Help & reference
The bandwidth exchange
This is how PhotoTray stays free, and it is the one thing worth reading in full before you decide whether the app is for you.
While PhotoTray is installed and running, it shares a slice of your device's idle internet bandwidth through Massive, a bundled sharing component. You agreed to this on the first page of the installer, before anything else was asked.
What is shared: a small amount of your device's free network resources and your IP address, to download public web data.
What is never shared: your photos, your files, your browsing history, your credentials, or anything you process in the utilities. The exchange has no access to any of it.
Why the utilities stop when it does. Sharing is what pays for the utilities, so they only run while it is on. Turning sharing off disables them — the switch, the tray menu, and the panel notice all say so plainly, rather than letting you fill in a form that is guaranteed to be refused. Jobs already running when sharing stops are allowed to finish; new work is not accepted.
Only one Clearware tray app shares at a time. If you also run another Clearware product on this machine, PhotoTray shares a slice of idle bandwidth when it can — the two do not stack.
The status indicator
The sidebar footer and Settings ▸ Bandwidth exchange both show the live state:
| Indicator | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sharing | Idle bandwidth is being shared to keep PhotoTray free. |
| Starting… | The exchange is initializing. |
| Paused | Sharing is paused. |
| Paused · error | Sharing is paused — the engine reported an error. |
| Off | Sharing is off, so the utilities are disabled. Turn it on in Settings. |
| Off · stopped in Massive | Sharing was stopped from the Massive tray icon. Start it there, or turn it on in Settings. |
| Unavailable | The exchange could not start on this machine at all. |
Turning it off
Use Share idle bandwidth, either in Settings ▸ Bandwidth exchange or in the tray menu. The utilities are disabled while it is off. Quitting PhotoTray from the tray stops sharing for as long as the app is closed, and uninstalling ends participation entirely.
If something goes wrong here
- "Sharing could not be started." The engine refused to start. Check that Massive is installed and running on this machine, then toggle Share idle bandwidth again.
- "Off · stopped in Massive". You (or something else) stopped sharing from Massive's own tray icon. PhotoTray will not silently override that — restart it there, or use the switch in Settings.
- "Unavailable" and a full-window screen with a Retry button. No sharing backend works on this machine, so nothing in the app can run. Press Retry after checking that Massive is installed; if it keeps failing, reinstall.
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