Early access
Your photos, back in order.
Twenty years of pictures spread across old phones, drives and laptops — pulled into one library, sorted by the day each photo was really taken, with the duplicates found for you.
It runs on a machine in your home. You browse it from any screen in the house. It backs itself up to your own Google Drive, encrypted, every night.
Illustration of the interface — not a real library.
What it does
Six things that turn a pile of files
back into a photo album
It knows when each photo was taken
The date comes from inside the photo, not from the file. Copying a folder wrecks file dates; this reads what the camera recorded, so your 2009 holiday lands in 2009.
It finds the duplicates
The same picture saved nine times under nine names is recognised as one photo. You are shown the groups first — nothing is ever deleted on your behalf.
You browse it from any screen in the house
Open it in a browser on your phone, tablet or laptop — nothing to install. Years, months, trips, a map, favourites, albums, slideshows.
New photos file themselves
Drop a card dump or a phone sync into one folder. Overnight it is read, dated, checked for duplicates and filed. That is the whole routine.
It backs itself up, encrypted, every night
Straight into your own Google Drive, scrambled before it leaves your machine — so a fire or a stolen laptop can't take your photos, and nobody can read the copy. The key stays with you.
Your originals are never touched
Your photos stay in ordinary folders you can open with anything. Remove this software tomorrow and every file is exactly where it was.
What it is
- Software you run on your own machine.
- A private photo library for your household.
- An automatic, encrypted offsite backup.
What it is not
- Not a hosted service — no account with me.
- Not a phone app, and not a photo editor.
- Not finished, and not for sale yet.
How it works
Set it up once
Point it at everything you've got
Drives, folders, a NAS, an export from a cloud service. It copies them in and checks every file arrived intact.
It sorts and de-duplicates
Real capture dates, duplicates grouped, anything undateable flagged for you rather than guessed at.
You open it in a browser
From any device on your home network. Add new photos by dropping them in one folder.
It looks after itself overnight
Imports what's new, backs up what's new — encrypted, to your own Drive. Nothing is ever deleted from the backup.
The Google Drive connection
What PhotoBackup can reach
The backup component is called PhotoBackup. It asks Google for the
drive.file permission and nothing else — that lets it touch only the
backup files it creates itself. It cannot read, change or delete anything else in
your Drive, and that limit is enforced by Google.
Your data is encrypted before it leaves your machine, with a key held on your machine. Nothing reaches me. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is touched and what is stored.
Being straight with you
Where this stands Early access
This is early-access software. It is not finished, and you cannot buy it today. There are no other installations yet and no track record to point at.
No pricing, no sign-up, no checkout — there is nothing to sell yet. If you want to try it on your own hardware, email me and it can be arranged as a limited trial. Expect rough edges, and keep your existing backups while you do.
Supported platforms, installation, hardware requirements, file formats and current version: TO FILL IN
Left blank rather than guessed at.
Who is behind this
One person, one library
Devaya Technologies is Devendra Chouhan. Photo Server was written for a real problem: about fifty thousand photos and videos collected over twenty years, scattered across a NAS, several phones and a stack of drives, with most of the dates destroyed by years of copying.
No agency, no team, no funnel.
Get in touch
For a trial on your own hardware, or any question about what it does. Email is the only channel, and it is read by the one person here.
Replies take as long as they take. There is no support desk.