You’re sorting through the photos on your phone when a thought comes up: I’d like to keep these myself. I don’t want to upload them to another cloud photo library.
There are clips from trips, everyday moments with family, and a few things you’d rather keep private. When you took them, you probably weren’t thinking much about storage. Years later, it matters where the originals are, who can open them, and whether you’ll still be able to find them.
Cloud photo libraries are convenient. You can also choose to look after your own files, keeping them on a phone, computer, or drive you own and deciding what to send when you want to share.
It’s the next step that can feel less straightforward. Leave everything on your phone, and what happens if it breaks? Move it to a drive, and could someone else plug it in and browse the contents? A simple wish to keep your photos starts to look like a project.
You can store photos and videos without a cloud photo library by keeping the originals on your own devices, encrypting private files, and maintaining a separate backup on another physical drive or device. Check existing cloud and backup settings too. Start with a small collection while you get comfortable with the routine.
Choose where to keep your photos: phone, Mac, or external drive
Photos you return to often are convenient to keep on a device within reach. Years of videos, or a collection you only browse occasionally, can have a separate home.
You might keep recent private photos on your phone, use your Mac for things you enjoy sorting through on a larger screen, and add an external drive as the collection grows.
There’s no need to move your whole photo library at once. Pick a collection you know you want to manage yourself, and start there.
Protect the photos stored on your devices
Keeping photos on your own hardware lets you choose where they live. The files themselves still need protection.
Copy ordinary photos onto an unencrypted external drive and put it in a drawer, and those copies are on your own hardware. But someone who gets the drive and can read its files may also be able to open the photos.
For private material, look for storage that locks and encrypts the contents. Check that it protects the stored files and lets you comfortably browse photos and play videos after unlocking. You’ll want to come back to these things, after all.
Disk encryption can protect a whole storage volume; an encrypted photo vault protects the collection you put inside it. If you want to browse private photos in an app, a photo vault may suit that routine.
Amazingface provides that kind of private storage. Imported photos and videos are saved as encrypted files in a local Vault that you unlock in the app. Amazingface does not create a cloud photo library for them. Read about its file protection.
Keep a private photo Vault on an external drive
Phone and computer storage only stretches so far. Video collections in particular can leave you looking for somewhere to keep files you want to hold on to. This is where a USB external drive you already own may be useful.
Amazingface for Mac lets you create a Vault in a supported folder on an external drive. Its files live in the location you choose. When you want to look through them, connect the drive and open and unlock the Vault in Amazingface to browse that collection. Explore Mac and external-drive storage.
To get started, connect the drive to your Mac and check that it’s writable and has enough space. When creating a Vault, choose a supported location on the external drive. Set a password, save your Recovery Phrase separately, then try importing a few photos and a video. Open them, play the video, and test an export. Once you’re comfortable with the process, you can add more.
You might find an evening now and then to sort through the things you’ve decided to keep. When the work is finished, close the Vault, eject the drive in macOS, and put it away.
The protection covers files imported into the Vault; it does not encrypt other folders on the drive. The drive also needs to be connected to access that Vault. Device and disk-format compatibility depends on what the app supports.
Send selected files when you need them elsewhere
Looking after your own photos still means moving files sometimes. You might want a video from your iPhone on your Mac, or a few private photos sent to someone you trust.
AmazingDrop securely sends selected photos and videos, with sending and receiving available on the Free plan. Transfers use end-to-end encryption. A relay temporarily handles encrypted transfer data and necessary service records; the transfer data is removed after delivery or expiry. Learn about AmazingDrop.
You choose what to send and when. AmazingDrop does not automatically sync your library, and the current release does not offer unified browsing across devices or Vaults.
Back up your photos without cloud storage
When you think about storing photos safely, keeping other people out may come to mind first. Being able to open them yourself in a few years matters just as much.
If you move your originals to an external drive and delete them everywhere else, you still have only one copy. Encryption cannot recover files from a lost or failed drive.
Keep a second copy of important files on another physical device or drive, protected with encryption too. Check it occasionally: can you open the photos and play the videos? That tells you more than remembering that you probably made a backup once. If you create the copy by exporting files, protect the destination separately; exported originals are outside the Vault.
For example, you could keep the working collection on one drive and a protected backup on a second, stored separately. Two folders on the same disk will not help if the disk fails. Keep older backup versions where practical so an accidental deletion does not immediately become the only state left to recover.
For ordinary files on a Mac, Apple documents manual copies to external storage and Time Machine backups. With an app-managed Vault, check the backup method’s coverage and verify recovery; do not assume an external Vault is included automatically.
Look after your password and Recovery Phrase as well, keeping the phrase separate from the device. Amazingface retains neither and cannot restore access if both are lost. A Recovery Phrase can unlock an existing Vault; it cannot recreate files from a missing drive. Deleting the app may also delete local Vault data, so make sure you have a usable copy before removing it. Recovery and app-deletion details.
Then decide what to do with your existing copies
Once you’re comfortable with the new arrangement, go back to the photos you started with.
Importing files into a Vault does not automatically remove originals from Photos, a cloud library, or other folders. If you want your collection to stay entirely on your own hardware, check device backups and other cloud services for copies too.
Verify the new files and your backup before deciding what to delete. If you use iCloud Photos, our guide to moving selected photos out of iCloud Photos explains how syncing and deletion affect that decision.
You don’t have to sort a lifetime of photos in a weekend. Start with the collection you’ve been meaning to look after. Know where it lives, how to open it, and where the other copy is if a device goes missing. The next time you take something worth keeping, you’ll already know where to put it.