Frequently Asked Questions
Welcome to PhotoVault — your personal photo library, backed up to Cubbit DS3 and built to keep your memories safe for a very long time.
iOS has strict limitations on background activities to preserve battery life. When you close the PhotoVault app, iOS suspends most background operations.
The app schedules periodic upload tasks that run when your device is charging and connected to Wi-Fi. These tasks are managed by iOS and may not start immediately after you close the app.
Tip: For immediate uploads, keep the app open. Background uploads will continue automatically when conditions are favorable.
Your photos are uploaded to Cubbit DS3 — documented at 99.999999999% (eleven nines) durability — and organized in a structured bucket layout.
Bucket structure:
media/
Original photos and videos stored in date-based folders
media/
└── 2024/
└── 03/
└── 15/
└── 14-30-22-456.jpg # Original file (HH-mm-ss-ms.ext)
thumbnails/
512px JPEG preview images (required for the web gallery to display)
thumbnails/
└── 2024/
└── 03/
└── 15/
└── 14-30-22.jpg # Preview (same timestamp)
Files are named with their original capture timestamp (hour-minute-second-millisecond), so photos taken at the same moment keep their order. The folder structure follows the date (year/month/day), making it easy to browse your library chronologically.
Note: Thumbnails are required for the web gallery to work. They are generated automatically after each upload and used as the main preview in the web interface.
Cubbit DS3 encrypts your files with AES-256, splits them into redundant shards using Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes, and spreads them across the network (currently 20 data shards + 40 redundancy shards).
The network self-heals: it detects failures and autonomously recovers data — designed to keep it durable and available through regional outages. Cubbit documents data durability at 99.999999999% (eleven nines) and a 99.95% monthly availability SLA.
No. PhotoVault is an independent app that uses Cubbit DS3 as its infrastructure. It is not made or endorsed by Cubbit.
The app integrates with Cubbit's authentication system (ED25519 challenge-response) and its API, so your photos are stored transparently on Cubbit DS3 under your own Cubbit account.
Thumbnails are 512px JPEG previews that are automatically generated for every photo you upload (including HEIC and RAW formats). They are required for the web gallery to display your photos.
- Generated automatically after the original upload completes
- Stored separately in the
thumbnails/prefix - Used for gallery previews in the web interface
- Original high-resolution files remain untouched in
media/
Note: Thumbnails are mandatory. The web app cannot display photos without them.
PhotoVault implements a two-tier retry system to handle transient network issues automatically.
In-session retry (per upload attempt):
Up to 3 retries within a single session
Lifetime retry (across app sessions):
Each time you open the app, failed uploads are automatically retried silently — you see a pending badge, not an error. Only after 15 total retries does an asset become permanently failed.
Permanently failed uploads are marked with a ✗ badge and can be manually retried from the gallery, which resets the counter. The retry logic handles network errors and 5xx server responses, but does not retry 4xx client errors or local file access issues.