Sharing and surprise protection
How claiming a gift works, and why the person whose list it is never sees it.
This is the part of the site everything else is arranged around.
Sharing is always deliberate
A list is private until you share it, and you share it with a circle rather than with the world. The same list can go to one circle and not another.
Three places do the same thing, so you can share from wherever you already are:
- the Sharing Center — everything you have and everywhere it's shared, with a picker on each one
- the list itself
- the circle's page
Unsharing is just as available: each circle tag carries a ✕. People in that circle lose access straight away.
Claiming a gift
Open a list someone shared with you and each gift has a way to say you'll take care of it. The circle then sees it's covered, so two people don't buy the same thing.
For a gift someone wants several of, you say how many you're taking, and the list shows You're giving 1 of 3 alongside what the circle has covered altogether. You can't claim more than were asked for — if somebody asks for two, there's usually a reason, and the site won't let the circle turn up with five.
Changed your mind? Release the reservation and it's available again.
What the list's owner sees
Nothing. This is worth being precise about, because it's the promise the site is built on:
- No reservation badges, no counts, no "someone has claimed this".
- No notification when something is claimed or released.
- The page they open is the same page they saw before anyone claimed anything.
It isn't a preference that could be switched off by accident. The view that shows reservations is only ever built for people who aren't the owner, and the owner's own list is served from a different path entirely. Even if they went looking for the shared view of their own list, there's nothing there.
The one thing to know
Because the owner can't see reservations, they also can't see mistakes. If you claim something and then quietly stop planning to buy it, nobody finds out until the day. Release it instead — that's what it's for.
Logging what you claim
If you'd like, the site can write anything you reserve straight into your gift log, so your shopping list builds itself. It's off unless you turn it on, in Profile → Gift log.
Still stuck, or spotted something wrong? Get in touch — a real person reads it.