Grid, list and full views in the media gallery

Why does the media gallery open in list view on one project and grid on another?

It does not change by project. The view is remembered per browser rather than per project, so whatever you last chose is what every project opens in on that browser. A gallery that opens in list view on your laptop and grid view on your phone is the same setting stored in two different places.

The choice is kept in the browser, not on your account. Sign in somewhere else, or clear your browsing data, and it goes back to Grid.

What each view is for

The toggle sits beside the Project Media heading and offers three:

  1. Grid. Tiles, several to a row. The compact overview.
  2. List. One item to a row, with its title, description, file size and date beside it.
  3. Full-width. One item to a row at full width, for reading the gallery the way a visitor will.

Reordering works differently in each

This is the part worth knowing, because a view that will not let you move anything reads as a broken page:

Wherever you do it, the new order saves on its own about half a second later. Reordering images in a project covers what that save does and does not change on your public page.

Grid is not offered on a narrow screen

On a phone the Grid option is hidden, and a browser already set to Grid is moved to List when the screen is narrow. So a gallery that reads as Grid on your laptop will read as List on your phone without you having touched anything.

Captions are a separate setting

The public project page has its own view toggle, and captions are printed under images in one of its views but not the other. That is not this setting, and switching it here changes nothing there: see Where the image captions went.