How AutoButler Works

AutoButler is a small device that sits on your home network and stores your files on hard drives you own. Nothing leaves your house.

Here's what that looks like.

Your files, your network

::mermaid

code: | graph LR Phone"📱 Your Phone" -->|WiFi| Router"🏠 Home Router" Router --> Butler"🤖 AutoButler" Butler --> Drive"💾 Your Drive" Laptop"💻 Your Laptop" -->|WiFi| Router Tablet"📱 Tablet" -->|WiFi| Router

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Every device on your home WiFi can access AutoButler. Your files are stored on the hard drive you plug in — not on Google's servers, not on Apple's servers, not anywhere else.

How this is different from iCloud or Google Photos

::mermaid

code: | graph TD subgraph cloud"❌ Cloud Storage — your data leaves home" P1"📱 Your Phone" -->|Internet| CS"☁️ Google / Apple Servers" CS -->|Internet| P2"💻 Your Laptop" end subgraph local"✅ AutoButler — your data stays home" P3"📱 Your Phone" -->|Local WiFi| AB"🤖 AutoButler" AB --> D"💾 Your Drive" AB -->|Local WiFi| P4"💻 Your Laptop" end

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With cloud storage, your photos and files travel over the internet to a server you don't own. Every photo you take, every document you save — it all goes to someone else's computer first.

With AutoButler, your files go straight to a device sitting in your home. You own the hardware, you own the data.

Accessing from outside your home (coming soon)

We're adding the ability to access your files from anywhere — at work, traveling, or on your phone's data connection.

When you set up AutoButler, your phone and your device establish a private, encrypted tunnel between them. This happens automatically — you don't need to configure anything.

::mermaid

code: | graph TD Phone"📱 Your Phone\n(anywhere in the world)" Pi"🤖 AutoButler\n(at home)" Coord"AutoButler\nCoordination Server" Drive"💾 Your Drive" Phone <-->|"Encrypted direct tunnel"| Pi Pi --- Drive Phone -.->|"Connection setup only"| Coord Coord -.->|"Connection setup only"| Pi

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The coordination server only helps your phone and your AutoButler find each other. Once they're connected, all your actual data travels directly between them — encrypted, and never passing through our servers.

Think of it like FaceTime — Apple helps your devices find each other, but your actual call goes directly between them.

What AutoButler stores

When you plug a drive into AutoButler, it organizes your files into a simple structure:

  • Photos & Videos — Synced from your phone or uploaded from your computer. Organized by date, easy to browse.
  • Documents — PDFs, spreadsheets, notes — anything you want to keep safe on your own hardware.
  • Backups — Back up one drive to another with a single tap, so you always have a second copy.
  • Books & Media — Read EPUBs, watch videos, and browse your files from any device on your network.

Everything is stored in plain folders on your drive. No proprietary format, no lock-in. If you ever want to unplug and move to something else, your files are just files.