Settings

Open Settings from the System section of the sidebar. There is a Search settings… box at the top — type to filter the sections down to what you are looking for.

The sections below are in the order you will see them.

General

• Output folder — the root folder where all utilities save, each into its own subfolder. Use Browse… to change it, or Reveal to open it in File Explorer.
• Job concurrency — the maximum number of jobs running simultaneously, from 1 to 16. Raise it to process batches faster; lower it to be gentler on your computer.

Notifications

• Notify when a job finishes — show a system notification when a conversion completes or fails.

Startup & window

• Launch on Windows startup — start PhotoTray minimized to the tray at login.

Updates

• Update channel — Stable or Beta. Beta receives releases earlier, with more risk.
• Check for updates — the hint line shows the live update state, and the button reads Check now, or Restart to update once an update has downloaded. See Updates.

Privacy & diagnostics

All three are anonymous, opt-out, and never include URLs, filenames, or your photos.

• Crash reports — send anonymized crash diagnostics.
• Usage analytics — send anonymous feature-usage events.
• Reinstall / Uninstall analytics — on first launch, send a single anonymous id so installs and reinstalls can be measured, and which sources lead to real usage.

See Privacy & diagnostics.

Bandwidth exchange

PhotoTray is free because it shares a portion of your idle bandwidth through Massive. Sharing is what pays for the utilities, so they only run while it is on.

• Share idle bandwidth — the single participation control. Its hint tells you the consequence as it currently stands: "On. The utilities are available." or "Off. The utilities are disabled until you turn sharing back on."
• Exchange status — a live pill showing the engine's actual state, not what you asked for.

The switch tracks the engine, not your setting. If you turn it on and the engine never starts, PhotoTray says so in red rather than showing you a satisfied-looking switch over a service that is not running. See The bandwidth exchange.

Tools

• yt-dlp — a bundled command-line tool with an Update now button. PhotoTray does not use it: no PhotoTray utility depends on it, so this row will normally report "Version unknown — the binary may not be installed yet." It is a shared platform control that appears in every product built on the same core; you can safely ignore it.

Utilities

A card for each utility, with a switch to enable or disable it — disabled utilities are hidden from the sidebar — and the subfolder it saves into. Where a utility has configurable defaults they appear on its card; where it does not, the card says "This utility has no additional settings."

• Image Converter — Default output format, JPG / WebP / AVIF quality, Keep EXIF and colour profile.
• Resize & Compress — Default operation, Default maximum width, Default maximum height, Default target file size (KB).
• Privacy Scrub — Default action. Note that no setting can pre-answer the HEIC confirmation.
• AI Enhance, Background Remover, Photo Organizer and Video Fix have no settings on their cards. Background Remover's When a cutout finishes choice lives in its own panel; Photo Organizer remembers your folders, pattern and destination automatically.

About

• Version — the installed PhotoTray build.
• Privacy policy — Open launches https://phototray.io/privacy in your browser.
• Open-source licenses — View opens the bundled third-party notices, grouped by license.

If something goes wrong here

• A setting I am looking for is not on screen. Clear the Search settings… box — it hides whole sections that do not match.
• The Share idle bandwidth switch is greyed out. The exchange is unavailable on this machine and toggling would not help. See Troubleshooting.
• A utility vanished from the sidebar. Its switch under Utilities is off.