Features overview

A quick tour of what Frameleaf does. Each section links to the guide with the details.

Your library

Upload and view photos and videos on phone and web, with a fast, scrubbable timeline that stays smooth on very large libraries. See Library and timeline.
Three layouts, grouped by day, month or year, with adjustable thumbnail size.
Select and change many items at once: favourite, archive, tag, add to an album, change dates or locations.
Recently added shows your newest uploads first, whatever their capture date. Handy after a big import or Google Takeout, when the files you just added have old dates.
Best photos ranks your sharpest, best-exposed images using scores worked out privately on your server. It doesn’t call any cloud service, create an album, copy files or change your favourites.
Archive and favourites: archived items leave the timeline but still appear in search.
Folder view shows your library by its folders on disk.
Stacks group related shots, such as a burst or an edited version and its original, under one cover photo.
Live Photos and Motion Photos back up and play back as one item.
360° photos display in the web app.
Metadata view with camera details and a map for every item.
Trash with a 30-day grace period by default.
RAW support, with an enhanced renderer for difficult camera files. See Supported formats.
Your originals are never changed. Edits to dates, descriptions, ratings and locations go to the database and an .xmp sidecar file.

Albums and organisation

Albums and shared albums. See Albums and shared spaces.
Nested albums: put albums inside folders to any depth (for example 2024, then Summer, then Beach trip), drag and drop to nest and reorder, give albums custom icons, and browse them from a tree in the sidebar with breadcrumbs on every album. Frameleaf won’t let you nest an album inside its own sub-album, and warns before deleting a folder that still holds albums. The tree and drag-and-drop live in the web app.
Shared spaces for a family or group, with roles.
Smart albums that fill themselves from AI-generated tags: Travel, Documents & Receipts, Screenshots, Food, Pets and Nature. They’re off by default. See AI descriptions and smart albums.
Tags, including nested tags and tags imported from other apps. See Tags.
Storage template: choose how your originals are named and arranged on disk. See Storage template.

Finding things

Ask in plain words: “photos in Banff last summer”, “receipts from 2024”, “photos of Alice in Calgary from April 2024”. See Search.
Smart search finds what’s in a photo, powered by models on your own server.
Search by metadata: dates, places, cameras, file names and more.
People and pets: face recognition and grouping that run on your server, never in the cloud. Existing face tags in your files are read in too. See People and pets.
Places and map: a world map, and places by country, region and city, with names worked out on your server. See Places and map.
Memories: “on this day” stories from past years. See Memories.

AI descriptions

All on your own server, and optional:

Descriptions and tags for photos and videos, searchable like any other text. Video descriptions look at frames from across the whole clip, not just the thumbnail.
Custom instructions in plain words, such as “if you see a car, identify the make and model” or “name the sport being played”.
Names in descriptions: people you’ve named are mentioned by name (“Kelly, Connor, Alexa and Jeremy at the beach”), not as “a family”.
Safeguards that remove names the model made up, and admin tools to review and repair descriptions and tags.

There’s a recommended setup order (faces, then video duplicate detection, then prompts, then names, then smart albums) that saves re-running jobs across your whole library. See AI descriptions and smart albums.

Privacy

Locked content: mark sensitive photos (medical records, prescriptions, card images, identity documents, private family media) as locked. They stay in your albums but disappear from the timeline, albums and browsing until you unlock with your PIN. They’re still deduplicated, indexed and backed up. See Locked and private content.
Locked rules hide everything with a chosen tag or person.
Optional sensitive-content detection flags items for your private review.
No telemetry. Faces, search and descriptions never leave your server, even with Frameleaf Cloud linked.

Duplicates and storage

Duplicate review for photos and videos. See Duplicates.
Better video duplicates: Frameleaf compares several frames from each video, so black frames, title cards, similar intros and different-resolution copies don’t cause false matches.
Keeps the original format: when suggesting which copy to keep, Frameleaf prefers RAW, then HEIC or HEIF, over a re-encoded JPG, even when the JPG is bigger. Nothing is deleted automatically. Turn it off with Prefer original format in Administration, then Settings, then Machine Learning, then Duplicate Detection.
Physical deduplication: when family members upload the same file, the server stores it once while each person keeps their own item, albums, metadata and permissions. It doesn’t need partner sharing and doesn’t merge libraries. See Physical deduplication.
Identical uploads are skipped: a file already in your library is never stored twice.

Editing and video

Non-destructive editing for photos and videos on phone and web; the original upload is never touched. See Editing.
Video editing: trim, crop, rotate, straighten, mirror, auto enhance, stabilise, colour and light, filters, text, mute and volume, speed, and export a frame. Rendering uses your server’s hardware transcoding when it can and falls back to software when an edit needs it.
Studio, a multitrack video editor with projects, version history and review comments. See Studio.

Library health

Missing originals: find items whose files are missing or unreadable, locate verified copies by content fingerprint even after they were renamed or moved, and relink them.
Damaged originals: scan for files that won’t decode, review them with evidence, and replace them with verified copies.
Relink Live Photos that were split into a separate photo and video. Available to everyone under Utilities, then Relink live photos.
Preservation packages you can verify and restore from.

See Library Care.

Partner sharing, shared albums, public links and shared spaces. See Sharing.
Read-only viewing for people who should only look.
Multi-user servers with a private library for each person, and storage quotas.

Imports and moves

Google Photos from a Takeout export, with albums, dates, places and descriptions. See Import from Google Photos.
iCloud Photos Sync: background imports on a schedule, Apple edits kept as stacks, Live Photos kept together, and recovery of missing or damaged items from iCloud. See Import from iCloud Photos.
External libraries: show an existing folder in Frameleaf without copying it. See External libraries.
Server-to-server move: copy one person’s whole library to another Frameleaf server, resumable and verified file by file before you retire the old one. See Move to a new server.
Moving from Immich: switch an existing server in place. See Moving from Immich.

Phone apps

Native apps for iPhone, iPad and Android with automatic and background backup, album selection, offline browsing, freeing up space, widgets and app lock. See iPhone and Android apps.

Running the server

Command Center: health, storage, jobs, users and every setting in one place, with review before save. See Command Center.
Hardware acceleration for machine learning (OpenVINO, CUDA and more) and video transcoding, with CPU fallback. See Hardware acceleration.
Workers: add GPU computers on your network. See Workers and where jobs run.
Sign-in options: passwords, your own OAuth provider and Sign in with Frameleaf. See Sign-in and OAuth.
API keys and a command-line tool. See API and CLI.
Automatic database backups and guided restore. See Backup and restore.
Workflows for simple automation. See Workflows.

Frameleaf Cloud (optional)

Remote access without opening ports, encrypted cloud backup, buddy backup and cloud GPUs. See Frameleaf Cloud.