Pinterest group boards: invites, permissions and what collaborators can undo
Published · Lucas Viegas · 6 min read
A group board is an ordinary board with collaborators. The owner invites people, sets one permission level for everyone, and can remove anyone. At the widest setting collaborators delete Pins and sections, and deleted Pins cannot be recovered.
Below: how invites actually go out, the four settings behind Collaborators can, what a board owner can take back and what nobody can, how leaving differs from being removed, and the questions Pinterest’s help centre leaves open. Every label is Pinterest’s own, read on 7 September 2026.
What is a Pinterest group board?
In Pinterest’s own summary of board types: group boards are boards with collaborators, everyone invited can add and organize Pins, and group boards can be public or private. There is no separate object and no separate creation flow. You make one by inviting friends to a board you already own, which is why the help article opens by telling you to do exactly that.
Two consequences follow from that. Privacy is one switch for the whole board, so a public group board makes every collaborator’s saves as public as the owner’s, and a private one is visible to the owner plus everyone invited. And ownership does not spread: Pinterest says the owner of a group board manages the board’s settings, and that if you own it you delete it just as you would any other board. The secret versus public boards post covers that switch in full.
One nicety worth knowing before a board fills up: you can mark favourite Pins on a group board with a star, then filter the board to see all Pins, favourites, or the Pins added by a particular collaborator. That filter is the only documented way to see who added what.
How do you invite collaborators to a board?
Everything hangs off one control, the plus circle icon below the board name. Pinterest also warns on this article that some features may only be available on iOS at this time, so expect small differences between the web and the apps.
- 1Open your profile, then open the board you want to share. There is no separate button: a group board is one of your existing boards with people invited to it.
- 2Click the plus circle icon below the board name.
- 3Search by first and last name, username or email address and click Invite next to each person, or click Copy link and send it yourself. Pinterest says your friends will get an email or notification about the invite.
- 4Open the permission panel: click the plus circle icon again, then the directional chevron right icon next to Collaborators can.
- 5Choose a level, then click Done. The four options are in the table below, and the choice applies to the whole board rather than to one person.
- 6To remove someone later, click the profile pictures at the top of the page below the board name, click Remove next to them and confirm. In the apps, tap the x icon next to the collaborator and confirm.
What can collaborators actually do?
Four settings, listed here with Pinterest’s wording for what each one allows. The first two are the levels of access proper; the other two are extra permissions layered on top.
| Setting | What Pinterest says it allows | Can the owner take it back? |
|---|---|---|
| Do (almost) everything | Add, move and delete Pins and sections, as well as comment and react | The owner can switch the level or remove the person, but a Pin they deleted is gone |
| Save and comment | Save and organize Pins, comment and react | The owner can switch the level or remove the person at any time |
| Invite other people | Invite others to your group board | Turning it off stops new invites; anyone already in stays until removed |
| Board requests | People can request to join the board. The apps label the same control People can request to join this board | Turn it off in the same panel |
| Everything else | Not delegated. Pinterest says the owner of a group board manages the board’s settings | Only the owner can delete the board, and only the owner can restore it |
Notice what is missing. There is no read-only level, no per-person setting and no approval queue for saves. The narrower of the two, Save and comment, still lets a collaborator organize Pins, and the wider one hands out deletion of Pins and sections to everybody at once.
What can be undone, and what is permanent?
Permissions are reversible: change the level, or remove the collaborator. The content is a different story. Deleted Pins cannot be recovered, in Pinterest’s own words on the missing Pins page, so a collaborator on Do (almost) everything who clears out a section has done something no setting will reverse.
The board itself gets a grace period. Deleting a board deletes all the Pins on it, and you then have seven days to restore it from the Recently deleted section, which Pinterest says works on desktop or Android only. Archiving is the softer move: an archived board sits at the bottom of your profile, does not show up in your public profile, cannot take new Pins, and can be unarchived at any time. Note that archiving does not free room against the account board limit, only deleting does, and that recommendations are automatically turned off for archived and secret boards.
Leaving is reversible too, in the social sense. Pinterest lists having left a group board accidentally or been removed by the board creator among the reasons a group board goes missing, and its advice is to ask the owner to invite you back, or to request to join the board.
How do you leave a group board, or remove someone from one?
Leaving lives in the same place as inviting. Open the board, click the group of profile pictures below the board name, click Leave next to your name and click Leave again to confirm. On iPhone the flow reaches the same panel through the Boards tab and ends on Leave board; on Android it is Leave, then Leave.
You can only leave a board you were invited to. Owners have no leave button at all: Pinterest says that if you own the group board, you delete it just as you would any other board, which takes its Pins with it. Removing a collaborator is the owner’s side of the same panel, and it is the last step of the walkthrough above.
What does the help centre not say about group boards?
Four things, all of which people ask about constantly. Whether the Pins you added stay behind when you leave or are removed: undocumented on the leaving page and everywhere else. Whether a collaborator can change the board’s privacy, name or cover: the permission panel never mentions them, and the only statement is that the owner manages the board’s settings. Whether a board invite expires: the sole expiring invite Pinterest documents is the private profile link, good for three days or five people, and that is a profile feature. And what the Group board updates notification categories actually cover, for email and push alike: they are listed as settings, never explained.
Where a page below is silent, this post says so rather than filling the gap.
Can a group board be a wallpaper?
Only if it is public, and that is worth deciding on purpose rather than by accident. VisionWall is a macOS menu-bar app that turns any public Pinterest board into a live, rotating desktop wallpaper: you give it the board’s URL, it needs no Pinterest account, new pins appear automatically, and the masonry composition is reshuffled on each refresh, every 30 minutes by default and anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours. A shared moodboard is a good fit, because the whole team keeps adding to it. The visibility setting decides whether it works at all: a private group board is unreadable to any app that is not signed in as you, and making a Pinterest board public is the step by step for the other direction. Worth reading first: who can see what you save and, if you are choosing what to follow rather than what to share, following a board versus a profile. $9.99 once, on macOS 13.3 (Ventura) or later.
Questions people ask about Pinterest group boards
Can a collaborator make a group board private?
Pinterest does not say. The help centre states that the owner of a group board manages the board’s settings, and the permission panel only ever offers four choices: Do (almost) everything, Save and comment, Invite other people and Board requests. None of them mentions privacy, and no page grants or denies it to collaborators explicitly.
What happens to my Pins when I leave a group board?
Undocumented, and worth knowing before you go. The Leave a group board article covers only the clicks. It never says whether the Pins you added stay on the board, leave with you, or change ownership, and neither does any other help page. If it matters, save copies to a board of your own first.
Can the owner remove me from a group board?
Yes. The owner opens the board, clicks the profile pictures below the board name and clicks Remove, or taps the x icon in the apps, then confirms. Pinterest also lists being removed by the board creator as one reason a group board disappears from your account.
Can I get a deleted group board back?
For seven days, if you are the owner. Deleting a board deletes every Pin on it, and Pinterest gives you seven days to restore it from the Recently deleted section, on desktop or Android only. Individual deleted Pins cannot be recovered at all.
Is a group board public?
It depends on the board, not on the collaborators. Pinterest describes group boards as boards with collaborators, and says group boards can be public or private. Privacy is one setting for the whole board, so on a public group board every collaborator’s saves are as public as the owner’s.
Do I have to accept an invite to join?
Pinterest says your friends will get an email or notification about your invite, and that invitations can also go out as a copied link. What it does not document is whether a board invite expires. The only expiring invite it describes is the private profile link, which lasts three days or five people, and that is a profile feature rather than a board one.
Which Pinterest pages were checked for this post?
All read on 7 September 2026.