How do I leave a circle?

Where to leave

1. Open your circle, choose Circle options, then Settings.
2. At the bottom of the page, choose Leave this circle.
3. Read the confirmation, choose who takes over if asked, then confirm that you want to leave.

The members page is for managing people, so you can't leave from there.

You can also leave a paused circle.

If your own spot is paused, choose Circle settings on the circle's card on your home page, or, while the circle is open, on the circle's page. If you stay, your spot comes back on its own when the circle has Premium again; if you leave, you'd need a new invitation to rejoin.

Anyone can leave

Nobody is ever stuck in a circle. Whether you joined last week or you help look after it as a co-admin, you can leave at any time without asking anyone. The one exception is the last person in a circle: there's no one left to hand it to, so you pause it or delete it instead (see below).

Everyone else carries on as before, and everything you shared while you were there stays for them to look through.

What happens to your photos

• Your access to its sharing albums ends. Leaving also ends the access to the circle's sharing albums you had as a member. A sharing album invitation you accepted separately still applies. Comments, posts, reactions, and tags you already shared stay.
• What you shared stays in the circle. Photos, notes, voice messages, and comments you added stay there.
• Sharing albums you made pass to whoever looks after the circle. Any sharing albums you created inside the circle keep working, with the same photos, the same link, and the same people invited, looked after by the person who runs the circle now.
• Your number stops sending there. Once you leave, texting or emailing the circle no longer adds anything to it.

If you set the circle up, choose someone to take over

The person who set up a circle looks after it for everyone, so there's one extra step before you go: choose someone else in the circle to take over. Anyone in it can — they don't need to be a co-admin first.

1. Choose the person you'd like to hand the circle to.
2. Confirm that you're leaving.
3. They take over straight away, and you leave at the same moment.

They don't need to accept or set anything up first.

We tell them straight away that the circle is theirs to look after now, and that the payment for it hasn't moved to them.

For the steps, see Hand your circle to someone else.

If you were paying for the circle

Handing the circle to someone else does not move the payment. If you pay for an active subscription and leave, we cancel it at the end of your current paid period. Members keep access to the paid features until then. We let you and the circle's owner know when it ends, so another member can choose to add Premium. Nothing is deleted.

If the Premium you pay for is paused, or a payment is overdue, it ends as soon as you leave. An unfinished checkout is cancelled too.

If you're the only one left

If you're the only person left in a circle, you can't leave it. Instead, you choose what happens to it:

• Pause this circle and stay. Everything stays on your home page, marked Paused, for you to look through and download, and you can reopen it any time.
• Delete this circle. Everything in it is erased for good, so download a copy first if you want one.

Changed your mind?

We can't undo leaving for you, but coming back is easy: whoever looks after the circle can invite you again, and you'll pick up where you left off.

Need help?

If anything doesn't look the way you expect, reach out using the Still stuck? Get in touch link at the bottom of the Help panel and we'll take care of it.