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Short answers about Mediae on your Mac and on mediae.app.

(01) Getting started

Install Mediae, catalogue your drives, and set up backups.

Mediae is a Mac app for photographers. It catalogues your drives where they are: nothing is moved, copied or renamed, and you can browse a drive’s photos even when it’s unplugged.

Install

  • Mediae is in beta. Download it from the link you received, open the disk image and drag Mediae to Applications.
  • There are two installers: one for macOS 14 and later, and one for older Macs (macOS 12.7 and 13, or Intel).
  • Beta builds aren’t yet notarised by Apple. If macOS says it can’t check Mediae, Control-click the app in Applications, choose Open, then Open again.

Catalogue a drive

  • Connect the drive and add it in Mediae. It reads your photos and makes small previews on your Mac; your originals stay untouched.
  • Once catalogued, the drive stays browsable when it’s unplugged. Plug it in again to open the originals.

Backups

  • Mediae can back up your photos to storage you choose: a backup disk, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon S3. Files go straight from your Mac to that storage, under your own account there.
  • It shows which files have only one copy. If you’re signed in, the same summary appears on your account page.

Online

  • Sign in to share boards, books, exhibitions and collections on mediae.app. You can also start them in a browser from your account page.

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(02) Sharing

Share a collection, board, book or exhibition, and decide who can open it.

Anything you share gets its own page on mediae.app. Only previews of your photos are uploaded, never the originals.

Share

  • In Mediae on your Mac, choose Share Online. On mediae.app, open the work and click Share.
  • A collection is a set of photos people look at, pick from and comment on. Boards, books and exhibitions can also be laid out and edited together in the browser.

Who can open it

  • Invited people only: only the addresses you add can open it, after signing in with a code.
  • Anyone with the link: whoever has the address can open it, with the role you choose for the link.
  • You can add a password and an end date, turn downloads on or off, limit how many photos can be downloaded, and put a watermark on downloads.

Stop sharing

  • Stop the share in Mediae or from its Share panel. The link stops working at once, and its files are removed from mediae.app.

Limits

  • During the beta, each account has 5 GB for shared previews and up to 200 active shares.

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(03) Roles and permissions

What viewers, commenters, editors and managers can do.

Each person you invite, and the link itself, has a role:

  • Viewer: looks at everything, and downloads if you allow it.
  • Commenter: also comments, picks with stars, labels, reacts, sends a selection and approves.
  • Editor: also changes the layout of a board, book or exhibition, adds photos and restores earlier versions.
  • Manager: also changes the share’s settings and who has access, like the owner.

The owner and managers can stop a share. Change someone’s role or remove them from the Share panel; the change applies straight away.

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(04) Comments and approvals

Comment on a spot, draw, mention, pick, send a selection and sign off.

Comments

  • Open the comments panel and write. To comment on a particular place in a photo, choose the comment tool and click that spot; you can also draw a circle, an arrow or a line.
  • Type @ to mention someone; they get an email. Reply to a comment to keep a conversation together, and resolve it when it’s dealt with.
  • You can edit or delete your own comments. The owner and managers can delete any comment.

Picks and selections

  • Star the photos you like. When the owner turns on proofing, you can send your selection, with a note; the owner may set a minimum, a maximum and a deadline, and Mediae reminds people a day before it.

Approvals

  • Commenters can approve a work, a spread or a wall. The owner sees who approved what, and when.

Live

  • Everyone who has the page open sees each other’s cursors and changes as they happen.

Emails

  • Choose in Settings whether you hear about activity as it happens, once a day, or never.

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(05) Books

Start a book, choose a size and template, and lay out spreads.

  • Start a book in Mediae, or from Create, then Book, on your account page. Choose a page size, the number of pages (from 8 to 200, in fours) and a template: Blank, Classic, Zine, Catalogue or Lookbook.
  • The first page sits on its own on the right, as in a printed book. Add, move and remove spreads as you go.
  • Drag photos onto the pages. Guides snap them to the margins, to each other and to the centre.
  • Switch between the board, the pages in order and all the pages at once. Preview hides every page marking.
  • Present opens the book full screen, page by page, to show it to someone.
  • Everything is saved as you go. History shows earlier versions, which an editor can restore.
  • Open the book in Mediae on your Mac for print-ready PDF or InDesign export.

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(06) Exhibitions

Hang a show on walls at real size, then print the documents for it.

  • Start with one 5 × 3 m wall or a room of four walls, and add walls of any size.
  • Walls and prints are at real size. Add frames and mats, show a person to scale, and see sizes and centre heights.
  • The floor plan shows the room from above. Artworks lists every work on the walls, numbered.
  • From the share’s page you can print a checklist of works (with prices, if you choose to show them), an install pack, a lighting plan and a visitor guide with a QR code for each work.

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(07) Your account and privacy

Sign-in codes, settings, downloading your data and deleting your account.

Signing in

  • There’s no password. Enter your email address and we send a six-digit code, valid for 10 minutes. This browser then stays signed in.
  • In Settings, Sign out everywhere ends every browser session on the web; Mediae on your Mac stays signed in.

Settings

  • Your name and photo are shown on your comments and as your cursor. Choose Light, Dark or Automatic, and how often you get emails.

Your data

  • Download my data, under Settings, makes a zip of your account, everything you share and what people added to it, and your uploaded photos. We email you when it’s ready; it stays available for 7 days.
  • To delete your account, use Mediae on your Mac, or write to hello@mediae.app. Everything of yours goes: your name, email address and photo, your shares and files, and what you added to other people’s shares (a comment others replied to stays, empty, as “Deleted account”). It disappears from backups within 30 days.
  • The privacy policy explains what is kept, why, for how long, and your rights. The terms cover how Mediae may be used.

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(08) Troubleshooting

Codes that don’t arrive, links that don’t open, and other problems.

The code doesn’t arrive

  • Check your spam or junk folder, and that you typed the address correctly. Codes come from hello@mediae.app.
  • You can ask for a few codes a minute. If you see “Too many codes”, wait a minute and try again.

A link says it was shared with specific people

  • Sign in with the address it was sent to. If you use another one, ask whoever shared it to add that address.

A link has expired or no longer works

  • The owner may have set an end date or stopped sharing. Ask them to extend it or send a new link.

Photos don’t load

  • Reload the page. If the owner has just changed who can open the share, sign in again.

A download is too large

  • Very large zips are cut off: select fewer photos and download them in several goes.

Browsers

  • mediae.app works in current versions of Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Edge, on computers, tablets and phones.

Still stuck

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Still stuck? Write to hello@mediae.app, or use Feedback on your account page. The status page says if something is down.