How do I access my PhotoStructure Library on other computers?

PhotoStructure’s UI is web-based, and designed to work well with both mobile and desktop browsers.

PhotoStructure’s web service defaults to only being accessible to the computer running PhotoStructure. This prevents other computers on your local area network, or “LAN,” from viewing your library.

Note that the following instructions are intended for advanced users.

Configure #

If you trust all computers on your LAN, you can set the exposeNetworkWithoutAuth library setting to true.

If you’re using PhotoStructure for Docker, this setting is enabled by default.

For other editions of PhotoStructure, there are several ways to enable this setting: either

  • Edit the library’s settings.toml, or

  • If you’re on Windows, follow these instructions to add a new PS_EXPOSE_NETWORK_WITHOUT_AUTH variable whose value is “1”, or

  • If you’re on macOS, open a terminal and run launchctl setenv PS_EXPOSE_NETWORK_WITHOUT_AUTH 1. See this for more details.

  • If you’re using PhotoStructure for Servers, give the --expose argument when you start photostructure.

Access your PhotoStructure library #

If you’re using macOS to run PhotoStructure, you can open the Sharing control panel on the mac that is running PhotoStructure, and then edit the hostname to be easy to type (something like “mac”), you should then be able access your library on other apple devices in your LAN by using http://mac.local:1787 (replace “mac” with whatever you named your computer).

On other platforms, your library will be available at http://<ip address of the computer running PhotoStructure>:1787. You may want to configure your router to give the computer that runs PhotoStructure a “static IP address.” Consult your router’s manual for instructions.

Reverse proxies #

PhotoStructure works well with reverse proxies that also provide http basic auth. Caddy, Nginx Proxy Manager, and Traefik have all been used by beta users to expose their library to their friends and families with simple username/password access.

Example Caddy configuration #

Until this feature is implemented, I’m currently sharing my family’s photos via Caddy, using this Caddyfile (which lives in /etc/caddy/Caddyfile on Ubuntu):

The following Caddyfile manages https certificates and enforces basic HTTP authentication.

Replace:

  • EMAIL with your full email address, like [email protected]
  • DOMAIN_NAME with your external domain name, like photos.example.com
  • 127.0.0.1:1787 with the LAN IP address of the machine running PhotoStructure. If it’s the same host, 127.0.0.1 works.
  • USER with the username you want to access your library with, and
  • HASH with the result of running caddy hash-password
{
  email EMAIL
}

#
# To use your own domain name (with automatic HTTPS), first make
# sure your domain's A/AAAA DNS records are properly pointed to
# this machine's public IP, then replace the line below with your
# domain name.

DOMAIN_NAME

reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:1787

# See https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/basicauth

basicauth * {
  USER HASH
}

The Caddy docs are great, by the way: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile

In the future #

Future versions of PhotoStructure will add sharing and authorization mechanisms, at which point these instructions will no longer be relevant, and the exposeNetworkWithoutAuth setting will be deleted.

Photo of Matthew

Hi! I’m Matthew, the author of PhotoStructure. I’m a dad, amateur photographer, and author of open source, adtech, fintech, and edtech software since the turn of the millennium. He/him. I am building a self-hosted, safe, and fast new home for all your photos and videos.
Your memories deserve PhotoStructure. Try it out for free!