PixCarry: Back Up Photos to Storage You Actually Control
The logic of photo backup breaks down at exactly one point. Almost every cloud backup service works the same way: your photos are uploaded to somebody else's servers, on somebody else's terms, to a storage account that somebody else can shut down, delete from, or start charging more for. That may be an acceptable trade for most people, but if the reason you are looking at backups in the first place is that you do not want a stranger holding your entire private library, then the service just recreates the problem in a different shape.
PixCarry takes a different approach. It is a backup tool that talks to storage you choose. Your files travel directly from your device to your destination, and there is no PixCarry server anywhere in the middle.
Storage You Already Have
The point is that you probably already own somewhere to put your photos. You do not need to sign up for a new cloud account to have a destination - you need a tool that will talk to the destination you already have.
PixCarry connects to:
- S3 and S3-compatible storage - Amazon S3, plus Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MinIO and anything else speaking the same API.
- SFTP and FTP
- WebDAV - which covers Nextcloud and OwnCloud out of the box.
- Immich and PhotoPrism - if you already run one of those, PixCarry feeds it directly instead of competing with it.
- Your own computer, over the local network, using the free PixCarry Desktop companion app.
A Computer Counts as Backup Hardware
The desktop companion is the part that surprises people. A Mac, Windows PC or Linux machine on your own network is a perfectly good backup destination, and it is the one you were going to leave switched on anyway.
PixCarry Desktop runs quietly in the background and transfers photos and videos directly from your phone to that machine over your local network. No S3 bucket required, no NAS to configure, no cable. The Mac build is signed and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper accepts it without security warnings, and Linux ships as a .deb package.
It also works alongside any other destination you have already set up, so it is additive rather than a replacement.
Backing Up Should Be Invisible
Once a destination is chosen, the rest of the app is designed to be uneventful:
- Back up as you go - new photos and videos upload automatically in the background, without you scheduling anything.
- Skip duplicates - on-device duplicate detection means the same photo is not sent twice, and that detection survives reinstalling the app.
- Free up space in one step - once originals are backed up, choose which ones to remove from your phone with a single confirmation.
That last feature is the actual reason most people need a backup tool in the first place. A phone that is full cannot take new photos, and a backup you cannot free space from does not solve the problem.
Nobody Sees Your Photos
The privacy claim is unusually concrete, which is worth more than the usual reassurance: files travel directly from your device to the storage destination you selected, and there is no PixCarry server in between. There is nowhere for your library to leak to, because it never arrives anywhere else first.
Get Started
PixCarry is available for iOS and Android, and the desktop companion for Mac, Windows and Linux is free. You can read more about how the transfers work on the PixCarry site.