Frequently asked questions

In three steps. 1) Create your account and start your 30-day free trial on the website. 2) Download the app on your phone or computer. 3) Sign in with your account. The app is for using the service day to day; account creation and your subscription are always managed on the website.

30 days free, 100 GB, no credit card and no commitment. You confirm your email, your account is created right away and you can back up your photos immediately. At the end of the 30 days without a subscription, your account becomes read-only: you can still view and download your photos. Without re-subscribing, your data is permanently deleted 7 days later — we always warn you by email before any deletion, with a link to recover your photos.

Install the mobile app (iOS or Android) for automatic backup. You can also manage everything from the web, or install the macOS and Windows apps.

Yes. In the web app, open Utilities then “Import”: drop the .zip archives from your Google Takeout export, and your photos come back with their dates, locations and albums. Our Google Photos and iCloud guides walk you through it, and a real person answers if you get stuck. One detail about Live Photos in a Google Takeout export: they come back as a separate photo and video, which you can stack together if you like.

iPhone and Android, a full web client, and native macOS and Windows apps that we build ourselves.

Yes, the same photo can belong to as many albums as you like, without ever being duplicated. At Fotomania, each thumbnail even shows a badge per album — you see at a glance which albums it's in.

Yes, photos and videos in their original quality — including RAW, Live Photos and motion photos.

Automatically, with nothing for you to think about — but not to the second. iOS does not wake apps up the moment you take a photo: the backup runs regularly in the background, and keeps going even when Fotomania is closed. Opening the app speeds things up: it catches up on what is left straight away. And while Fotomania is open, a photo landing on your phone — taken with the camera, received by AirDrop, or captured from the screen — appears in your timeline and goes up within a second, with no need to leave the app. On Android, a new photo leaves after five seconds, and you can change that delay in Settings, under “When your photos leave”.

Yes. In the mobile app, open the backup screen and tap “Sync now”: Fotomania looks at what is new on your phone, compares it with what is already online, and sends whatever is missing. If there is nothing to send, it says so — “Everything is up to date”, along with the number of photos backed up. Handy right after a burst of photos, or simply to check that everything arrived.

Keep the app open with the screen on: that is the fast mode — several photos go up at once, without pause, and the screen no longer locks while an upload is running. Leave the app and the backup carries on, but at the pace your phone chooses: the same batch can take hours instead of minutes. Nothing is lost either way, it is only a matter of speed. And if the network hiccups, the photo goes again on its own — the app tells you so without calling it an error.

From the backup screen in the mobile app, tap “Delete synced photos”. Fotomania only ever offers photos that are already backed up online, shows you which ones before touching anything, and lets you set aside your favourites or particular folders. Only the copies on the phone are removed: your photos stay on Fotomania and you carry on seeing them in the app. They go to your phone's own trash first, which keeps them for thirty days — the space is genuinely freed once that trash is emptied. You can also make it a rule rather than a chore: the “Free up space automatically” switch at the top of the same screen makes Fotomania offer you, once a day when you open it, to remove the photos backed up more than a month ago. Nothing is ever removed without your say-so — you see the batch, you approve it, then your phone asks for its own confirmation. One word of caution if you use iCloud Photos: removing a photo from this phone also removes it from your other devices signed in to the same iCloud account.

Yes. Fotomania keeps your original files and their metadata (date, location, EXIF), with no recompression.

Smart search (objects, places, even text inside images), face recognition, map, timeline… and the album name right on the thumbnail.

In the mobile app, a calendar button at the top of the home screen opens your years, then months, then days — with the number of photos for each period. One tap takes you to the right place in your library, no scrolling. Months without photos stay visible but dimmed, so you can see at a glance where to look.

Yes, give them a clear name ("Lea's birthday") instead of an unreadable IMG_2043, and find them easily with the search field.

Yes. Each album can have a colour, a cover photo and a header photo — the large one shown at the top of the album. You also choose how that header is framed, so faces don't get cut off. Handy for spotting “summer in Brittany” at a glance in a long list.

Yes, in two clicks from “Edit album”: a strip shows the album's photos and you pick the one you want. You can use a different photo for the cover (the square tile in your album list) and for the header at the top of the album — the framing isn't the same, and neither is the best photo.

No, it's yours alone. In a shared album each member can pick their own colour without imposing it on anyone else: you organise your way, your family organises theirs. See the details on the Features page.

Fotomania spotted the same photo in several copies (sent twice, re-encoded, edited…). Click the badge: the copies appear side by side with their size and quality, and you choose what to keep. Nothing is ever deleted automatically. The badge is in the mobile app too, where it tells you exactly the same thing. There it is for information only: the side-by-side comparison screen currently exists on computer only, so that is where the sorting happens.

It marks a series: several photos taken in a row that look alike (a burst, several tries of the same shot). They are not copies — each photo is different. The dot helps you spot the group at a glance and keep the best one. The colours only tell neighbouring series apart: there are about ten of them and they repeat further down the grid. Two photos sharing a colour are not necessarily in the same group — what matters is that they sit side by side. The dot is there on computer and in the mobile app alike; on mobile, tapping it shows the whole sentence.

On a computer, open Utilities then “Duplicates”: each group is shown, you tick what you keep and the rest goes to the bin. In the mobile app, go to Settings then “Duplicates” — or simply tap the badge on a photo, which opens its group. The photos scroll through one at a time, full width, each with its file name (so its format, HEIC or JPG), its resolution, its size and the time it was taken: enough to choose knowingly. The largest one is ticked in advance, as it is almost always the original. Two ways out: “Keep all”, which files the group away without deleting anything, or moving what you did not tick to the bin — recoverable for 30 days. Nothing is ever deleted without you asking.

A duplicate is the same photo living several lives: sent twice, re-encoded, compressed by a messaging app… A series is several different photos of the same moment: a burst, several tries of the same shot. Two photos taken in a row can look identical to the eye, but each shutter press produces a unique image — so Fotomania groups them as a series, not as duplicates. In short: duplicate = copies to clean up, series = a choice to make.

If you use Fotomania on several Apple devices, a device could upload a reduced version of a photo instead of the original: the same picture then appeared twice, in two qualities. This happened when the photo had not yet been fully downloaded onto that device — typically an iPad or a second iPhone pulling your library from iCloud, whether you chose “Optimise Storage” or “Download and Keep Originals”. This is fixed from version 3.5: devices now wait for the original. To tidy up the ones already uploaded, the duplicate review screen on the computer shows them side by side and offers to keep the largest version; the others go to the bin, where you can still recover them.

Yes. The camera button at the bottom of your timeline opens a built-in viewfinder: photo or video, self-timer, framing grid, exposure, zoom and front/back switch. The picture is saved to your phone's own photo library first — so it never exists only inside Fotomania — then sent straight away, without waiting for the next backup. And if you are inside an album when you press the shutter, it goes into that album directly. The viewfinder stays open between shots, so you can keep going. If you asked Fotomania to send over Wi-Fi only, the photo waits for Wi-Fi like any other.

Because you asked Fotomania not to send anything outside Wi-Fi — that is the starting setting for videos. Fotomania now says so in plain words, instead of a silent crossed-out cloud that could be mistaken for a failure. Those photos are safe on your phone and will leave on their own as soon as Wi-Fi is back, with nothing for you to do. You can change the setting at any time, separately for photos and for videos.

Archive it. The photo leaves the chronological timeline — it no longer shows up as you scroll through your memories — but it stays backed up, stays in its albums, and stays findable through search. Exactly what you want for screenshots, receipts or train tickets cluttering up an otherwise lovely year.

Yes, without leaving Fotomania: open the photo and choose “Editor”. You can rotate it, crop it and apply a filter. Editing creates a new version — your original is never overwritten.

Yes. From the viewer, start the slideshow: photos play full screen, with no borders and no buttons. It is the right way to show an album on a television, or to let memories roll during a family meal.

Yes: select them and choose “Stack”. The timeline then shows only one thumbnail, the one you picked, with the others tucked behind it — a tap unfolds them. Handy for a burst, for three tries at the same portrait, or to tidy away in one go the copies Fotomania spotted for you.

Yes, on iPhone and Android alike: add the Fotomania widget to your home screen and it shows your photos there — at random from your library, or from a person or an album you choose. It refreshes on its own, without opening the app.

Yes. Alongside searching by words, filters let you combine criteria: a period, a place, a person, an album, the kind of media (photo or video), the camera that took the shot, or only what is not in an album yet. Just what you need when “it's somewhere in 2019” stops being enough.

Yes, to view them. With no network the mobile app still shows your timeline and you can open your photos — the thumbnails and images that have already passed through your phone. Anything that changes something, though — deleting, adding to an album, archiving, renaming — needs the internet: those changes live on the server, so that all your devices see the same thing. The app tells you so plainly, and there is nothing to repair: get back online and do it again. Photos you take in the meantime are safely kept and will go on their own once the network is back.

The same date, all your years at once. Open “On this day” and you see what you were photographing on 7 September: this year, last year, ten years ago — grouped by year, most recent first. It is the quickest way to stumble back on photos you would never think to search for. You reach it from the first line of your library, or from the menu, right below “Photos”.

Yes, all of them — not a sample. Many services show only a handful per year; here you get the whole day, year by year. And the list is worked out afresh every time you open it: photos you have just imported from Google Photos or an old backup are there straight away, even if they date from 2008.

Yes, if you took no photos on that date in previous years. Rather than leave you with an empty page, Fotomania says so plainly and offers the nearest day that does have photos. The arrows on either side of the date also let you wander from one day to the next.

Yes, from your computer as well as from your phone. You get 14 adjustments (light, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, vibrance, warmth, tint, sharpness, vignette, grain, fade, blacks and whites), 12 filters whose strength you set yourself, and an Auto button that balances a photo in one go. The result follows exactly the same formula everywhere: what you see on screen is what you get.

No. Fotomania leaves your original file untouched and only keeps the list of adjustments applied. You can go back to the photo you started from at any time, even months later, with “Reset”.

Use “Save as a new photo”. Fotomania creates a second photo with the edit included and files it under the same date as the original, so the two sit side by side in your library. The original itself is left untouched.

On a phone, press and hold the photo: it returns to its original look until you let go. On a computer, the “Original” filter in the filter strip does the same job.

Edited photos carry a marker in the grid, so a glance is enough to tell them apart from the ones you have not touched.

Open “Explore”: the Dates section draws your years as areas — the more photos a year holds, the bigger it gets. Click a year to see it month by month, then a month to open your library at that period. On the web for now.

Everything that shows up in your library, photos and videos alike. Whatever sits in the trash or in the archive is left out, and so are photos shared with you by a partner: the map measures your own library.

A calendar of your moments. You name an event — “Summer holiday”, “Treetop climbing”, “Claire's wedding” — you give the date or date range, and your photos file themselves into it. A year timeline shows everything you lived through at a glance, and a month view gives you the detail. It answers a question search cannot: “what did we do this summer?” — because you cannot search for what you no longer remember.

An album is a list of photos you build one by one. An event is a slice of time you name: you don't pick the photos, you give the dates. The two work well together — many people file by theme in albums and by moment in events.

On their own. You give a start and end date, and every photo taken in that period shows up in the event. Nothing to select. Better still: photos you import later — from your camera, or sent by a relative — join by themselves, without you having to go back.

You can remove a whole day in one click — handy when one day of your holiday deserves its own event — or remove photos one by one. Nothing is lost: a “removed photos” view lets you see what you set aside and tick whatever you want back.

Yes. The wedding you attended during your holiday can legitimately belong to both. When you create an event that sits inside another, Fotomania simply asks you to choose.

It happens more often than you'd think: a camera set wrong, a scanned print, a picture sent by a relative. You can attach any photo to an event by hand, from its details or from the viewer menu — even if its date would place it elsewhere. It stays there, whatever happens.

Yes. One button downloads the event's photos exactly as you see them: without the days or photos you removed. If you ticked some, only those are downloaded. Archives are split automatically when an event is large.

Yes. “Share the event” creates a shared album from it: that album is what your family and friends open, with the name and dates of the event. You then choose a link to send them, or invite other Fotomania accounts. The album follows the event — a photo attached later is added to it, a photo removed disappears from it — and it is updated when you open the event. Since the album is a reflection of the event, a photo is added to the event, not to the album — anything dropped straight into the album leaves again at the next update (except what a guest adds, which stays). Your photos are not copied: stopping the sharing, or deleting the event, removes the album and its link, never your photos. Available on the web.

Yes. Events are available on the web from your browser — on computer as well as on a phone — and in the iOS and Android apps.

A Fotomania exclusive: a family tree directly connected to your photo library. You create the people of your family, link them together (unions, remarriages, blended families — all supported), and attach your photos to a person, a couple or a whole family. The tree is browsed by clicking: each person shows their photos, plus those of their couples and families.

Open "Genealogy" — on the web or in the mobile app ("Collections" tab) — and create your tree, then your first person — yourself, for example, ticking "This is me". Then select a card in the tree: the "Add father", "Add mother", "Add a partner" and "Add a child" buttons build the family step by step. Uncertain dates are welcome: the year alone is enough, and you can say "around", "before" or "after".

Yes, in full. In the iPhone and Android app, open the "Collections" tab: you can view and edit your trees (the interactive tree pans with your finger, pinch to zoom, double-tap a card to recenter), attach photos to people, couples and families, recognized faces suggest the right profiles, and GEDCOM export goes through the phone's share sheet. The same tree everywhere: whatever you add on mobile shows up on the web, and vice versa.

Two ways. From a photo: open it, "⋯" menu → "Add to family tree", pick the person — if their face is recognised on the photo, their profile is suggested automatically — then the scope: their profile, the couple or the family. From the tree: select a person or a couple and add photos to their galleries. The same photo can be linked to several people, and clicking a gallery opens a full-screen viewer to browse it like an album.

A lot. Link a tree profile to a face recognised in your photos ("Link to a recognised face"): Fotomania then counts that person's photos in your library and can link them all in one click. And when you send a photo to the tree, the profiles matching the detected faces are suggested first.

Never. The tree only references your photos: they stay in your photos, your albums and your archive, with no duplicates. Removing a photo from the tree doesn't delete it, and deleting a profile or a tree never touches your photos. The tree data stays private, in your account.

Yes: every tree exports to the standard GEDCOM format (export button at the top of the tree), recognised by Geneanet, Heredis, MyHeritage and every genealogy application. Your data is never locked in.

Create a shared album and invite members: everyone can add their photos, like and comment.

From your account owner area, enter the person's email and invite them (up to 5 members depending on the plan). Fotomania automatically creates an account for them and emails their login details — they don't need an account beforehand. Their storage comes from your shared family space, and you can remove a member at any time.

You give another member access to your entire photo and video library (your whole timeline). They can view and download it, read-only — without being able to delete or change your originals. It's continuous: your new photos appear automatically on their side. Unlike an album (a one-off selection), a partner sees your whole library; it's mutual if each of you shares with the other. Perfect for a couple or a family.

Up to 5 members depending on the plan, with a shared storage space that adapts to everyone's needs.

Yes. Storage is shared, but everyone keeps their own private photos and decides what to share.

Yes, through a share link that you can protect with a password and set to expire.

On servers located in Europe, in compliance with the GDPR.

Only you — and only the people you explicitly choose to share with. Your photos are private by default. No one at Fotomania looks at them: we don't view them, we don't moderate them, and no algorithm analyses them. A member of our team accesses them only if a technical action is strictly necessary, at your request, and always confidentially. You remain the owner of your content and are solely responsible for what you store and share.

No. No data reselling, no targeted advertising, no algorithm analysing your photos to sell you anything. Our only revenue is your subscription.

No. The privacy we promise for your photos, we apply to ourselves too. Our site uses neither Google Analytics nor advertising cookies: just a European statistics tool, which we host ourselves, that shows us the essentials to improve our pages, completely anonymously. So you'll never see an “accept cookies” pop-up here.

Because we don't need them to give you a good website — and because most cookies exist to track visitors, which we refuse to do. A cookie is a small file stored on your device; advertising cookies then follow you from one site to the next. At Fotomania, none of that: nothing is stored on your device, your IP address is never kept, and we can neither identify you nor follow you elsewhere. To improve our pages, we rely solely on anonymous statistics (Umami, which we host ourselves in Europe). Since the law only requires a consent banner when cookies or trackers are used — which we don't — you have no pop-up to accept when you arrive. It's how we apply to ourselves the privacy we promise for your photos.

Yes, your library is hosted on secure infrastructure with regular backups.

It goes to a trash bin and stays recoverable for 30 days before permanent deletion.

Yes. European hosting, data under control, and you can export or delete your data at any time.

Yes — that is the locked folder. Photos you put in it leave the timeline, the albums, search and memories: they are no longer visible anywhere else. Opening that folder takes a code you set yourself — and on mobile, your fingerprint or face is enough. Made for identity papers, bank documents, or simply what you would rather not have scroll past while showing someone your phone. Those photos stay backed up like the rest, just out of sight.

From the sign-in screen — on the web (photos.fotomania.app) or in the mobile app — tap “Forgot password?”. You can also go directly to https://api.fotomania.app/reset-password. Enter your email: if an account exists, you'll receive a link (valid for 30 minutes, single use) to choose a new password. Once changed, sign back in. For your security, every change is confirmed to you by email.

From €3.99/month for 100 GB. Several plans up to 5 TB, monthly or yearly (−10%).

The Extreme plan goes up to 5 TB, for €35.99/month or €388.99/year (−10%), shared between 5 people like the other plans. It's our largest volume: enough for decades of photos and videos in full quality. It costs more than some equivalent American offers, because at that volume storage genuinely is expensive, and because everything stays hosted in Europe — with no AI or video subscription bundled in that you never asked for.

Yes, at any time from your “My subscription” area. An upgrade is immediate: you only pay the difference, prorated for the remaining days, and your storage increases right away. A downgrade takes effect at your next renewal — you keep your current plan until then, with no refund.

On the monthly plan, no commitment: cancel anytime (the current month remains due). On the yearly plan, you pay 12 months upfront (−10%), with access guaranteed until the end of the term. In all cases, you have a 14-day right of withdrawal after the order (pro rata refund).

Your account becomes read-only: you can still view and download your photos. Without re-subscribing, your data is permanently deleted 7 days later — always after a warning email with a link to recover your photos.

Card and major European methods, through a European payment provider.

The easiest way: the “My subscription” button — in the web app (your account menu) or in the mobile app. You go straight in, without signing in again. If you don't have the app handy, go to https://api.fotomania.app/portal/login: enter your email and we'll send you a login link (no password). From this space you manage your plan, members, payments and receipts.

Go to your “My subscription” space (button in the web or mobile app). Tap “Subscribe”, choose your plan (from Mini to Extreme) and your billing — monthly or yearly (−10%). You'll be redirected to our secure payment provider (Mollie) to enter your card. As soon as the payment is confirmed, your plan is active immediately and you keep all your photos, with no interruption. You can subscribe at any time during the trial.

Your account becomes read-only: you can still view and download your photos. You have 30 days to resubscribe or retrieve your data. After that, without resubscribing, all your data is permanently deleted from our servers and our backups. We notify you by email before any deletion, with a link to retrieve your photos.