Out West AI / Photo Saver
Photo Saver Support
What it does
Photo Saver copies the original files out of your Photos library — including the ones stored in iCloud — to a destination you choose. It saves true originals rather than re-encoded copies: RAW files, unmodified video, both halves of a Live Photo, and your edited versions alongside them. What lands on your server is a folder of ordinary files you can browse without this app.
Getting started
- It lives in the menu bar. There is no Dock icon and no main window — click the photo icon at the top right of the screen to open it.
- Choose a destination in Settings › Destination: a local folder or external drive, a mounted network share, an SFTP server, S3-compatible object storage, or WebDAV. Press Test Connection to confirm before you start.
- Choose a layout in Settings › Layout: by year and month, by album, by media type, or a folder template of your own.
- Press Back Up Now. macOS asks for Photos access the first time. After that the app watches your library and backs up new photos as they arrive.
Network shares
The App Store version runs in Apple's sandbox, which does not permit an app to mount a volume. Mount your SMB or network share in Finder first (Finder › Go › Connect to Server), then choose it as the backup folder. Everything else — SFTP, S3, WebDAV, local and external drives — is configured entirely within the app.
Common questions
- How long does the first backup take? — as long as your library and your link allow; hundreds of gigabytes take hours. It is fully resumable, so you can quit, sleep the Mac, or lose the network and it will carry on from where it stopped.
- It says iCloud is limiting downloads. — iCloud rate-limits how fast originals can be pulled down, and a large library will reach that limit. Photo Saver recognises it, pauses, and resumes automatically. Nothing is lost; it just takes longer.
- Some files are waiting to be retried. — a file that fails is deferred and tried again later on a growing backoff rather than abandoned. The count going down on its own is the normal case; you do not need to do anything.
- Does it delete anything? — not unless you turn on the optional space-reclaiming feature in Settings › Storage, which is off by default and starts as a dry run. Note that deleting from your Photos library also removes the photo from iCloud and your other devices; the app explains this wherever the feature appears.
- Can I browse the backup without the app? — yes. Files keep their original names in plain folders. There is no database and no proprietary format.
- What happens if I run it again? — the destination is asked what it already holds before anything is sent, so nothing is uploaded twice. Even losing the app's own records only costs a re-scan, not a re-upload.
Get help
Contact us via the form at outwest.ai and mention Photo Saver — include your macOS version, the kind of destination you are backing up to, and any message shown in the menu bar popover.
Privacy
Photo Saver collects nothing — read the full privacy policy.