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 and HEIC

The date, camera, lens, exposure and GPS position are read from each photo’s EXIF data, HEIC included.

Quick rescans

Files that haven’t changed are skipped without being read again. A renamed or moved photo keeps its place, 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. GPS shows as coordinates, 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

A Live Photo is one tile with a LIVE badge. Open it and press to play the motion; 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, 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, and nothing is written there.

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. One at a time, paused during a scan or an import, and the bytes never change.

Import

Copy a folder of photos and videos on the server 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 folder is left exactly as it was.

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 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 in the image, 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. Built and tested with Podman; Docker is still to try.

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. A home-network variant makes its own certificates. Tested for real with Caddy’s own certificate authority; a certificate from Let’s Encrypt is still to try.

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. Nothing is exposed to the internet. Checked against Tailscale’s documentation and source, but not yet run on a real tailnet.

Health checks and backups from the command line

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