pixelunion.eu No paid content found Multilingual

Yes. PixelUnion supports the native Immich mobile apps, so you can back up photos and videos from an iPhone or Android phone to PixelUnion's EU-hosted cloud and view them on your phone. The site states full support for both iPhone and Android, with instant and secure backups, and offers a "Download PixelUnion app" link. Because PixelUnion is built on a forked version of Immich, the mobile experience follows the Immich app model rather than a separate proprietary app.

What the mobile apps let you do

According to PixelUnion's own description, the phone apps cover the core jobs most people need:

• Back up from your phone — photos and videos go from your device to PixelUnion's cloud.
• Instant and secure backups — the backup is described as immediate rather than a manual, scheduled upload.
• View your photos on your phone — browsing happens in the app, not only in a browser.
• iPhone and Android support — both platforms are listed as fully supported.

How to get set up

1. Create a PixelUnion account (the site shows Login and Sign up options).
2. Download the PixelUnion app for your phone — the site provides a download link and states it supports the native Immich apps.
3. Sign in to the app with your PixelUnion account.
4. Turn on backup so your phone's camera roll uploads to your PixelUnion storage.
5. Confirm the upload by opening the app and checking that recent photos appear in your library.

The expected result: your phone's photos and videos are stored in your PixelUnion account and visible from the app on the same device or any other device you sign in on.

What to check before you rely on it

• Storage tier matters. The free tier is 16 GB, which fills quickly with video. Paid tiers are 150 GB (€2.95/month), 450 GB (€4.95/month), and 2000 GB (€9.95/month), with yearly billing at a discount (for example, 150 GB at €2.46/month, €29.50 billed once a year). Larger needs scale from 4 TB to 16 TB by contacting PixelUnion.
• It's Immich-based. If you already know Immich, the app behavior should feel familiar; if not, expect an Immich-style interface rather than a Google Photos clone.
• Migration is a separate step. Moving an existing Google Photos library is covered by PixelUnion's own migration guidance and is not the same as installing the app.

Common sticking points

• Assuming the app is PixelUnion-branded only. The site says it supports the native Immich apps, so the app you install may be the Immich app rather than a PixelUnion-specific one.
• Skipping backup settings. Installing the app alone doesn't move your library; you need to enable and confirm backup.
• Underestimating video size. A 16 GB free tier is fine for testing, not for a full camera roll.

For the exact download link and current app options, use the "Download PixelUnion app" entry on pixelunion.eu, since app store listings and supported versions can change.

An open-source UI element library is a collection of individual, ready-made interface pieces—buttons, cards, inputs, toggles, loaders—that you copy into your own project and adapt. A UI framework, by contrast, is a structured system of components, conventions, and often a theming layer that governs how your whole interface is built. The practical difference: an element library gives you a snippet; a framework gives you a way of working. If you need a polished button in ten minutes, reach for the element library. If you're building a 40-screen product with a team, you probably want the framework.

What "open-source UI element library" actually means

The term gets used loosely, so it helps to separate the parts:

• Open-source: the code is publicly available, and the license tells you what you may do with it—copy, modify, redistribute, or use commercially.
• UI element: a single, self-contained piece of interface, usually small enough to read in one sitting. A button with hover states, a pricing card, a search field.
• Library: a browsable, searchable collection of those elements, typically contributed by many different people.

On a site like Uiverse, elements are shared by a community and written in plain CSS or Tailwind. You find one you like, copy the markup and styles, paste them into your project, and adjust colors, spacing, and text to fit. There's no package to install and no build step required—which is exactly the appeal, and also the source of most of the confusion.

Element library vs. UI framework: the core differences

The table isn't a verdict. It's a map of trade-offs. Element libraries win on speed and freedom; frameworks win on consistency and maintenance.

Licensing and attribution: what to check before you paste

This is where people get into trouble, and it's worth slowing down for.

1. Find the license. Every element or collection should state one. Common open-source licenses include MIT, Apache-2.0, and BSD. Some projects use copyleft licenses like GPL, which can impose obligations if you redistribute your code.
2. Understand what the license permits. MIT and Apache-2.0 are permissive: you can typically use the code in commercial and closed-source projects. Copyleft licenses may require you to release derivative source under the same terms.
3. Check attribution requirements. Permissive licenses usually require you to keep the copyright notice and license text somewhere in your project. That's a real obligation, not a formality.
4. Look for per-element terms. On community sites, the site's overall terms and the individual contributor's stated wishes may differ. If a contributor asks for credit, honor it.
5. When in doubt, ask or avoid. If a snippet has no license at all, you don't have clear permission to reuse it. Treat "no license" as "not open source," even if the code is publicly visible.

This article is general information, not legal advice. For commercial products with real exposure, have someone qualified review the licenses you're relying on.

How to use a community element in your project: a practical workflow

Here's a repeatable process that avoids most of the usual mess.

1. Start from a real need, not a browsing session

Decide what you need first—"a compact primary button with a loading state"—then search. Browsing aimlessly produces a pile of pretty snippets that don't fit together.

2. Copy the smallest version that works

Take the markup and the styles. Strip anything you don't need: demo wrappers, extra animations, decorative layers. Less code means fewer surprises.

3. Convert it to your conventions

If your project uses design tokens or CSS variables, replace hard-coded values:

/* Before: hard-coded */
.button { background: #4f46e5; border-radius: 8px; }

/* After: token-based */
.button { background: var(--color-primary); border-radius: var(--radius-md); }

This one step is what keeps a copied element from looking like a foreign object in your UI.

4. Check accessibility before you ship

Community elements vary widely here. Verify at minimum:

• Keyboard focus is visible and the element is reachable by Tab.
• Color contrast meets WCAG AA (4.5:1 for normal text).
• Interactive elements use semantic HTML (<button>, not a clickable <div>).
• Form inputs have associated labels.
• Motion respects prefers-reduced-motion.

5. Test in context

Paste it into a real page with real content. Long labels, small screens, and dark mode break more copied elements than anything else.

6. Note where it came from

Keep a short comment or an internal credits file: source, license, date. Future you—and your legal reviewer—will be grateful.

Where element libraries genuinely shine

• Prototypes and demos: you need something clickable today, not a design system.
• Landing pages and marketing sites: a handful of distinctive elements, each custom.
• Filling gaps: your framework lacks one specific component, and you don't want to build it from scratch.
• Learning: reading well-made CSS is one of the fastest ways to improve.
• Small projects: a personal site doesn't need a theming architecture.

Where they fall short

• Consistency at scale: ten elements from ten contributors rarely look like one product.
• Maintenance: you own every copy. When your design changes, you edit each one.
• Accessibility debt: you inherit whatever the contributor did or didn't do.
• No upstream fixes: a bug fixed in the original won't reach your copy.
• Integration friction: different naming conventions, different units, different assumptions about resets.

When to choose which

Choose an element library when the scope is small, the timeline is short, or you need a few distinctive pieces rather than a whole system.

Choose a framework or design system when multiple people build multiple screens over months, when consistency is a product requirement, or when accessibility and theming need to be guaranteed rather than checked.

A hybrid works well for many teams: adopt a framework for the structural components—forms, navigation, layout—and borrow individual elements for the places where you want personality. Just route every borrowed element through the same token and accessibility checks, so it lands as part of your system rather than beside it.

The short version: open-source UI element libraries are a fast, flexible way to get good-looking interface pieces into a project. They are not a substitute for a design system, and the license and accessibility details are the part worth reading carefully.

PixelUnion keeps your photos and videos on servers located in the EU, runs them on 100% renewable energy, and builds its service on a forked version of the open-source Immich platform. According to the site, it shows no ads and does no tracking, and it offers privacy-focused facial recognition and AI object recognition. If your main concern is keeping personal media off American tech platforms while still getting automatic phone backup, this is the model PixelUnion is selling.

Where your photos actually live

The core privacy claim is geographic and infrastructural:

• European servers. PixelUnion states that all servers and storage are on European soil, so your library is not stored on US-based infrastructure.
• 100% renewable energy. The same servers run on green power, which the site frames as part of a minimal CO2 footprint.
• EU-based operation. The service is positioned explicitly as an alternative to American tech platforms for photo and video storage.

For anyone whose threat model is "I don't want my library sitting in a US cloud," the location of the servers is the single most important fact here. It does not, by itself, tell you the full legal jurisdiction story, but it is the concrete, checkable claim the site makes.

Built on open-source Immich

PixelUnion is not a closed black box. The site says it is built on a forked version of Immich, the open-source photo and video backup platform. Two practical consequences follow:

• The underlying technology is inspectable in principle, since Immich is open source.
• PixelUnion supports the native Immich mobile apps, so iPhone and Android backup works through an existing, widely used client rather than a proprietary app you have to trust blindly.

The site also lists "Open source" and "Mobile apps" as top-level navigation items, and offers a dedicated "Immich" account area, which is consistent with the fork-based approach.

No ads, no tracking

The page states plainly: no ads or tracking. That matters because ad-supported photo services typically monetize by profiling your content and behavior. Removing ads and tracking removes that incentive entirely — the business model here is paid storage tiers, not attention.

Privacy-preserving recognition features

PixelUnion advertises facial recognition with privacy and AI object recognition. These are the features that usually create the most anxiety in photo apps, because they require analyzing your images. The site's framing is that these capabilities are implemented with privacy in mind rather than by shipping your photos to a third-party AI service. If recognition features are important to you, this is the claim to verify against the help center or support before committing.

What you get on the phone

Backup is the everyday privacy surface — every photo you take leaves your device. PixelUnion's stated behavior:

• Instant and secure backups from phone to cloud.
• Full support for iPhone and Android.
• Viewing your photos on your phone through the native Immich apps.

Pricing as a privacy signal

The service is not ad-funded, so the tiers tell you what you're actually paying for:

Larger needs scale from 4 TB to 16 TB at €19,95 per month for 4 TB, with 16 TB available on request. The free 16 GB tier lets you test the privacy and backup behavior before paying anything.

How to decide

Choose PixelUnion if your priority is EU-hosted storage, an open-source foundation, and no ad or tracking model, and you want automatic iPhone/Android backup through the Immich apps. The free 16 GB tier is the low-risk way to confirm the apps work with your phone and that backups behave as described.

Before relying on it, verify the two claims that matter most to you personally: the exact server location and legal setup, and how facial/AI recognition processes your images. Both are answerable through the site's Help Center and support channels.

PixelUnion is a private photo and video storage service built on a forked version of Immich and hosted entirely within the EU. It offers a free 16 GB tier plus paid plans from 150 GB to 16 TB, supports the native Immich mobile apps for iPhone and Android, and runs its servers on 100% renewable energy. It is aimed at people who want to move their photo library off American tech platforms without giving up automatic phone backup or mobile viewing.

What PixelUnion actually is

PixelUnion is not a from-scratch photo app. It is a hosted service built on a forked version of Immich, the open-source photo and video backup platform. That distinction matters: the underlying software is open source, while PixelUnion supplies the infrastructure, storage, and support layer around it.

The service positions itself around two claims:

• Privacy and safety as defaults — the site states "No ads or tracking" and lists facial recognition with privacy among its features.
• European hosting — servers sit on European soil, and all servers and storage run on 100% renewable energy, which the site describes as a minimal CO2 footprint.

The site's own framing is "Your memories, kept safe in Europe," with the tagline "Free your photos from American tech platforms."

Storage plans and pricing

PixelUnion publishes both monthly and yearly pricing. Yearly billing is advertised as "2 months free," and the page shows the exact annual totals.

The 16 GB tier is described as "perfect for getting started" and is free permanently ("€0 always free"). The 450 GB plan is marked "Popular" on the pricing page.

For larger libraries, PixelUnion offers a scale-up option: storage from 4 TB to 16 TB, priced at €19,95 per month for 4 TB, with a "Contact Us" step for the upper end of that range.

Mobile apps and backup

PixelUnion supports the native Immich apps rather than shipping its own client. According to the site, this means:

• Backups from your phone to the cloud happen instantly.
• You can view your photos on your phone.
• iPhone and Android are both fully supported.

The practical takeaway: if you already know Immich's mobile app, the backup and browsing experience should feel familiar, because PixelUnion is built on a fork of that same software.

Migrating from Google Photos

The site lists "Migrating from Google Photos" as a dedicated section alongside its help center, which suggests migration is a supported, documented path rather than something you improvise. If leaving Google Photos is your main reason for looking at PixelUnion, that section is the place to start before signing up, since it should tell you what carries over and what does not.

Who this fits

PixelUnion makes sense if you want:

• EU-based storage with a stated renewable-energy footprint.
• Open-source foundations — Immich under the hood, with the option to understand or verify the software.
• A free starting point — 16 GB costs nothing and never expires, so you can test backup and browsing before paying.
• Straightforward scaling — from 150 GB up to 16 TB without changing providers.

It is less obviously a fit if you need features the page does not mention, or if you want to compare against non-EU providers on dimensions like sharing, editing, or third-party integrations — none of which appear in the material available here.

Getting started

1. Choose a plan on the pricing page — the 16 GB free tier works as a trial.
2. Create an account via the sign-up link.
3. Download the PixelUnion app (the native Immich app) for iPhone or Android.
4. Point the app at your PixelUnion account and let it back up your camera roll.
5. If you are coming from Google Photos, work through the migration section before deleting anything at the source.

The one thing worth verifying yourself before committing: how the migration handles albums, metadata, and shared items, since those details are not spelled out in the page content summarized here.

PixelUnion provides a dedicated "Migrating from Google Photos" page and a Help Center to guide the process, and it runs on a forked version of Immich, which supports the native Immich mobile apps for iPhone and Android. That means migration is a two-part job: get your library out of Google Photos, then get it into PixelUnion. The exact export steps depend on what Google currently offers in your account, so treat the steps below as the general flow and confirm menu names in your own Google account.

What you need before you start

• A PixelUnion account (the site offers a free 16 GB tier and paid tiers from 150 GB upward, so you can test the workflow before committing to a large plan).
• Enough PixelUnion storage for your library. If your Google Photos library is larger than your chosen tier, either upgrade or migrate in batches.
• A destination for the Google export that isn't your phone's limited local storage — a computer or external drive is safer for large libraries.
• Time. Exports of large libraries can take hours or days to be prepared by Google, and uploads take time proportional to your library size.

Step 1: Export your library from Google Photos

Google's standard route is Google Takeout, which packages your data into downloadable archives.

1. Sign in to your Google account and open Google Takeout.
2. Deselect all services, then select only Google Photos.
3. Choose your export options — file type, archive size, and delivery method (download link or cloud destination).
4. Start the export and wait for Google to notify you that it's ready.
5. Download all archive parts and extract them on your computer.

Expected result: a set of folders containing your photos and videos, typically with JSON sidecar files holding metadata such as album names and timestamps.

Common snags:

• Large libraries are split into multiple archives; you need every part before extracting.
• Takeout sometimes flattens album structure or separates metadata into JSON files, so albums may not survive the round trip intact.
• Edited photos may appear alongside originals, and some Google-specific formats (for example Motion Photos) may not carry over cleanly.

Step 2: Get the files into PixelUnion

PixelUnion is built on a forked version of Immich and supports the native Immich apps, so you have two practical upload paths.

Option A: Upload from a computer

1. Log in to your PixelUnion account in a browser.
2. Use the upload function to select the extracted folders.
3. Upload in batches if your library is large, so a single failure doesn't force you to restart everything.
4. Verify that photos and videos appear in your library and that albums are grouped as expected.

Option B: Back up from your phone

1. Install the PixelUnion app (available for iPhone and Android).
2. Sign in with your PixelUnion account.
3. Point the app's backup at your phone's photo library and let it sync.

This path is best for photos already on your phone. It won't help with the Google Photos archive you downloaded to a computer, so most people migrating a full library use Option A for the archive and Option B for ongoing phone backups.

Step 3: Verify the migration

• Count check: compare the number of items in your PixelUnion library against the number of files you extracted.
• Spot check: open a sample of photos from different years and albums to confirm they display correctly.
• Metadata check: confirm dates and locations look right, since these often come from sidecar files rather than the images themselves.
• Album check: verify that albums you care about were recreated, and rebuild any that were lost in export.

Choosing a storage tier for your library

PixelUnion's published plans, from the site's pricing section:

Yearly billing is advertised as two months free. Larger needs scale from 4 TB to 16 TB at €19,95 per month for 4 TB, with 16 TB available on request. Match the tier to your library size plus headroom for future photos — the free 16 GB tier is enough to test the migration workflow but not for most real libraries.

Practical notes

• PixelUnion states it runs on 100% renewable energy with servers on European soil, and advertises no ads or tracking plus privacy-focused facial recognition and AI object features. These are the site's own claims; if data residency matters to you, confirm the specifics in the Help Center before migrating.
• Because PixelUnion is Immich-based, Immich's own documentation and community guides are a useful supplement for upload behavior and metadata handling, even though PixelUnion is a forked version.
• If you hit problems, the site lists a Help Center and support contact — the "Migrating from Google Photos" page is the intended starting point for this exact task.

The migration is straightforward in shape — export, upload, verify — but the fiddly parts are archive size, album structure, and metadata. Budget time for the export and check your library carefully before deleting anything from Google Photos.