Offline and storage

In short. Photos you take stay on your phone in full for 14 days. Turn on Available offline to keep a case or an Album for good, so it opens with no signal. Settings → Storage shows what is on the phone and in the cloud. Nothing is limited, and photos waiting to upload are never removed.

Available offline

Turn on Available offline on a case or an Album and its full photos are kept on this phone. They then open with no signal, in a theatre basement for example. Open the app before you lose signal: kept photos open while the app is open, and a closed app needs a connection to start. Cases and Albums that are Offline carry a small Offline mark in your Case browser and your Albums list.

Switching it off removes nothing from the cloud. A few seconds later, photos you took more than 14 days ago go back to thumbnails, and downloaded photos join Recently viewed and leave oldest first. Photos waiting to upload always stay.

Recent photos and Recently viewed

Photos you take stay on your phone in full for 14 days after you take them, so this week’s cases open instantly. After that only the thumbnail stays, and opening the photo downloads it again. Opening a case also downloads its photos in the background, and the slideshow fetches the next two ahead. Everything you open goes into Recently viewed, 500 MB by default, and the oldest leave first. You can change both in Settings → Storage.

Wi-Fi and the iPhone question

Download Offline media on Wi-Fi only is on by default. On an Android phone, Offline photos then wait for Wi-Fi, and you can tap Download now. An iPhone cannot tell Wi-Fi from mobile data, so it asks instead: Download 14 MB now? Photos you take always back up at once, on any connection; this switch never holds them.

The Storage screen

Settings → Storage shows what is on this phone (photos kept, and how much space they take) and what is in the cloud (your photo count and total size). Here you choose how long new photos stay in full (14 days, 7 days, 30 days, or off), the Recently viewed size, and Download Offline media on Wi-Fi only. Nothing is limited: there is no quota and you will never see “Storage full”. During the alpha, founding surgeons see one line saying their storage is unlimited. The cloud copies are scrambled on your phone first, so what we hold are files we cannot open.

Clear Offline

Settings → Storage → Clear Offline switches Offline off for every case and Album on this phone and removes the downloaded photos. Photos waiting to upload, and photos you took in the last 14 days, stay. Nothing is deleted from the cloud, and you can download again whenever you like.

Needs re-download

A photo that should be on this phone but is not says why, in words: Downloading, Waiting for Wi-Fi, Not on this phone yet, or Needs re-download. Not on this phone yet means the phone is short of space or is waiting for you to say yes to the download. Needs re-download usually means you went offline before the photo arrived, or a download stopped part way. Tap Download now, or open the photo when you are back online. You never see a blank tile.

Kept photos on your phone are the same scrambled files as in the cloud. Without your backup password or biometric unlock they cannot be opened.