Android

Frameleaf for Android is a native app that backs up your phone to your own server and browses your whole library, at home, away or offline.

What you need

A phone or tablet on Android 11 or later.
A Frameleaf server you can sign in to.
For use away from home, push notifications and plans: the server linked to Frameleaf Cloud.

The app uses a dark theme. On tablets and foldables the bottom bar becomes a side rail and the editor shows its controls beside the photo.

Get started

When you open the app you can:

Sign in with Frameleaf. This opens your Frameleaf account sign-in in a browser tab. Your servers, ones you own and ones shared with you, appear on their own, with no second password.
Use a server on this Wi-Fi. The app looks for Frameleaf servers on your network. It only looks for Frameleaf servers and doesn’t read your Wi-Fi name.
Enter a server address, then sign in with your email and password, or with Sign in with your organisation if the server uses its own sign-in provider.

When a server is found, a card slides up with its name, your role and “Online · on this Wi-Fi”. Choose Connect, Not Now or Don’t offer again. After you connect, it asks whether to back up this phone to that server.

Set up a brand-new server from your phone

On your home network you can claim a server that has no administrator yet:

Type the 8-character setup code (XXXX-XXXX) the server shows on its console or in its log, or scan its QR code.
Give the server a name.
Choose to link it to your Frameleaf account. You become the owner with no server password, and linking also turns on remote access and Cloud Backup.

If you don’t want to use Frameleaf Cloud, you can set a server password instead, and the server stays on your home network only.

Several servers

Every server is listed with your role and its route: Home (your network), Direct or Relay (the Frameleaf relay, part of remote access). The app tries every route at once and prefers Home. You’ll see lines like “Connected at home · 3 ms” or “Offline · can’t reach it from here”.

Over the relay, previews always load, but full originals and videos wait for a faster route unless you allow them in Settings, then Privacy and lock. Both are off by default.

Remove a server to delete this phone’s copy of its library, caches and queue. Nothing is deleted from the server.

Browse your library

Library shows everything in one grid, newest first. Pinch to change the size, switch between Years, Months and All, drag the fast scroller to jump through months, and pull down to refresh.
Times are shown in the photo’s own local time.
Press and drag to select several photos, then Share (up to 30 at a time), Add To, Delete, or under More, Favourite, Archive, Lock or create a public link.

In the viewer, tap to hide the bars, double-tap or pinch to zoom deeply, swipe down to close and swipe up for Info. Press and hold a Motion Photo to play it. Delete moves the item to Recently Deleted, with Undo.

The viewer’s More menu adds Find similar photos, Smart details, Text in this photo, Versions, Add tags, Rating, and Why is this here?, which shows which smart album rule added a photo.

Info shows the caption, date and time (with a time zone picker), camera and exposure, people, albums, the file name and checksum, and whether the photo is on this phone, your server and Cloud Backup.

Search

Search finds photos by place, person, thing or the text in a photo. Narrow results with chips for place, year, photos or videos, person and similar photos, and Narrow down shows how many results each filter would leave.

Results appear in two parts: instant matches from the copy on your phone, then smart search results from your server. Text found in photos is highlighted. Searches also find moments in your videos, matched in the picture, caption or transcript. You can keep saved searches. See Search.

Collections

The Collections tab gathers Pinned items, Memories, People & Pets, your Library (Albums, Favourites, Videos, Archive, Places, Tags, Documents, Smart albums, Locked and Studio), Sharing (Partners, Shared Links, Invitations, Groups) and Utilities (Not on Server, Duplicates, Recently Deleted, Library Care, Preservation, Import from Google Photos, Add from files and Free up space).

Places on Android are a list, not a map.

Memories

Memories are grouped into On this day, Stories, Birthdays, People & pets and More. Tap one to play it full screen. You can keep it, rename it, hide it (its photos stay in your library), delete it, or ask to see less of a person, a type or a date.

Make a highlight video renders a short video on your server: choose 15, 30 or 60 seconds, 720p, 1080p or 2160p, and whether to keep the videos’ sound. Save it to your library or to the phone.

Partners share your whole library with someone on the same server. They see yours; you don’t see theirs unless they share too.
Shared links can have an expiry date, a password, downloads and details. You can also show a link as a QR code.
Shared spaces have members with roles, an activity feed with comments and likes, and Show in my Library. Accept, decline or leave invitations from Invitations.

Smart albums

A smart album fills itself from a rule: people, media type, dates, or what’s in the photos. Before you save, a preview shows how many items it would add. You can choose Ask me before adding to review each addition, Also archive what it adds, run the rule now or stop it.

Back up your phone

Open Backup. Two rings show how safe your phone is: the outer ring (green) is the share on your server, the inner ring (teal) the share in Cloud Backup. The number in the middle is how many items are on the phone.

Below are rows for what’s uploading now, what’s Not on server (grouped by reason, with Retry), the last server check, failures with their reason (such as “The server’s copy didn’t match” or “The connection kept dropping”) with Retry and Skip, Free up space, Backup choices and Focus, which keeps the screen on but dimmed during a big backup.

Tap Back up now to start. It turns into Pause while it runs.

Every photo is checked

Each original is read with its location data, fingerprinted with SHA-256, compared with what the server already has, and sent with a resumable upload. A photo only counts as backed up when the server’s fingerprint matches. Identical copies upload once. After a crash, a reboot or a network change, backup resumes without uploading anything twice.

Edits saved by gallery apps, such as IMG_1-edited.jpg, are stacked with their original.

Backup choices

Choice	Options	Default
What	Everything on this phone, Camera photos and videos only, or Folders I choose. Any folder can be skipped
Kinds	Photos and videos, Photos only, or Videos only	Photos and videos
From	Everything, however old, or From today on
Only on Wi-Fi	Never use mobile data	Off
Videos wait for Wi-Fi	Photos may use mobile data, videos wait	On
Only while charging		Off

Backup always waits while the battery is low. Photos you saved from the server to the phone are never backed up again.

In the background

Every hour the app catches up on anything new, within your network and charging rules.
About 30 seconds after you take a photo, a backup is triggered.
Back up now keeps running after you leave the app.

While a backup runs, its progress shows in a notification, such as “Backing up to Home Server · 131 items to go”, with a Pause button. On Android 16 it’s a Live Update at the top of the screen.

If something’s in the way, Backup says what: waiting for Wi-Fi or charging, photo access turned off, Only some photos are shared (if you gave the app access to selected photos only), photo locations hidden, battery optimisation, local network access off, or notifications off.

Check this phone’s backup

In Settings, then Account and backup devices, choose Check this phone’s backup and confirm with your PIN or password. The app compares this phone’s fingerprints with the server without sending the whole list, and queues anything missing.

Free up space

Free up space removes items from your phone only when your server holds an identical copy, checked by SHA-256, and its last check didn’t fail.

Keep favourites and Keep the last 30 days are on by default.
You can choose to remove only what your server has also copied to Cloud Backup.
Each file is checked again just before it’s removed, and removed items go to the phone’s trash, not straight to permanent deletion.

Bring in photos from elsewhere

Save to Frameleaf appears in other apps’ share sheets. Share one or many photos and videos, pick or create an album, and save. Items the server already has are recognised and not sent again.
Add from files brings in photos from a memory card, a USB drive or a files app. The files are copied first, so you can unplug the card once the upload has started.
Import from Google Photos takes your Google Takeout files: add them, scan, review any conflicts, then import. Photos already in your library are matched rather than copied again, and albums, favourites, archive, Locked, places, dates, descriptions and Live Photos come across. You can pause, resume or remove an import. See Google Photos.

Edit photos and videos

Tap Edit in the viewer. Edits never change your original: your server keeps each saved edit as a new version, and you can always go back. See Editing.

Photos

The editor has five tabs: Adjust, Looks, Crop, Clean Up and Masks.

Adjust has 17 dials: Light (Exposure, Brilliance, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Whites, Blacks), Colour (Saturation, Vibrance, Warmth, Tint), Detail (Sharpen, Clarity, Noise Reduction, Dehaze) and Effects (Vignette, Grain). You can type an exact value on a ruler.
Looks shows nine styles on your own photo, each with a strength slider. Save as preset keeps your own.
Crop has a straighten ruler, rotate, flip and aspect ratios Original, Freeform, Square, 4:5, 3:2 and 16:9.
Clean Up: paint over what should go with Heal, Clone (drag the ring to choose the source) or Hide to pixelate.
Masks: up to eight per photo, Brush, Radial and Linear.

Under More: Compare, the histogram, Copy and Paste edits, and Revert to original. On Android 13 and later, every dial previews live; on Android 11 and 12, some do.

Videos

The video editor has Trim, Adjust, Looks, Turn and Sound:

Trim: Exact re-encodes on the frame you choose; Fast cuts at the previous keyframe without re-encoding.
Adjust and Looks: the photo dials and looks, plus a black-and-white look for video.
Turn: rotate 90° or flip.
Sound: volume from 0 to 200%, or mute.
Speed: 0.25×, 0.5×, 1×, 1.5×, 2× or 4× for the whole clip.

HDR videos are edited to a standard-range version, and the HDR original is kept.

Develop in another app

For RAW files, Develop in another app sends the original to an app of your choice through the system file picker. Bring back a developed file… adds the result as a new version.

Restore and upscale

Restore and upscale improves old or damaged photos and videos. Choose Faithful or Creative, whether to keep film grain, whether to upscale, and Smooth motion to add in-between frames to video. Then choose where it runs: a GPU computer at home, which stays on your network, or Cloud GPU. You see an estimate and a preview first, and the original is never replaced.

Keep your library offline

The app always keeps a searchable copy of each server’s catalogue, so dates, places and search work without a connection. Keep offline decides how many pictures it also keeps, per server:

Option	What’s kept
Catalog only	The catalogue, with a 256 MB working cache
Travel (default)	Small pictures of everything, plus full-screen pictures of the last 3 months
Everything	Small and full-screen pictures of everything

Set a space limit of 1, 5, 10, 25 or 50 GB (5 GB by default). Pictures download on Wi-Fi when the battery is fine, newest first. Locked items are never kept offline. Without a connection, the library shows “Offline · showing this phone’s copy”.

Outside the app

Widgets: Backup rings (from 2×2; wider shows “12,348 of 12,480” and the Cloud Backup share), Memories, an Album or person slideshow (people and pets) and Server for administrators (storage and jobs waiting, 3×2). They refresh every 6 hours.
Live Updates: backup progress and Cloud Backup setup appear as Live Updates on Android 16.
Quick Settings tile: Back up now, showing how many are left while it runs.
App shortcuts: long-press the icon for Back up now, Search and Favourites.
Themed icon: the icon follows your themed icon setting.

Library Care on your phone

From Collections, then Utilities:

Duplicates: one group at a time, bursts included, with a suggested keeper. Choose Keep, Don’t keep, Stack or Not duplicates. Favourites, albums, ratings, descriptions and people carry over to what you keep, and recent decisions can be undone.
Recently Deleted: restore, delete for good, or empty. In Cloud Backup lists items deleted from the server that a Cloud Backup still holds, so you can bring them back.
Library Care: check for damaged files and replace them with a verified copy while keeping the damaged one; find and relink missing originals; rejoin Live Photos; and list RAW files your server can’t read. See Library Care.
Preservation: make a package of your originals with checksums and their details, optionally with Locked items. Verify it, download it or restore from it. Restoring never replaces originals you already have.
Documents: receipts and letters your server recognised, with the text read from each line. Confirm, correct or hide lines.
Smart details: a photo’s AI description (write it again, or use your own), AI tags, text in the photo, and a sensitive-content flag you can correct.

App lock and Locked items

Turn on app lock in Settings, then Privacy and lock. Frameleaf uses your fingerprint, face or screen lock, and you choose when it asks again: right away, or after 1, 5 or 15 minutes. On Android 13 and later, the preview is hidden in Recents. The phone needs a screen lock first.

Locked items always ask for your account’s six-digit PIN, even with app lock off, and screenshots are blocked on Locked screens and in the editor. Set, change or remove the PIN in Settings, then Profile and security.

Notifications

Notifications are encrypted by your server so that only your phone can read them, and Frameleaf’s push service can’t. Turn each kind on or off per server: backup needs you, backup hasn’t run in a while, Cloud Backup setup, shared with you, memories, videos and edits ready, and access changes. Notifications need the server linked to Frameleaf Cloud. See Notifications.

Settings

You: profile and security (name, password, PIN), signed-in devices, API keys, every server preference, and Account and backup devices.
This app: backup choices, notifications, Keep offline, privacy and lock, and the picture cache.
Server page: route, speed and address, whether this phone backs up there, offline copies, notifications, Frameleaf Cloud and a storage chart. Rename a server (for this phone only) or remove it.

Administrators also get the server’s job queues, people (add, roles, storage limits), Cloud Backup restore points (bring back one item, one album or the whole library), maintenance mode, the full server settings tree with Review changes before saving, and write-only secrets. A few actions, such as restoring a database backup, stay on the web.

Privacy

The app contains no third-party analytics. Send crash reports and usage data is off unless you turn it on; the app asks once after you first sign in. Reports go only to Frameleaf’s own servers and never include your photos, names, email, server addresses, file names, search text, IP address or screenshots.

Frameleaf Cloud in the app

The server’s owner can add a Frameleaf Cloud plan from Backup. Plans bought in the app are billed by Google Play. Other people on the server see that the owner’s plan covers it.

Google Play plans come in fixed storage sizes. If your backup outgrows yours, the app asks whether to move up a size. If you keep your plan, new items wait with Backup paused: plan full; nothing already backed up is touched, and restores keep working. See Cloud backup.

Studio on your phone

You can open Studio projects started on the web: preview them, restore an earlier version, add notes at the playhead and export. Editing the timeline needs the web app for now.

Coming later

These aren’t in the Android app yet: a map, Chromecast, manual face tagging, a light theme, upload time estimates, Studio timeline editing on tablets, and deleting your Frameleaf account from the app.

Moving from the Immich app

The Frameleaf app is a separate app. You can keep both installed while you switch. See Moving to the Frameleaf app.