Getting Started
Fictura is a local-first app: your photos, videos, and audio live on your own disk, in your own SQLite database, under your own control. There's no cloud tier to upgrade into, no subscription gate on your own files, and no account required to use the app itself — the account you create on this site is only for managing your license and devices, not for storing or syncing your media.
First launch
The first time you open Fictura, a setup wizard walks you through the handful of decisions that matter before you start importing:
- Choose a data location. This is where Fictura's own database and generated variants (thumbnails, previews, exported proxies) will live on disk. Pick a drive with enough free space for your library to grow — variants can add up for large photo/video collections, though they're always regenerable from your originals if you ever need to reclaim space.
- Add scan directories. Point the app at one or more folders where your existing photos, videos, and audio already live. These become the places Fictura looks both when importing new files and when Sync needs to repair a broken file path later — the more complete this list, the more reliable automatic path repair will be.
- Review AI/ML feature defaults. Fictura can optionally use local models for image description, transcription, and face detection. You can enable or skip these now and revisit the choice any time in Settings.
- Finish, or accept defaults. Every choice here is changeable later — there's no wrong answer that locks you out of anything.
How authentication works
Fictura authenticates silently in the desktop app — there's no username or password to type inside the app itself, ever. On first launch, a random local secret is generated once and stored next to your database; the app uses it to sign itself in automatically on every subsequent launch. This secret (and therefore your session) survives app updates and reinstalls — only wiping your app data or moving to a new machine regenerates it, and even then it happens automatically with zero prompts.
What "local-first" means day to day
- Originals never move without you knowing. Fictura tracks each photo/video/audio file's location on disk but doesn't require copying it into its own storage — the original stays exactly where you put it unless you explicitly turn on "Copy Originals to Internal" during Sync.
- Variants are disposable. Thumbnails, previews, and rendered exports are regenerable at any time from your originals plus your saved edit history — deleting them never loses data, only render time.
- Backups are yours. Nothing is uploaded anywhere automatically; back up your library the same way you'd back up any other folder on disk — Sync's maintenance tools can help identify what's changed since your last backup.
Where to go next
- What Fictura Is (and Isn't) — the scope of what Fictura does, and what it deliberately leaves to dedicated tools.
- Browsing Your Library — the main screen you'll spend the most time in.
- Import — bring existing media into your library.
- Settings — configure scan directories, defaults, and AI features at any time.