StorePhotos.ca is a privacy-first photo management tool — designed to help you organize and preserve your photos without giving them away to someone else. Specifically built for people who own enough hardware to host their own images indefinitely, StorePhotos implements cloud backups but only for people who want them enough to set up their own hosting accounts. Whether you’re backing up family albums or documenting a project, your images stay yours.
Local-First by Design
StorePhotos.ca runs entirely on your computer. It does not connect to a central server. It does not send analytics, crash reports, or metadata. There are no accounts to sign up for, no external authentication, and no sync system calling home.
Every part of the system — from image storage to tagging to captions — is local by default. If you choose to manually upload or share photos to other services, that’s up to you. But StorePhotos will never do it automatically. Nor is there any AI implementation waiting in the background. And that's nothing against AI just an acknowledgement that there are already a lot of companies with great AI/photo implementations.
StorePhotos implements cloud backups but you have to choose which service to use and set up your own account. StorePhotos will guide you through the process and automate the tricky stuff, but this is your account, billing is your responsibility and your use of those services will be governed by their own privacy policies.
About Encryption
At launch, StorePhotos.ca does not encrypt its database. That means someone with access to your device can access your photos and tags. If someone breaks into your device to find out where you store your photos, you have definitely lived an interesting life. Encryption will be introduced as an optional feature based on community feedback.
We’ll share early designs and tradeoffs before implementing encryption. Users will be able to vote on the approach that best balances usability and security.
In the meantime, please protect your device with a password, use full-disk encryption if supported by your OS, and remember: you can always obscure personal tags or use nicknames for sensitive data.
Security Considerations
StorePhotos.ca does not make your computer more secure — it simply avoids making it less secure. Like any desktop app, it inherits the security of your system.
To protect your photos and data:
- Keep your operating system and software up to date
- Use built-in or third-party antivirus tools
- Avoid downloading sketchy files or clicking suspicious links
- Consider locking your screen when you step away
These steps go a long way.
Support & Logs
When you request support, you’re in control of what’s sent. StorePhotos.ca uses Siteimp’s local logger for Tauri, and all logs stay on your machine until you choose to submit them.
Before submitting a request, you’ll see a preview of what information would be included. You can:
- Remove any field
- Replace sensitive values with custom text
- Skip log submission entirely
Images are submitted and sending logs is optional. In the future, you’ll be able to turn it off completely. But during the early release phase, logs are valuable for improving stability and catching hard-to-reproduce bugs.
Support messages are routed through Formimp, and delivered to a private Slack channel where real humans can respond. See Formimp’s privacy policy and Slack’s privacy policy for more.
Infrastructure Transparency
This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. That means Cloudflare may log standard metadata such as IP addresses or browser type to ensure service quality and security. You can read their privacy policy.
We don’t use Google Analytics, Facebook pixels, Hotjar, or any other behavioral tracking software. The only data Cloudflare collects is what’s required to deliver the website safely and quickly.
StorePhotos.ca does not use cookies. There's no login, so there's nothing to track.
If you have questions about privacy, please contact Greg Hluska directly. No bots, no autoresponders and no mailing lists.