Remote Access of your PhotoStructure Library

PhotoStructure’s UI is designed to work on 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.

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.

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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.
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