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A shared trip photo and video app with resumable uploads and a map.
01 / Problem
On a trip to Denmark with two iPhones and two Androids, the group chat compressed everything and videos failed over roaming data. I built one shared album of originals that opens with a link and a four-digit PIN, with no accounts.
02 / How it works
A Fastify server accepts resumable uploads, queues each file in a durable job queue, and uses exiftool, libvips and ffmpeg to read the capture time and GPS and make thumbnails and previews. Everything sits in one SQLite file and one storage folder. Server-sent events push new items to every phone, and a map groups photos by where they were taken.
03 / The hard part
iOS can take a long time to copy originals out of the photo library, so each pick keeps its own file input alive until the upload ends. On Android I moved the upload bytes to the browser's download manager so they continue with the screen locked, and copied files into plain blobs because Chrome sent empty bodies for input-backed files. Photos from iOS 26 had no previews until I moved the image to a base that ships a newer HEIC library.
04 / Result
146 automated tests cover the server and the upload flow, with end-to-end runs at phone and desktop sizes. Capture times are tested against synthetic files for each phone family, PIN attempts are throttled and uploads are refused before the disk fills. The trip ended and I retired the app and archived the repository.
How it works
One container and one database file. Originals go in, and every phone in the group sees them arrive.
The same flow as a list, in order.
Stack, by layer
Live from the fælles. repoOffline, last known values