iCloud Sync

How It Works

When you perform an action on one device — like favouriting a photo, updating an album, or removing an item — Photoflare records a lightweight event. That event is pushed to your private iCloud container, where your other devices pick it up and replay it locally. The result: every device reflects the same state without ever transferring your photos.

What We Sync

Only small event payloads that describe what changed — never the content itself. A typical event looks like this:

{
  "event": "photos.updated",
  "data": {
    "entities": [
      { "UID": "ptajmyx4rf5gni6h" }
    ]
  }
}

Each event contains an action name and a list of anonymous identifiers. No filenames, no thumbnails, no personal information.

What We Don't Sync

• Your photos or videos
• Photo metadata (EXIF, location, camera info)
• Server credentials or addresses
• Any personally identifiable information

Your media stays on your PhotoPrism server and your devices. iCloud only carries the tiny events that tell each device what to refresh.

Private iCloud Container

Photoflare uses a private CloudKit container scoped to your Apple ID. This means:

• Only your devices can read and write to this container
• Data is not shared with other users or apps
• Apple manages encryption in transit and at rest
• You can inspect or delete this data in iCloud Settings at any time

Why This Exists

PhotoPrism servers don't push real-time sync events to connected clients. When you favourite a photo on your iPhone, your iPad has no way to know about it until the next manual refresh. iCloud Sync bridges that gap — it gives every device a shared, privacy-respecting event stream so your library feels consistent everywhere, without requiring any changes to your server.