Sync between your machines

Run PxlMonk on two of your own computers and it keeps their libraries in step over the local network: new photos, develop edits, ratings/flags/colour labels/keywords, the camera/lens/film you assign to scans, and the album/folder/roll structure around them. Nothing leaves your network — there is no cloud in the middle. Open it with the Sync tab.

Sync finds your other machines on their own, so you rarely start here cold: the machine on the sofa and the machine in the studio see each other as soon as both are running PxlMonk.

Pair two machines once

The Sync tab lists the machines it has found, each with a state — Online, Offline, just Found, or Too old / Too new when the two versions can’t talk. Your own machine’s name is shown at the top under This machine:.

A machine you haven’t paired with shows a Pair button. Pairing is a one-time handshake with a short PIN, so the two computers trust each other from then on:

Press Pair on either machine. It asks: show a PIN here, or enter the one shown on the other?
On one machine press Show PIN — it displays a code and waits.
On the other press Enter PIN and type that code.

Once it succeeds the pair is remembered. A paired machine shows Sync… (open the workspace) and Unpair (forget it) instead of Pair.

Read-only by default

Pairing proves two machines are yours; it doesn’t yet let one change the other. A freshly paired machine is read-only — it can copy photos and edits from you, but can’t push edits, photos or metadata to you until you allow it. Open Sync settings (the button at the top of the Sync area) and switch a machine you trust to Can edit. Each machine controls what its own peers may do to it, so set it on the other machine too if you want changes to flow both ways.

The three panes

Press Sync… on a paired machine to open the workspace. It reuses the whole window:

Left is your real library sidebar — the same All photos, Capture date, Last modified and Albums you always have. It scopes what the middle shows.
Middle is the plan: one tile per photo that differs between the two libraries, or that is already in sync.
Right is the other machine’s structure, laid out like your sidebar — its capture dates, modified dates and albums/folders/rolls.

The header shows both machine names with a ↔ between them. ← Machines takes you back to the list.

What the tiles tell you

Each tile in the middle is one photo. A badge says what a sync would do to it, and an arrow says which way it moves:

New — the photo is only on one side; a sync copies it (with its edits).
Edit — the photo is on both sides and one has a newer develop edit, or newer metadata (rating, flag, colour label, keywords — and, on a film scan, the camera, lens and film you assigned) — those ride along under the same badge; a sync updates it, the most recent change winning.
Conflict — both sides edited it since the last sync; see Conflicts below.
Deleted — the other machine removed this photo and you still have it. See Deletions below.
In sync — nothing to do. These show greyed for context (so a fully-synced view is never a baffling blank); the In sync chip hides them.

The arrow is ← for a photo coming in from the other machine (a pull) and → for one going out to it (a push); a ✕ marks a deletion (it removes, it doesn’t move). A photo’s variants are grouped into a single tile marked with how many, and syncing it moves them together.

Use the New, Edit, Conflict, Deleted and In sync chips at the top to show or hide each kind. Tick the photos you want (or press All to tick every visible one), then press Synchronize — it pulls and pushes in one pass. A long sync shows its progress — how many photos of the total have moved — and a Cancel button stops it cleanly between photos, keeping whatever already transferred. It also appears in the app’s task panel, so it keeps running — and stays watchable and cancelable there — if you switch to another tab; only one sync runs at a time.

Sync just part of the library

You rarely want the whole library at once. Narrow it in any of these ways, and the middle grid and Synchronize follow:

Click a folder, album or roll on either side. Selecting it on your sidebar or on the peer rail highlights the same node on the other — and shows that album’s whole difference, including the other machine’s photos you’d pull in.
Click a capture or modified date. If the exact day isn’t on the other machine, the nearest match is highlighted instead — pick a day the other side lacks and its month (or year) lights up.
Filter your library the normal way (rating, search, a keyword) — the middle grid narrows to what’s showing.

Structure that only one machine has is marked new on both sides — the peer’s folders/albums you don’t have yet, and your own the peer is missing — so you can see at a glance what a sync would add where.

Bringing albums and folders over

Photos and their album membership are separate things. If you’ve already synced some photos (say by date) but not the album they live in, click that album on the peer rail and press Synchronize — it creates the album on your machine and files the already-present photos into it, even though there are no photos left to move.

This also works for empty folders and albums: select one on the other machine and syncing recreates it (and its folder structure) on yours, with nothing inside yet.

Renames cross too: rename a folder, album or roll on one machine and the next sync carries the new name to the other (the most recent rename wins). And a sync now works both ways at once — pushing photos to the other machine also brings your albums and folders there, so you no longer have to sync from each side to make the two structures match.

Deletions

Delete a photo on one machine and the other learns of it: on the next sync the photo shows a Deleted badge on the machine that still has it. Deletion is destructive, so it is handled more carefully than anything else:

Opt-in. A Deleted tile is never ticked by default — pressing Synchronize (or All) won’t remove a photo unless you tick it yourself, and it asks you to confirm before it moves anything to the trash.
Your edit wins. If you changed the photo — a develop edit, a rating, a keyword — after the other machine deleted it, no deletion is offered. Your version stays; a removal never quietly destroys newer work.
It applies here, not over the wire. A sync only ever deletes this machine’s copy when it sees the other’s deletion — it never reaches across to delete on the far side. Each machine converges the same way the next time it syncs, so the two libraries agree without any machine deleting photos on another.
It goes to the trash. A synced deletion uses the same move-to-trash your own delete does, so it is recoverable from your operating system’s trash.

A deleted photo also won’t quietly come back: the machine that deleted it won’t re-pull or re-push it on a later sync — unless the other machine genuinely changed it after the deletion, in which case that change resurfaces the photo as New.

Only photos are propagated this way. Deleting an album, folder or roll is left alone — its photos stay in All photos, only the grouping is lost — so a sync never removes structure on the other machine.

Conflicts

When the same photo was edited on both machines since their last sync, nothing is overwritten. Your version stays as it is, and the other machine’s version arrives alongside it as a variant, so you can compare the two and keep whichever you prefer. See Variants for how to work with them.

New photos and referenced libraries

Where a new photo can go depends on how each library was created (see Managed vs referenced):

A managed library has a home for new photos, so they land automatically.
A referenced library doesn’t, so when a sync would pull new photos into one, PxlMonk asks where should the new photos go? once, and copies them there.

The same asymmetry runs the other way: you can’t push new photos to a referenced machine — it has nowhere to file them — so those photos are shown greyed and can’t be ticked, with a note saying only edits will be sent. Edits to photos it already has still push normally.

Right-click a photo

Right-click a tile for actions on that photo — or, with the two “selection” entries, on your whole ticked selection:

Show in library — jump to the Library tab with the photo selected (dropping to All photos if a selection spans several albums).
Open for editing — open it in Develop.
Sync only this / Sync selection — sync now, without the big button.
Delete this locally / Delete selection locally — remove your local copy (the usual delete confirmation applies). The plan rebuilds afterwards.

The library-only actions are greyed for a photo that isn’t on your machine yet.

Everything stays on your network

Machines find each other by local-network discovery and talk over an encrypted connection — there is no server and nothing goes to the cloud. To stop trusting a machine, press Unpair on it; to stop being discoverable, close PxlMonk.