iPhone and iPad

Frameleaf for iPhone and iPad is a native app that backs up your camera roll to your own server and browses your whole library, at home or away.

What you need

An iPhone or iPad on iOS or iPadOS 26 or later. The background upload feature described below needs 26.1.
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 is dark only for now, and one app covers both iPhone and iPad.

Get started

When you open the app you can:

Sign in with Frameleaf. This opens your Frameleaf account sign-in in a browser sheet. The servers linked to your account, ones you own and ones shared with you, appear on their own, and the app signs in to each without a second password.
Use a server on this Wi-Fi. The app looks for Frameleaf servers on your network. iOS asks once for permission to find devices on your local network; the app explains why first.
Enter a server address, then your email and password for that server.

The discovery card

When a server is found on your Wi-Fi, or listed in your Frameleaf account, a card slides up showing its name, your role and “Online · on this Wi-Fi”. Choose Connect, Not Now or Don’t offer again. If there are several servers, they page inside the same card. The card appears at most once per launch and never interrupts the editor, a purchase or a permission prompt. After you connect, it asks whether to back up this iPhone 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) that the server shows on its console or in its log, or scan its QR code.
Give the server a name.
Choose Link to Your Frameleaf Account. You become the owner and don’t need a server password.

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 on the phone is listed with your role (Owner, Admin or User) and how the app is reaching it:

Route	Meaning
Home	Your home network
Direct	A direct connection over the internet
Relay	The Frameleaf relay, part of remote access

The app picks the fastest route on its own and switches back to Home when it can. Tap a server to switch to it. To stop using the relay from this phone, turn off Use the Frameleaf Relay in Settings, then Connection.

Sign out removes this phone’s copy of that server’s library, its caches and its upload queue. Nothing is deleted from the server.

Browse your library

Library shows everything in one edge-to-edge grid, newest first. Pinch to change the size, or switch between Years, Months and All. The header shows the day and place you’re looking at.
Times are shown in the photo’s own local time. A photo taken at 6:42 in Banff reads 6:42 wherever you are.
Press and hold a photo for a preview with Favourite, Share, Add to Album, Save to iPhone, Hide and Delete.
Select several photos to Share, Add To, Delete, or under More, Favourite, Hide, Lock or create a public link.

In the viewer, tap to hide the bars, double-tap or pinch to zoom, swipe down to close and swipe up for Info. The bottom bar has Share, Favourite, Info, Delete and Edit. Delete moves the photo to Recently Deleted.

Info shows the caption, date and time (with Adjust and a time zone picker), the camera and exposure, the file name and checksum, and a row showing whether the photo is on this phone, your server and Cloud Backup, each with the date since when.

Search

Type in the search field to find places, things and the words in your photos. Before you type you’ll see people, places, recent searches and suggestions. You can narrow results with tokens for a place, a year, photos or videos, and favourites.

Results come in two parts: instant matches from the copy of your library on the phone, then smart search results from your server, which understand what’s in a photo. Text found in photos is highlighted in the results. See Search for how smart search works.

People, memories and collections

The Collections tab gathers:

Pinned albums, people and pets you open often
Memories: tap one to play it full screen. You can keep it, hide it (“Its photos stay in your library”), or ask to see less of a person, a type of memory or a date. Make a highlight video renders a short video on your server; it stays private until you save it to your library.
People & Pets: tap a face to see their photos. Naming and fixing faces is done on the web for now.
Library: Albums, Favourites, Videos and Archive
Sharing: Partners, Shared Links, Invitations and Groups
Utilities: Not on Server, Duplicates and Recently Deleted

Partners share your whole library with someone on the same server. Choose whether they see where photos were taken.
Shared links can have an expiry date, a password, and options to allow downloads and show details. Anyone with the link can open it without an account.
Shared spaces: see members and their roles, invite people and remove them.

See Sharing and Albums and shared spaces for how these work on the server.

Back up your photos

Open Backup from the account sheet. Two thin rings show how safe your phone is:

the outer ring (green) is the share of this phone’s photos on your server;
the inner ring (teal) is the share in Cloud Backup. Without a Cloud plan there’s only one ring.

The number in the middle is how many items are on this iPhone. Below are rows for what’s uploading now, what’s Not on Server (with reasons and Retry), the last Server Check, Free Up Space, Backup Choices, and any failures with their reason.

Tap Back Up Now to start. It turns into Pause while it runs. For a big first backup, Focus shows one large ring and keeps the screen awake but dimmed. Keep the app open and plug the phone in.

Every photo is checked

Each original is fingerprinted with SHA-256 on the phone, 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 files are uploaded once, and an interrupted upload picks up where it stopped.

Edits you made in Apple Photos are uploaded and stacked with their original.

Backup choices

Choice	Options	Default
Preset	Everything, Photos on Wi-Fi, Chosen albums, Custom
What	Photos, Videos, Edited versions stacked with the original	All on
Photos on mobile data	On or off	On
Videos on mobile data	On or off	Off
Videos only while charging	On or off	Off
Pause in Low Power Mode	On or off	On
Pause in Low Data Mode	On or off	On
Dates	Everything, or only from a date you choose	Everything

If you use Optimize iPhone Storage in iCloud, the full originals are downloaded from iCloud first, on Wi-Fi. Backup shows how many iCloud originals are waiting.

In the background

iOS decides when apps can work in the background, so the app never promises a continuous upload. It does three things to keep going:

An overnight backup run when iOS allows it.
Back Up Now keeps running after you leave the app, with the system’s own progress display.
On iOS 26.1 or later, when you leave the app, the remaining plain photos and videos are handed to iOS’s own background upload. Backup shows how many were handed to iOS. This needs full photo library access. Live Photos, edited items and videos you only back up while charging stay with the app, and anything iOS hasn’t uploaded after 24 hours is taken back by the app.

Free up space

Free Up Space removes photos and videos from your iPhone once your server holds an identical copy, checked by SHA-256. You see a summary first, then confirm Remove from iPhone.

Turn on Only Items Also in Cloud Backup to remove only what’s also in Cloud Backup.
Items stored only in iCloud are left alone.
Removed items go to Recently Deleted in Photos, where you can get them back for 30 days.

To bring a photo back onto the phone, choose Save to iPhone. It downloads the original, with options to include the location and to save it as a JPEG for compatibility.

Edit photos and videos

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

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

Adjust has 17 dials in four groups: Light (Exposure, Brilliance, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Whites, Blacks), Colour (Saturation, Vibrance, Warmth, Tint), Detail (Sharpen, Definition, Noise Reduction) and Effects (Dehaze, Vignette, Grain). Tap a dial to switch it off while keeping its value.
Looks shows nine styles on your own photo (Original, Vivid, Natural, Warm, Cool, Mono, Silvertone, Noir, Fade), each with a strength slider.
Crop has a thirds grid, a straighten ruler, rotate, flip and aspect ratios Original, Freeform, Square, 4:5, 3:2 and 16:9.
Clean Up lets you paint over what should go: Heal, Clone, or Hide to pixelate a face or number plate. Your server applies the fix when you save.
Masks apply adjustments to part of the photo, up to eight per photo: Brush, Radial, Linear and Subject, which finds the main subject on your phone.

Press and hold the photo to see the original. Under More you’ll find side-by-side Compare, the histogram, Copy and Paste edits, Revert to original and Versions, which lists every saved version. Showing an older version makes it current again; nothing is deleted.

For videos, the app offers Trim, with an exact or fast cut. Other video edits are made on the web.

Outside the app

Widgets

Backup: the rings, in small, medium and Lock Screen sizes. The medium widget has a Back Up Now or Pause button.
Memories: small, medium and large.
Album or Person: choose an album, a person or a pet.
Server, for administrators: storage, whether it’s online and how many jobs are waiting.

Widgets work in the tinted and clear Home Screen styles.

Live Activities

Backup progress on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a thumbnail, how many items are left and a Pause button.
Frameleaf Cloud setup, showing the four setup steps after you add a plan.
Server jobs, such as a finished export, a restore in progress or a long check.

Controls, Siri and Spotlight

Controls for Control Center and the Lock Screen: a Back Up Now button and a Pause Backup toggle. They work without opening the app.
Siri and Shortcuts: say “Back up with Frameleaf”, “Search Frameleaf”, “Show my Frameleaf backup”, “Open an album in Frameleaf” or “Play a memory in Frameleaf”. The Search Photos shortcut shows up to 24 matching photos right in the result.
Spotlight finds your albums, people, pets, memories and servers.

Save to Frameleaf from other apps

Choose Frameleaf in the share sheet of another app to add up to 50 images and 20 videos at a time, optionally to an album. The files upload the next time Frameleaf runs.

App lock and Locked items

Turn on Require Face ID in Settings, then App Lock. Frameleaf asks for Face ID (or Touch ID, Optic ID or your passcode) when it opens and each time you come back. While it’s locked, the app switcher shows no photos, and backup keeps running.

Locked items are protected by your account’s six-digit PIN. You can set, change or remove the PIN in Settings, then Password & PIN, and move photos to Locked from the viewer or a selection. Viewing Locked items in the app is coming later; use the web app for now.

Offline

The app keeps a copy of each server’s library catalogue on the phone, so dates, places and search keep working without a connection. Settings, then Storage shows how much space the offline library and the thumbnails use, and can clear the thumbnails and previews. The offline library is removed when you remove the server from the phone.

Notifications

Your server can tell you when backup needs you, when something’s shared with you, or when a video is ready. Notifications are encrypted by your server so that only your phone can read them. Turn each kind on or off per server in Settings, then Notifications:

Backup needs attention
Backup hasn’t run for a while
Cloud Backup setup
Shared albums
Memories
Finished videos and exports
Changes to your access

Notifications need your server to be linked to Frameleaf Cloud. A server that can’t send them yet says so. See Notifications.

Settings

You: profile picture and name, password and PIN (with Sign Out Other Devices), signed-in devices, linked accounts, API keys (the secret is shown once), and every account preference on the server.
This iPhone: Backup, Notifications, App Lock, Storage and Connection.
Server: connection details, whether this phone backs up there, and a storage chart.

Administrators also get the server’s job queues and workers, people (add, set roles and storage limits, reset passwords), database backups and maintenance mode, every server setting (drafted, reviewed, then saved), external libraries, workflows and the server’s Frameleaf Cloud link. Secrets such as passwords can be replaced but never shown again.

Frameleaf Cloud in the app

The server’s owner can add a Frameleaf Cloud plan from Backup. The plan screen shows where your photos go: from this iPhone to your server, and only from your server on to Cloud Backup. Plans bought in the app are billed by the App Store and can include Family Sharing. Other people on the server see that the owner’s plan covers it.

App Store 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.

Coming later

These aren’t in the iPhone app yet: viewing Locked items, signing in to servers that only use their own OAuth provider, an iPad sidebar, Studio on iPad, 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.