Mac & Windows
A full-featured desktop app for family photos, chat, and calendar.
ILY’s native Mac and Windows apps are being built for the people who already live on a computer: prepare, organize, and upload photos; talk with family; check the kid calendar; and manage the whole album without needing the mobile app if you prefer not to.
Bulk upload is a first-class workflow. Point a watch folder at a directory, drop in exports from Google Photos or other albums, and let ILY keep the family album current while you work.
Public installers are not released yet. Planned targets: macOS (Apple silicon & Intel) and Windows 10/11 (x64). Mobile apps remain available via Get the app.
Why desktop
Built for photo workflows that phones make hard.
Many family apps are mobile-only, which makes large libraries painful. Native desktop removes that restriction: drag in hundreds of photos, sync from a folder, and review the album on a real screen.
Bulk upload
Upload at desktop scale
Select many files at once or drag and drop from Finder or Explorer. Catching up after a trip, a school year, or a folder export is part of the product—not a workaround.
Watch folder
Directory sync that keeps up
Set a watch folder and ILY can pick up new photos as they land on disk— including exports you drop into a working directory—then sync into the shared family album.
Your editor, then ILY
Prepare elsewhere, upload here
Edit or organize in the tools you already use, then upload into ILY from the same machine instead of shuffling files to a phone.
Full family app
Not just an uploader. Chat, calendar, and the whole album.
The desktop app is a complete ILY client—chat, kid calendar, month-by-month album, and upload—from Mac or Windows.
Family chat
Message parents, grandparents, and caregivers from the computer you already have open during the day.
Kid calendar
School, practices, doctors, and handoffs stay visible on a larger screen next to the rest of family life.
Full photo album
Browse the private month-by-month timeline, review uploads, and manage the library where it is easiest to see detail.
Operational details
How bulk upload and watch folders actually behave
Honest limits matter when you are migrating a library. Here is how the desktop client is designed to behave.
Supported formats
Images: JPEG, PNG, HEIC/HEIF, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP. Video (file pick / loose drop): MOV, MP4, M4V, AVI, MKV, WebM. Watch-folder intake currently picks up images in the watched directory.
Watch folders are top-level only
Nested subfolders are not walked recursively. Drop files into the folder you pointed at, or upload nested trees with the bulk picker / drag-and-drop of loose files.
Local delete ≠ album delete
Removing or renaming a file on disk does not remove it from ILY. Once published to the family album, media stays until you delete it in the app.
Duplicates & resume
The watch catalog keys handled files by path + size + mtime—not by file contents. Copying the same bytes to a new path can queue again; renaming or editing a previously handled file can too. Album-side dedupe still uses content hashing after upload. Interrupted batches can be retried from the desktop uploader for items that did not finish.
Google Photos & other exports
Export albums to a folder, then point bulk upload or a watch folder at that directory. We do not claim to parse Google Takeout JSON sidecars or reconstruct captions/albums from metadata packages—file contents and capture dates available on the media itself are what the uploader uses.
Compared with mobile-only apps
Native desktop means real bulk workflows.
Use mobile when you are out capturing moments. Use desktop when you want to import in volume, or live in chat and calendar on a bigger screen. Same family, same plan.
Optional without mobile
Prefer not to live in the phone app? Desktop covers chat, calendar, album viewing, and upload so you can stay on Mac or Windows as your primary ILY home.
Same private family plan
Desktop is included with the same whole-family experience as iOS and Android. Invite relatives once; everyone meets in one private place.
Ready for Mac or Windows?
Desktop installers are not public yet. Capture on mobile today, and ask to be notified when Mac and Windows downloads ship.