Glossary

• Job — a single unit of work that runs in the background and appears in the Job Queue.
• Job Queue — the shared list of active and recent jobs, with progress and per-job actions.
• Batch — a group of photos submitted together. Some utilities run a batch as one job, others as one job per photo.
• Utility — one of the seven built-in tools. Each can be turned on or off individually.
• Output folder — the root location where utilities save files, each into its own subfolder.
• Watch rule — a saved instruction to watch one folder for matching files and run a pipeline on them as they arrive.
• Pipeline — the ordered steps a watch rule runs on each file, for example convert to JPG, then upscale 2×, then strip GPS.
• Original disposition — what a watch rule does with the source file: keep it, move it, or move it to a recoverable backup.
• Metadata — information stored inside a photo alongside the image: GPS location, camera make and model, capture date, IPTC and XMP fields, and the colour profile.
• EXIF — the most common metadata format written by cameras and phones.
• HEIC / HEIF — Apple's default photo format. PhotoTray can read it (with the free HEIF Image Extension) but cannot write it.
• RAW — an unprocessed camera file such as CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW or DNG.
• Lossless — a change that discards no image data. Rewrapping an H.264 video and optimising a PNG are both lossless; re-encoding a JPEG is not.
• Remux / rewrap — putting an existing video stream into a different container without re-encoding it. Near-instant, no quality change.
• Transcode — genuinely re-encoding a video into a different codec. Slow, and not lossless.
• The bandwidth exchange — the sharing of your device's idle internet bandwidth that funds the free app; it never shares your photos or personal data.
• Tray — the small icons near the Windows clock. PhotoTray runs here and reopens when you click its icon.
• Channel — the update track you follow: Stable (tested) or Beta (earlier, more risk).

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PhotoTray — a free, local-first photo utility belt for Windows.