Your photos stay home.

Read-only scanning

Point PhotoBlad at the folders your photos already live in. It reads them and never moves, renames, re-encodes or deletes a file.

JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and DNG

The date, camera, lens, exposure and GPS position are read from each photo’s EXIF data — HEIC, Apple ProRAW and DNG (.dng, marked with a RAW badge) included.

Quick rescans

Files that haven’t changed are skipped without being read again. A renamed or moved photo — even one both moved and edited in another app — keeps its place and its ID, and identical copies are listed once.

Thumbnails, made once

Small WebP thumbnails are made while indexing and kept in PhotoBlad’s data folder. Large previews are made the first time a photo is opened.

The Darkroom gallery

A justified photo grid that only draws the rows on screen, and a lightbox you can step through with the arrow keys. It fits phone screens too.

Photo details

When a photo was taken, with which camera and lens, its exposure, size and file. Where it was taken shows as coordinates under the nearest town, with no call to a map service.

Scans from the browser

Start a scan from the web app and follow its progress live. The gallery reloads when the scan finishes.

Two services, one command

Aspire starts the Server (web app and API) and the Indexer (scanning) together, with a dashboard for logs and health.

Accounts for your household

An owner and family members share one library: the folders the owner scans. The owner invites members with single-use links.

Passwords and passkeys

Sign in with a username and a password or a passkey. There’s no email address to give, and PhotoBlad never sends email.

A setup code on first run

The first start prints a one-time setup code in the Server log. Enter it at /setup to create the owner account, so nobody else can claim a new install.

Backups from the browser

Anyone signed in can back up photos and videos with the Upload button or the drop zone. Each file’s hash is checked first, so nothing you’ve backed up is sent twice.

Written once, in plain folders

Backups are kept byte for byte, under their own names, in plain folders that open without PhotoBlad, ~/PhotoBlad/Uploads to begin with. PhotoBlad never changes or overwrites one.

Sharing, when you choose

Your backups are private, even from the owner, until you share them in Settings → Sharing. The gallery shows Everything, the Family library or My backups.

A session for every device

Each browser and phone signed in has a session of its own. Settings → Devices lists them and signs any one out at once, phones included.

Videos

MP4, M4V, MOV, 3GP, WebM, MKV and AVI, with posters, playback in the browser and seeking. FFmpeg is optional: without it, videos are still backed up and listed.

Playback copies

A video that not every browser can play gets an H.264 copy for playing, made in the background. The copy is disposable, and the original is never changed.

Live Photos and Motion Photos

An iPhone Live Photo or an Android Motion Photo is one tile with a LIVE badge. Hover to preview on the web, or open it and press and hold to play the motion with sound and haptics; download the photo or its motion clip.

Download original

Every photo and video you can see downloads exactly as it was stored, byte for byte.

Non-destructive editing

Crop, rotate, straighten, four-corner perspective correction, light, colour and filters, previewed live as you drag. The edits are stored beside the photo and the edited look is made from the original, which is never modified.

Details you can correct

Fix a date or a place, add a caption and tags, and mark favourites, which stay private to you. The camera’s own values are kept, and nothing is written into the file.

Video trims

Keep just the part of a video you want. Download it as a quick lossless copy, or as an exact, frame-accurate one.

Versions beside the original

Keep a photo you edited in another app, such as Lightroom, next to the original, and compare the two. Deleting a version never touches the original.

Download edited

Download the edited photo at full size, upright and with its date and place, or the original exactly as it was stored.

Storage across drives

Keep backups, imported photos and versions in folders on as many drives as you like, filed by month and person. The owner can dedicate a drive to one person; everything else goes to the first shared location with room. A drive that isn’t plugged in is offline, nothing is written there, and an on-demand Refresh or folder check in Settings → Storage verifies right away whether a drive is back online.

Verified moves

When someone is given a drive, a drive comes back after being offline, or a location is drained or goes over its cap, files move by a copy that’s checked against its hash before the old one is removed. Every check reads the bytes from the drive itself, past the computer’s own cache, so a network share that only seemed to hold a whole copy is caught, and a new copy that turns out broken sends the library back to the old file. One at a time, paused during a scan or an import, and the bytes never change.

Import, and Google Takeout

Copy a folder of photos and videos — or a Google Photos Takeout with its JSON dates, places and captions — into PhotoBlad’s storage, for the family or for one person, and follow its progress. What’s already stored is skipped by its content, and the source folder is left untouched.

Rebuilt from your folders

After a lost database, storage rebuild reads every storage location, both folder layouts and each location’s manifest, and records the backups, versions, sealed files and their owners again. It never changes a file.

Docker and Podman Compose

The Server and the Indexer run as two containers with one Compose command. FFmpeg is installed on a click, the containers run without privileges on a read-only root file system and publish nothing of their own, and you mount your photo folders read-only, so the operating system itself keeps them untouched.

Caddy, with automatic certificates

Reach PhotoBlad at your own domain over HTTPS, with certificates that Caddy gets from Let’s Encrypt and renews itself, HTTP/3, and uploads and videos that stream straight through. On a Mac, Settings → Public address installs Caddy on a click, checks your DNS and router port forwarding, supports custom public HTTPS ports and local service port selection, and turns HTTPS on or off from the browser.

Tailscale, private to your devices

Reach PhotoBlad at an address such as https://photoblad.<your-tailnet>.ts.net, which only the devices on your own tailnet can open, with certificates Tailscale provides and renews. Add it in Settings → Public address (or with photoblad address add), and nothing is exposed to the internet.

Health checks and backups from the command line

doctor checks the installation: FFmpeg, photo decoding including HEIC, the data folder, every storage location, the database copies and the proxy settings. db backup copies the database safely while PhotoBlad runs.

FFmpeg on a click

The owner can have PhotoBlad download FFmpeg, at first-run setup or in Settings → Updates: an approved build for this computer, checked against its SHA-256 and tried before it’s used. Installing it from a file, or yourself, works too.

Signed updates, and one-click Mac & Windows updates

If the owner agrees at setup, PhotoBlad reads the project’s signed update feed once a day and says when a new version is out. On a Mac or Windows PC installed from the package, Settings → Updates (or photoblad update) verifies the download against the signed feed and restarts into the new version on your click.

A copy of the database every night

The database, PhotoBlad’s settings and the key that keeps browsers signed in, in one zip in a storage location, checked before it counts. A week of nightly copies is kept, and a copy from each of the four weeks before. db restore puts one back.

Settings → Health

One page for the owner: what needs them first, then the database copies, everyone’s phones and when each last backed up, storage, last night’s maintenance and recent warnings and errors. A full check of the installation runs on a click.

Nightly maintenance

After the copy, PhotoBlad checks and tidies its database, cleans up its caches and logs, and reads every original again once a month to catch a failing disk. It warns when a drive will fill within 30 days, and never changes a photo.

HEIC in a helper

HEIC photos are decoded by a small program of their own, started for each photo, so a damaged file fails alone and PhotoBlad carries on. Any file that crashed PhotoBlad twice while being read isn’t opened again.

Search, with fuzzy and compound queries

Search file names, captions, tags, cameras, people, places and dates with typo tolerance and compound queries (such as "Maya Tokyo" or a person plus an AI scene), newest first. Live suggestions show matching people (with face thumbnails), places, tags and cameras as you type. / or ⌘K opens it.

Place names, kept at home

Each photo’s location is headed by the nearest town or city within 50 km, from GeoNames’ list of places of 1,000 people or more, which PhotoBlad keeps on your server (CC BY 4.0). No other service is asked.

A jump bar through the years

A bar at the right edge with the years along it. Drag to a month, or click a year, and the gallery goes there, even to months it hasn’t loaded yet. Search results get one too.

Select many at once

Select photos one by one, Shift-click a range, or select them all. Then favourite, tag, hide, download or move them to the trash, shift their dates or set their location, in one go.

Download several

A zip of up to 5,000 originals, byte for byte, made while it downloads and never kept on the server. A Live Photo’s motion comes with its photo.

Hide, and a trash

Hide a photo from everyone else, or move it to the trash, where it waits 30 days unless the owner sets another period. Restoring it brings back its edits, tags and versions. Only PhotoBlad’s own copies are ever deleted: a photo in a folder you scan can only be hidden.

Search by what’s in a photo

Find “beach at sunset” without a caption that says so, and photos like one you’re looking at. A model PhotoBlad runs itself, on your own server, installed only when the owner chooses.

Faces, active training and profile avatars

The family’s people, named by the owner, and each person’s private people for their own backups, with an active-learning queue to confirm uncertain face matches on the web and phone. Link your own face (This is me), choose your profile avatar from your recognized face crops or any photo, or hide your face from everyone.

Descriptions, questions and removing an object

A description of each photo, marked as written by AI and kept apart from your captions; questions you can ask about a photo; and removing an object, saved as a new version beside the original. Descriptions and questions use Ollama, on a computer you control.

PhotoBlad on a Mac and Windows

Native server packages with the Server, the Indexer and the photoblad CLI inside — signed and notarized on macOS, and packaged for Windows (x64 and ARM64) with Task Scheduler auto-start. One command installs it into your account, starts it at login and restarts it if it stops. No developer tools, no Docker.

A menu-bar or system-tray icon

Shows whether PhotoBlad is running and what needs the owner, with a notification for each new thing, if you want one. Open PhotoBlad, copy its address, restart or stop it from the menu. Hiding the icon never stops PhotoBlad.

Where PhotoBlad keeps things

Settings → Storage lists every disk PhotoBlad writes to, with its free space and what it keeps there: backups, caches, add-ons, the database, the copies and the library folders. The caches and the add-ons can each move to a drive of their own; on a Mac, a command moves the database.

Move backups to another drive

A guided move of everything on one drive to another, checked first against the room the new drive has. The old drive is retired once it’s empty. Files move by the same checked copy as before.

How backups are filed

One folder per person, then year and month, or one folder per month. The owner chooses, and can re-file what’s already there, a few files at a time, with Pause and Resume. Nothing is lost if you stop halfway.

Library folders, looked after

Settings → Library lists each scanned folder with its state. If a folder moves, Folder moved… finds the photos in the new place, checks some of them by their contents and keeps their edits, tags and favourites. Remove from library forgets a folder without touching it.

Moments

Drag the jump bar, or rest on a month, and its moments appear beside it: each with its days, the place most of its photos were taken, the people named in them, the tags and a few covers. Choose one to see just those photos. On the phone, the same column stands beside the date scrubber.

Titles for moments

Off until the owner turns it on, and only once descriptions are on. An AI on a computer you control writes a short title from the descriptions of the photos, their places and dates. No picture, name, caption or tag is sent, and nothing of a backup unless everyone who backed it up allows it.

Light mode

The web app follows your computer’s light or dark setting, or you choose Light, Dark or System in the account menu. The choice stays in that browser.

Editing on the phone

Rotate, flip, straighten, crop with four-corner perspective handles, Fix photo, light and colour, filters, Auto, removing an object and trimming a video, with the same Undo, Compare and Revert as the web app. The edits are stored beside the photo, so the web app shows them too.

Edits from Apple Photos

An iPhone can also back up the edited picture Apple Photos keeps, as a version beside the original. It’s a setting in the app, off until you turn it on. The original is always sent first and is never replaced.

Fix photo, and bulk Fix photos

One click straightens and crops a photographed print from its outline (including four-corner perspective warp when keystoned), turns it upright and balances its colour inside the crop — or select many photos at once and review before-and-after fixes in bulk before saving.

Duplicates, merged without deleting

When the same photo arrives twice (an iPhone original and an imported copy), certain matches merge the second copy as a version beside the first without deleting a file. Possible matches wait in /duplicates on the web and on the phone for you to choose which copy to keep.

Similar photo stacks

Burst frames and near-duplicate shots group into stacks in /stacks on the web and on the phone, with a suggested best shot from sharpness, resolution, favourites, edits and open eyes. A burst needs the time the camera recorded, never just the file’s date, and a pair waiting in the duplicates review isn’t offered again here. Stacked groups collapse to one tile with a count in the gallery.

Albums and shared albums

Make albums for yourself, share them with chosen family members (who can add their own photos when you allow it), or share an album with a connected PhotoBlad server — and browse Shared with me albums (including Live Photo motion) on both the web and the phone, saving any photo to your own library.

Connections: offsite backup to another PhotoBlad

Pair with a relative’s or friend’s PhotoBlad (over Tailscale today; from the next release also at its public https name, or on your home network once the owner allows it, with its certificate checked by the pairing): one owner makes an invite code, the other types it in, and both compare the same six words before anything is connected. Then send your backups (and Live Photo motion clips) to space they set aside for you, and, once they allow it, restore from them if your own drive is lost.

Sealed offsite backups

Seal what you send to a connection with a key only your server holds, written down as a 24-word recovery phrase, so the host stores only opaque sealed files and can’t see your photos, names, dates, places or edits: only each file’s size and when it arrived.

Add from Google Photos

Connect your Google account and pick photos and videos straight from Google Photos into your library from the web or the phone, streaming originals into storage and merging duplicates automatically.

On this day memories and fullscreen slideshow

Revisit photos taken on today’s date in past years at the top of the gallery, and play a fullscreen slideshow (3s, 5s or 10s with loop) in the viewer or any album on the web and the phone.

Phone app lock and verified space cleanup

Lock the phone app with Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode (with an instant background privacy cover), and free up camera-roll space only after your server verifies each original and Live Photo is safely on disk.

Easy on the phone’s battery and data

The phone apps scroll at up to 120 Hz only while your finger is moving the photos, and slower otherwise. Behind other apps they stop their polls and timers and let go of memory, while backup carries on. On mobile data or in Low Power Mode they load fewer pictures ahead and fetch a Live Photo’s motion only when you play it. Backup hashes each file as it copies it instead of reading it twice, waits while the phone is hot, and on Android looks for new photos less often while it finds none. The server compresses its large lists for them.