FAQ

Can I use Homewend today?

Not yet. We are building it. Join the waitlist and we send you one email when it’s ready.

What does it do, exactly?

You ask Google Takeout for your Google Photos once, in your own browser: three choices and a button. Homewend waits for Google, brings every archive down to your disk by itself, picks up where it stopped if the connection drops, and puts your photos in plain folders, by year and album.

Why is getting my photos out of Google so hard?

A large library comes back as a long list of separate archives, each one several gigabytes. If a download breaks halfway, as far as we know there is no way to resume it in the browser: it starts again from zero. Homewend handles all of it for you: it brings every archive down, resumes the ones that break, downloads again the ones that fail, keeps an eye on everything while it runs, and at the end checks that your library is complete against what Google sent.

Will it tell me whether Google exported everything?

No one outside Google can. What Homewend checks is that everything Google put in the export reached your disk, file by file and year by year, against the list Google itself includes in the export.

Does it change my photos?

No. They arrive exactly as Google sent them: no edits, no rewritten dates, no conversions.

Does it replace Google Photos?

No. It makes the copy you own. Whether you keep Google Photos is up to you.

Do I need it?

Maybe not. If you already run an always-on server, and sending Takeout to Drive or Dropbox and pulling it down with rclone sounds easy, you have what you need. Homewend is for everyone else.

Does my Google password go through you?

No. You sign in to Google in your own browser. Your photos go from Google to your disk; nothing passes through our servers.

Where can I run it?

On your own computer: Mac, Windows or Linux.

What does it cost?

The desktop app is free and open source. The code goes public at launch.

What about iCloud and other services?

Homewend starts with Google Photos only. After launch we plan to add iCloud to the app, so photos from both end up in the same library on your disk. OneDrive and Dropbox may follow, for the same reason: everything in one place, sorted by year and month.

What do you do with my email?

We use it to tell you when Homewend is ready, and nothing else. Details in the privacy page.