How to Back Up Your Entire SmugMug Library with Folio

Download every photo and video from your SmugMug account in one operation. Includes smart resume, metadata export, and disk space management.

Folio can download your entire SmugMug account — every photo and video from every gallery — in one operation.

Starting a Backup

Open Backup Account

Go to File > Backup Account (or press Cmd+Shift+B). This option is also available from the menu bar icon.

Review backup information

Folio displays a confirmation sheet explaining that the backup will download everything from all galleries. Large libraries may take a long time and require significant disk space.

The backup confirmation sheet in Folio

Configure metadata export

Optionally toggle Generate metadata files to save each photo's title, caption, and keywords alongside the downloaded file.

Start the backup

Click Start Backup.

Choose a destination folder

Select the folder where Folio should save your backup. This folder will contain your full SmugMug library structure.

How It Works

Folio fetches a list of every gallery in your account
Files are downloaded in original quality, gallery by gallery
Up to 3 files download simultaneously
Progress is shown in the toolbar and menu bar

Folder Structure

Folio preserves your SmugMug gallery structure on disk:

Backup Folder/
  Photography/
    Landscapes/
      Mountains/
        summit-sunset.jpg
        alpine-lake.jpg
      Beaches/
        tropical-shore.jpg
    Portraits/
      Client-Sessions/
        session-001.jpg

Metadata Files

When Generate metadata files is enabled, each photo gets a companion .txt file containing its SmugMug metadata:

Title: Summit Sunset
Caption: Golden hour light painting the mountain peaks above the alpine valley.
Keywords: sunset, mountains, landscape, golden hour, alpine

Before starting, Folio estimates the total disk space required for the backup. If your destination drive does not have enough free space, a warning dialog is shown with the estimated size and a choice to continue or cancel.

Resuming a Backup

Start a backup using the same destination

Open File > Backup Account and select the same destination folder you used previously.

Folio detects previously downloaded files

Folio scans the destination folder and identifies files that have already been downloaded.

Only new files are fetched

Folio skips previously downloaded files and fetches only the ones that are missing.

Folio verifies existing files using checksums to ensure completeness and integrity.

Cross-Album Duplicates

If the same photo appears in multiple galleries, Folio downloads it once and creates a hard link for each additional gallery location. This keeps the backup organized while saving disk space.

For very large libraries, consider running backups overnight to avoid interruptions.

For downloading individual galleries instead of your entire account, see Downloading.