Embedded Files
This app is ideal for people who capture most of their memories on an iPhone, store them on a server, and want to browse them anytime—easily and comfortably.
I love traveling, and I capture those moments on my iPhone.
Over time, my photo library became huge. I tried cloud services, but I eventually hit storage limits—and day-to-day reliability wasn’t always great. Sometimes uploads stalled, syncing felt inconsistent, and it turned into more stress than convenience.
So I built my own personal cloud. My workflow was simple: upload to an FTP server, then browse everything like an album. That’s why I built TorchPhoto—an app that makes it easy to back up what you shoot and comfortably view it anytime.
This project started from real frustration. It’s a tool I built for myself first.
What pushed me over the edge was how most FTP file explorer apps handle media. They’re built for general file management, not photo viewing—so thumbnails are often generated only for what’s currently on screen, one page at a time. Scrolling through a folder means waiting again and again, and browsing never feels instant.
On top of that, many of those apps keep thumbnails under strict cache limits. You don’t get to choose how much thumbnail storage you want, and older thumbnails can be deleted automatically—so the “album feel” disappears the moment you come back later.
TorchPhoto is different. It’s focused purely on photos and videos, with fast, album-style browsing in mind. You can build and reuse thumbnails so folders open quickly, and the experience stays consistent instead of constantly reloading.
While building it, I ended up using it daily for my own photo and editing workflow. It became one of those apps I genuinely can’t live without. If you’ve run into the same pain points, I think you’ll find it useful too.
Whether you use a NAS or have built your own, TorchPhoto lets you browse your photos and videos on iOS quickly and effortlessly over FTP—the most widely compatible option.
The easiest approach is to turn any storage device you already have into a simple NAS. If it supports FTP access, you can use this app with it.
It wasn’t just useful for browsing travel photos—it also proved efficient for work that relies on images stored on a server. I could quickly find what I needed, then share or save photos immediately whenever a task required it.
Even while traveling, I still had to work with images. I could quickly review photos stored on a remote server, and it was very easy to bring what I needed onto my MacBook or iPhone.
During my trips, I backed up all my photos to the server. Once everything was safely stored there, there was no real reason to keep the originals on my iPhone.
The thumbnails generated by TorchPhoto can be viewed even offline, so I could look back on my travel memories—even on a plane. And for anything I wanted to revisit later, I simply saved it to Favorites.
The download is free.
There’s an optional subscription if you need it,
and with ongoing updates, you’ll get even more benefits over time.
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