How transfers work (no cloud, no servers)
The single most important thing to know about Photo Transfer App: your photos never leave your local network during a transfer. There is no Photo Transfer server in the middle, no cloud upload, no third party that sees your files.
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.
What happens in detail when you tap "Send"
- Your sending device asks the receiver to accept a connection over local 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.
What we can and can't see
| Data | Can we see it? |
|---|---|
| Your photo and video content | No — never leaves your network during a transfer. |
| EXIF metadata in your photos | No — stays inside the files, which never reach our servers. |
| Who you transferred to / from | No — connections are device-to-device, not logged anywhere by us. |
| App analytics (crashes, feature usage) | Anonymized counts via Firebase / Google Analytics (mobile) and Sentry (desktop), if you've consented. Never your photos or filenames. |
What about cloud backup?
Cloud backup (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Flickr) is the one case where photos travel over the internet. Even then: the upload goes 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.