Bring all your family photos into one private place
In short
Famileze's free Mac companion brings your photos home from the major photo and social apps, old drives, folders and exports. Get a copy of your photos, point Famileze at it once, and it files each one by the date it was taken, keeps captions where it can and skips duplicates. On iPhone, you can add many library photos at once.
Where are your photos now?
Most families' pictures are scattered: years in one app, a holiday in another, old backups on a drive in a drawer. Most big services let you ask for a copy of your own photos, usually under a heading like "Download your data". Famileze guides you through getting that copy, then does the heavy lifting.
Bring them in on your Mac
The free Mac companion is where the bigger jobs happen, and a lifetime of photos is one of them.
- Open Famileze on your Mac, click Settings, and beside 📦 Reclaim your data click Open ›.
- Under 📥 Bring your photos home, choose where your photos live now: one of the photo and social services listed, or Photos, videos or a folder on this Mac for an old backup, a hard drive or a memory card.
- For a service, follow the steps on screen. Famileze shows you exactly how to ask that service for a copy, with a link to its official guide. The copy can take minutes or days to arrive by email. Download it on your Mac and leave it as it is; there's no need to unzip it.
- Back in Famileze, click 🔎 Let Famileze find it for me. It looks in your Downloads folder; click Use this ✓ beside your file. Prefer to find it yourself? Click 📁 Choose the file manually…. If a big export came in several parts, put them all in one folder and choose that: Famileze reads them together.
- Click 📥 Bring my photos in (for a folder, Bring them in).
Famileze unpacks the export, works out when each photo and video was taken and files it, counting what it brought in and what it skipped as already saved.
The screen also asks two things of you, and both are good advice: back up first, and don't delete anything from the old service until you've checked your photos are really there.
What Famileze does with them
- Dated by when they were taken, not when they arrived. It reads the date from the photo or video itself, from the export's own records, or from the file's name.
- Kept together in their own folder. Everything from one source lands in a folder named after where it came from (a folder from your own drive becomes Imported Photos). It stays off your timeline and out of your newsletter, and you can rename it or move any photo later.
- Sorted by year and month. Once a folder holds 150 or more items across more than one month, it opens on tiles by year, then by month.
- Captions kept where it can. If the export includes a caption or description, it becomes the photo's caption. If a service asks you to choose a format, the on-screen steps say which to pick; choose the other and Famileze says so, and importing the right one later fills the captions in.
- No duplicates. A file already in your archive is skipped, so running the same export twice, or two exports that overlap, never copies a photo twice.
- Room checked first. A zipped export needs about twice its size free while it works. If there isn't room, Famileze says so and copies nothing. The export can sit on an external drive; keep it plugged in.
Where do the imported photos live?
On your Mac, in the archive it keeps as ordinary files you own. Importing uploads nothing: your export is read straight off your computer into your archive, never sent to us. Imports don't appear on your phones, they use none of your family's cloud storage, and 💾 Back up everything copies them too.
Depending on your family's plan, Famileze may also offer ☁️ Send to your family after an import. That sends the photos to your family's private cloud, encrypted on your Mac before they leave, so they appear on your phones too.
Adding photos from your iPhone
No Mac? You can still bring in photos already on your phone.
- Tap ☰ and choose Folders, then open a folder (or tap ＋ New folder first).
- Under ＋ Add to this folder, tap 🖼 Library and pick as many photos as you like.
- Type one caption for the whole batch, or leave it blank, and tap Add.
Each photo is dated by when it was taken, then encrypted on your phone and backed up to your family's private cloud. A bar shows progress, with ⏸ Pause, ⏹ Stop and ↩︎ Undo. To add a video from your camera roll, use 🎞 Choose a video on the capture screen.
What it doesn't do
- It can't ask other services for your photos on your behalf. Requesting your copy is a step only you can take, and some services take days to send it.
- It can only bring in what the export holds. When an export's own list names items that aren't in the download, Famileze tells you how many. Ask that service for a fresh copy and import it; nothing already brought in is doubled.
- It doesn't remove location details already inside a photo file. Famileze never reads or shows where a photo was taken, but an imported photo keeps whatever its file held.
- Exports from other services come in on the Mac. On iPhone, you add photos from your own library.
Questions parents ask
- Do I need a Mac to use Famileze?
No. Famileze is an iPhone app; the free Mac companion is optional. It's where years of photos from other services and old drives come in, and your phone can add photos from its own library any time.
- Will importing use up our cloud storage?
Not by itself. Imports land on your Mac and upload nothing. Only what you choose to send to your family reaches your phones and uses your family's cloud storage.
- Can I delete my photos from the other service afterwards?
Only once you've checked. Open the new folder, make sure everything arrived, and keep a backup. Famileze only reads your export; it never deletes anything from it or from the other service.
- Are imported photos encrypted?
On your Mac they're ordinary files you own, like everything else on your computer. Anything sent to your family's cloud, including every photo added on iPhone, is encrypted on the device before it leaves, so we can't read it.
Related
- A private family photo app that isn't social media
- What happens to our photos if I lose my phone?
- Co-parenting with one shared family archive
- Is my family photo app actually private?
Famileze is coming to iPhone, with a free Mac companion. Join the waitlist.