrives at 9. The vendors do. Two itineraries, two audiences, one hangout. See the wedding planning guide for the multi-itinerary setup.

The 4×4 visibility matrix

This is the full picture of who sees a Hosts only resource depending on who uploaded it. View only and Editable are simpler — if the resource is set to either of those states, every invited attendee sees it (guests and vendors alike).

Read it across a row: everyone on the host team sees all three flavors. Vendors only see their own private uploads plus team-shared host uploads. Guests only see their own private uploads — nothing from vendors, nothing from other guests.

The channel filter and why your own upload always shows on All Guests

What: Brunchie has two channel views — All Guests and Hosts. When you're a vendor or guest and you upload something as Hosts only, it stays visible in your own All Guests channel even though it's private to everyone else.

Why: Without this carve-out, you'd upload a contract, mark it Hosts only, and then lose it — it wouldn't appear in the All Guests channel where you'd naturally look for it, and you'd have to know to switch to the Hosts channel (which is the host team's internal channel). That's a confusing mental model for someone who doesn't use the Hosts channel as their home base.

So What: If you upload a Hosts only doc and then look at the All Guests channel, you'll see your card there. Only you. Nobody else on the hangout sees it in that view. You're not accidentally publishing it — Brunchie is just making sure you can find your own stuff without switching channels.

Hosts and cohosts don't get this carve-out. Their Hosts only uploads live in the Hosts channel, which is exactly where they'd go to find internal planning docs. The carve-out is for people who don't have a mental home in that channel.

First time I saw my own contract appear in All Guests I panicked and thought it had leaked. It hadn't. The "Only you and the hosts" badge was right there telling me I was the only one seeing it. Took me a minute.

Picking your audience in the composer

What: Every attending attendee — guest, vendor, host — picks the audience for any post or upload they create. The composer's audience picker sits right above the submit button: All Guests or Hosts only. Choosing Hosts only as a guest or vendor triggers the uploader-private path.

Why: A previous version of Brunchie only let hosts control visibility after the fact — after someone had already uploaded something. Opening the audience picker to all uploaders means the correct audience is set from the moment the resource lands — no retroactive badge-fixing required.

So What: Before you tap submit on a post or doc, check the audience toggle. If it's a contract, waiver, or anything you want only the host team to see — flip it to Hosts only. The badge confirms the state immediately. You can change it afterward by tapping the badge, but getting it right at creation is cleaner.

Checklists — what Editable vs View only actually means

What: For checklists specifically, Editable and View only are nearly identical. The only difference is whether guests can add new rows.

Why: This contract shipped specifically so hosts could share a registry or task list with guests without worrying that a guest would add a rogue item. View only locks the structure while keeping the interactive part (ticking) fully open. Editable opens the structure so guests can contribute their own rows.

So What: Use View only for a finalized list where you want guests to claim items by ticking — but not add to it. Use Editable for a collaborative list where contribution is the whole point (potluck sign-ups, task delegation, packing lists). Either way, nobody can delete another person's rows.

Itinerary, seating charts, and spreadsheets — same model, same badges

What: The visibility model and the five badges work identically across itineraries, seating charts, spreadsheets, and docs. There's no separate settings screen per resource type.

Why: Before Phase 3 shipped, itineraries used a different toggle (a Hide / View switch per audience) that didn't match the badge language on checklists and spreadsheets. The uniform model means the same badge appears on every resource, and the same three audience states apply everywhere.

So What: Once you understand who-sees-what for one resource type, you understand it for all of them. The seating chart you set to Hosts only behaves exactly like the spreadsheet or itinerary you set to Hosts only. The seating charts guide and expense splitting guide both use this same model for their host-private content.

See also the wedding planning guide for how host-private expense groups, host-only itineraries, and vendor-facing docs all fit together in a single wedding hangout.

Related guides

• Expense Splitting — wedding budgets are host-private; the 30-attendee threshold and what it means
• Seating Charts — seating visibility and how vendors see the floor plan when hosts share it
• Wedding Planning — multi-itinerary, vendor access, and the full wedding workflow
• Importing Data — uploading vendor PDFs and floor plans into the Docs tab