PhotoStructure User Guide

Howdy, and welcome to PhotoStructure!

Here’s a “guided path” through some of PhotoStructure’s documentation.

Please don’t feel like you have to read through all of this!

We’ve tried hard to make PhotoStructure “just work” right out of the box, and for most of our users, they don’t have to read much (or any!) of our documentation and they get along just swimmingly.

If you’re curious about how anything works, or want to configure something to your needs, know that you probably can, and that these pages were made for you.

Introduction: 🤔 Why PhotoStructure? #

• Why I’m building PhotoStructure

• Why you may want to use PhotoStructure

Chapter 1: 👶 PhotoStructure Basics #

• What’s a PhotoStructure Library?

• PhotoStructure’s automatic library organization

Chapter 2: 🧭 Where do I put PhotoStructure? #

PhotoStructure is “self-hosted,” which means it only runs on your computer.

It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux desktops, as well as servers.

• What do I need to run PhotoStructure?

• How much free disk space do I need?

• How are the desktop & server editions of PhotoStructure different?

Chapter 3: ⚙️ Setup and installation #

• Install PhotoStructure for Desktops

• Install PhotoStructure for Servers

Chapter 4: 🚀 Post-installation articles #

• Post-installation #protips

• How do I prevent a directory from being imported into my library?

• Why didn’t my file get imported into my Library?

• How do I backup my photos on my phone to my server?

• How do I start and stop PhotoStructure?

• How to search your PhotoStructure library

• What are “Library metrics”?

• How to archive, remove, and delete photos and videos in your PhotoStructure library

• How to import Google Photos into PhotoStructure

• How to zoom in PhotoStructure

Chapter 5: 🤖 Advanced topics for PhotoStructure for Servers #

• Server hardening

• Command-line tooling, including log monitoring, library and file diagnostics, and more

• Raspberry Pi support

Chapter 6: 🗄️ Advanced metadata topics #

• What’s a hierarchical tag?

• How does PhotoStructure extract keywords from my photos and videos?

• How does PhotoStructure capture captured-at?

• DAMs, systems of record, and how PhotoStructure plays well with others

Chapter 7: 🪄 Advanced PhotoStructure topics #

• What does PhotoStructure mean by “drive,” or “volume”?

• PhotoStructure’s advanced settings

• What do you mean by “de-duplicate”?

• What’s the difference between “sync” and “rebuild”?

• How do I access my PhotoStructure Library on other computers?

• How to uninstall PhotoStructure

Chapter 8: 🧪 PhotoStructure versions #

• What’s new in the latest version?

• Read detailed release notes for every build

• Alpha, beta, stable, and latest; What should you use?

Chapter 9: 💁 Help! #

Feedback? Questions? Feature requests? Found a bug?

• Visit the PhotoStructure forum, or

• Hop into our Discord chat

We’d love to hear from you!

• Getting Started
• FAQ
• Docs

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!