Installing the app

Install it from Google Play, or as the signed APK from GitHub. Either way it takes about a minute.

1. Install the app. On Google Play, tap Install. Or download opensolr-photos.apk, the latest release from GitHub, on your phone and allow the install when Android asks whether your browser may install apps.
2. Open Opensolr Photos and tap Sign in with Opensolr. The Opensolr login opens in your browser; approve the app and you are back in it. See signing in.
3. Read what your plan covers, allow access to your photos, and choose your folders.
4. The first sync starts on its own. Search as soon as the first photos show up.

Google Play updates the copy installed from it. The copy installed from GitHub offers new versions itself. See updating the app.

Every release on GitHub is signed with the same Opensolr Photos key. To check an APK before installing it, on a computer with the Android build tools:

The SHA-256 digest of the signer certificate must be:

The same fingerprint is published by opensolr.com in /.well-known/assetlinks.json. That file is what lets Android hand the end of the sign-in to this app and to no other.

• Reinstalling on the same phone: sign in again. The app finds the phone's index, reads it once into its own copy, and syncs only the differences. See the phone's index.
• A new phone: it asks whether to re-use the index of one of your other phones, or starts an index of its own. See phones you no longer use.
• Uninstalling: removes the app and everything it kept on the phone. The index stays in your Opensolr account; delete it from the control panel if you no longer want it, and sign the phone out in Account › Devices.