How transfers work (your photos never touch our servers)
The single most important thing to know about Photo Transfer App: your photos never pass through our servers. Local transfers go straight from one device to the other. Cloud and network-drive transfers go straight between your phone and the service or server you chose.
The short version
Each device running Photo Transfer App becomes a small WiFi server on your local network. Other devices on the same network find it automatically (using mDNS, the same standard Apple's AirPrint and AirPlay use) and connect directly. Files go from one device straight to the other over your home WiFi. No internet round-trip.
With the Windows app, you can also connect your phone with a USB cable instead of WiFi. See Transfer over a USB cable (Windows).
What happens in detail when you tap "Send"
- Your sending device asks the receiver to accept a connection over local WiFi. The first time a device connects, the phone asks you to allow it, unless Authorize to connect is off. See Connect two devices over WiFi.
- The two devices negotiate a direct connection between their local IP addresses (something like
192.168.x.x). - You pick photos. Each file is read from the sender's photo library, transmitted over the WiFi connection, and written to the receiver's storage.
- The connection closes when the transfer finishes.
When devices can't find each other: the discovery service
Some networks block mDNS. So that the desktop app can still find your phone, the phone app also registers with our discovery service while Photo Transfer App is open. It shares what's needed to connect: the phone's local IP address and port, plus your network's public IP address, which groups devices on the same network. The phone also sends its model, never the name you gave your phone: an iPhone sends "iPhone", an iPad sends "iPad", and an Android device sends its model name, such as "Pixel 8". The service discards the model without storing it. Older versions of the app sent the phone's name, which the service discards the same way. Entries are deleted automatically 5 minutes after the phone last registers. No photos, videos, file names or metadata ever pass through it.
mDNS on your local network still advertises your phone's name.
What we can and can't see
| Data | Can we see it? |
|---|---|
| Your photo and video content | No — it goes directly to the device, service or server you chose. |
| EXIF metadata in your photos | No — stays inside the files, which never reach our servers. |
| Who you transferred to / from | No — connections are direct, not logged anywhere by us. |
| Your network drive's address and login | No — stored securely on your phone and sent only to your server. |
| Your phone's local IP address and port | Briefly — the discovery service keeps them so your computer can find your phone, and deletes them 5 minutes after the phone last registers. |
| Your phone's name | No — the discovery service doesn't store it. Your phone sends only its model, such as "iPhone" or "Pixel 8", and the service discards that too. |
| App analytics (crashes, feature usage) | Usage and crash reports: Firebase in the mobile apps, Sentry in the Windows app, and Google Analytics in the Mac app. An error report can include the name of a file or folder involved, never the photos themselves. On iPhone, iPad and Android, you can turn off usage statistics in More → Settings → Privacy → Share usage data (version 10.6 or later on iPhone and iPad, 10.5 or later on Android). It's on by default. Turning it off stops Firebase Analytics and Adjust. Crash reports (Crashlytics) stay on. The Windows and Mac apps don't have a switch to turn this off; see the App Privacy Policy for your options. |
What about cloud backup and network drives?
With cloud backup (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Flickr), photos travel over the internet — directly from your phone to the cloud provider, using their official APIs. Photo Transfer never sees, stores, or proxies the data. We just initiate the OAuth handshake so you can authorize the upload.
With a network drive (a NAS or server you connect over SMB or WebDAV), photos go directly between your phone and your server. A drive on your home network keeps the transfer inside your network. A server elsewhere is reached over the internet, so use HTTPS or SMB3 encryption for it. See Send and receive with a network drive.