Most photos of you are taken by friends and family. Pycter makes it effortless and free for them to share, ensuring your albums are complete.
Both for phones (IOS, Android) and computers (Windows, MacOS, and Linux).
The photos are backed up on your devices right away.
Because Pycter is decentralized, there is no central databank that knows what photos you share, nor with who you share them.
When offline, you can still add photos to an album. They will be synchronised as soon as you get back online.
Pycter | Group Chat |
Cloud Storage |
WeTransfer | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Original Quality | ✔ | ✘ (Compressed) | ✔ | ✔ |
Unlimited Quantity | ✔ (Dependent on device storage) | ✔ (Dependent on device storage) | ✘ (Limited free storage) | ~ (Limited free transfer) |
Collaborative | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ (Broadcast only) |
Cloud Backup | ✘ (Premium) | ~ (Varies) | ✔ | ✘ (Transfer only) |
Photo-first design | ✔ | ✘ (Text) | ✔ (Some) | ✘ (Generic file) |
Privacy | ✔ (end-to-end encryption) | ~ (Varies) | ✘ (Unencrypted) | ✘ (Unencrypted) |
Immediate Delivery | ~ (Devices need to sync) | ✔ | ~ (Sync-based) | ✘ (Multiple steps) |
Local Copy | ✔ | ~ (Varies) | ✘ (Manual download) | ✔ |
Pycter is designed for seamless photo sharing among friends, families, couples, or even for self-sharing across your devices. It’s perfect for sharing event photos, vacation memories, or keeping an album synchronized between devices.
Pycter stands out as the best free photo-sharing app by embracing the full photo lifecycle, from capture on one device to secure archiving on another. It focuses on what matters most: seamless collaboration, photo quality, and privacy. Unlike other apps, Pycter ensures these core values are never compromised to push users toward costly premium features, delivering an experience that prioritizes your memories over monetization.
Yes, Pycter's sharing service is completely free to use, no matter how many photos you share.
This is made possible by the app's peer-to-peer nature, which eliminates the need for expensive centralized storage.
Our revenue will eventually come from an optional cloud backup service, ensuring the core sharing functionality remains free for everyone.
No, Pycter does not and cannot sell your data.
The Pycter team has no access to your data or metadata, thanks to our end-to-end encrypted design.
Additionally, we do not believe in the ethics of that business model.
Getting started with Pycter is quick and easy. There’s no need to create an account or deal with complicated setup steps. Simply download the app, and you’ll be ready to start sharing photos in minutes.
Each shared album is secured using state of the art XSalsa20 stream cipher, ensuring that only the devices involved can access the content. This end-to-end encryption safeguards your photos, group member details, and metadata.
Yes, you can review and manage album members in the album settings panel. Only people with the invitation link can access your shared albums.
If an album link is compromised, that person will get access to your album's content and can add other members.
you can change the album’s secret in the album settings panel to secure it again.
The only information transmitted through our servers is related to 'communication setup' messages. Here is an exhaustive list of the decryptable information we have access to
We do not have any information about the ownership of devices.
Pycter never applies lossy compression to your photos. A checksum mechanism ensures every shared photo is identical, bit for bit, to the original.
Absolutely! You can add photos to an album while offline. They will automatically synchronise with your peers as soon as both devices reconnect to the internet.
Pycter imposes no limits on the number of photos you can share. However, photos are stored on your device, so you may run out of storage space.
Synchronisation will halt.
To manage this, you can configure a 'retention policy' to automatically remove photos based on specific criteria, such as time elapsed since synchronization, successful backup to another device, or other settings.
By default, downloaded photos are saved in your device’s photo folder under: [user photo folder]/pycter_downloads/[album name]/[year]/[month]/
Yes! Each album has a configurable download policy that allows you to specify if and where files are downloaded.
Not yet, but this feature is planned for the next version. Stay tuned!
Simply ask your peers to resend the shared album links, and your photos will be re-downloaded from their device.
Not yet. For long-term photo storage, Pycter will offer cloud backup plans starting at €50 per terabyte per year.
It stands for "picture transfer." The "y" represents the "y" in cryptography, emphasizing security.
Pycter is a peer-to-peer application where devices communicate directly to exchange files. A central server functions like a directory, enabling devices to discover and share their IP addresses.
While Pycter is a peer-to-peer system, it does not use the torrent protocol. Instead, it employs a dedicated protocol optimized for photo album sharing, with two major differences.
Firstly, this protocol requires authentication to download your files, ensuring that your memories remain private.
Secondly, this protocol allows you to receive files you didn't explicitly request.