Configuration
Watch Folders
This is what PhotoTray is actually for: point it at the folders your photos land in, and it fixes them on arrival — on your machine, nothing uploaded.
Open Watch Folders from the System section of the sidebar.
The screen
- At the top, a plain stat line: "This week: N photos converted." Alongside it, Pause all — one click stops every rule. While paused, a banner explains that new matching files are queued and will run when you press Resume all. The same checkbox lives in the tray menu as Pause all watch folders.
- Rules — every rule you have, showing the folder, what it matches, the pipeline it runs, and what happens to the original. Each has an On checkbox and a delete button. With none set up it reads: "No watch folders yet. Convert some photos by hand and PhotoTray will offer to automate it — or turn on one of the suggestions below."
- Suggestions — ready-made rules for folders PhotoTray can see on your machine. Each shows the real folder it would watch and what it would match, with a Turn on button. Nothing here is pre-ticked: "Off until you turn them on — nothing runs automatically without your say-so." A suggestion whose folder does not exist on your PC is not offered at all.
- Activity — every file processed automatically, with an Undo button on each entry. Failed entries are marked, already-undone ones say so.
The suggestions PhotoTray offers
| Suggestion | What it does |
|---|---|
| iPhone import → JPG | Converts HEIC photos to JPG as soon as they land, so every app can open them. Originals are kept. |
| Downloads & Desktop → PNG | Converts WebP and AVIF images from the web to PNG so every app can open them. |
| Screenshots → compressed & filed | Losslessly compresses new screenshots, renames them by date, and files them into a month folder. |
| Camera / SD card → Photos | Converts RAW photos to JPG, upscales 2×, strips GPS, and files them by year and month. RAW originals are kept. |
| Shared → strip metadata | Strips all metadata from photos you place in a Shared folder, before you send them anywhere. |
The rule PhotoTray offers you
The moment you finish a conversion by hand, a toast appears in the corner: "Do this automatically?" with a one-line description of the rule it would create — watch that folder for that file type, convert the same way, output alongside, originals kept. Create rule accepts it; Not now dismisses it, and PhotoTray will not ask again for that folder and file type.
Folders that sync to your other devices
If a rule would watch a folder inside OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive, PhotoTray stops and says so before creating it — a real dialog, not a toast.
- "This folder syncs to your other devices" is a warning. You can read the reason and press Create it anyway, or Cancel.
- "This rule can't be created" is a refusal. There is no continue button — a rule that would move or delete originals inside a synced folder is not allowed.
If something goes wrong here
- A rule is on but nothing is happening. Check whether Pause all is active (the banner and the tray checkbox both show it), and whether the rule's own On box is ticked. Rules also need bandwidth sharing to be on, like every other kind of work.
- A rule did something I did not want. Find the entry in Activity and press Undo. If the undo hits a problem it reports exactly what it could not reverse.
- Photo Organizer is not available in any rule. By design — duplicate review is a human decision, so that utility can never run unattended.
- My SD card reader does not get picked up. Card readers get a different drive letter each time, which cannot be watched. The Camera / SD card suggestion watches a staging folder you copy the card's contents into.
Get PhotoTray
Free for Windows 10 and 11. No account, no file limits, nothing uploaded.