Why We Built the Pexar App: Local Storage, No Subscription

Today, we're launching the first Pexar frame to run our self-developed app. Building our own software has been on Pexar's roadmap for some time — a frame is a single, focused product, and we wanted the software running on it to be designed end-to-end for that purpose. This post walks through the principles behind the app, the decisions we made along the way, and how the rollout is going.

Why We Built Our Own

Like most brands in this category, our hardware has shipped with a third-party app — one we continue to support and that's served our customers well for years. Owning the software ourselves was always a longer-term goal. The reason is straightforward: a digital frame sits in someone's living room for years. The experience of sending a photo to it, the way it handles your library, the way it ages with new phone formats — those touchpoints define the product as much as the panel does. We wanted that surface area to be ours to design, ours to refine, and ours to evolve along a roadmap shaped by the kind of frames we want to build.

The Principles That Shaped It

Two business models dominate the digital frame software space: subscription tiers that unlock features over time, and cloud-based architectures where photos pass through centralized servers. Both have legitimate reasons to exist — subscriptions fund ongoing development; cloud architectures enable cross-device features that are genuinely hard to do without them.

For Pexar specifically, we wanted a different starting point. Three principles shaped what we built: charge once and include everything; store photos locally on the frame, not in someone else's data center; design for what we want the product to be in five years, not just at launch. Version one doesn't have every feature we want it to have — that's the trade. What you see today won't disappear behind a paywall later.

What We Built

The first frame running our self-developed app is the Pexar 11" 2K Frame, App Version, available today. Three decisions sit at the core of what we built:

Zero subscription, everything included. Unlimited batch uploads. Videos up to 60 seconds. Captions, reactions, sleep schedules, custom albums. If it's in the app, it works on day one and keeps working.

Local storage, not cloud. Family photos are some of the most personal data on your phone — kids' birthdays, grandparents' last visits, the quiet weekends in between. Cloud-based photo services come with real privacy trade-offs: data breaches, third-party access, retention policies you don't fully control. We didn't want our customers' memories sitting on any server, ours included. So every photo on a Pexar App frame stays on the device it was sent to. The app is GDPR, CCPA, and PSTI compliant — the three frameworks governing personal data in the EU, California, and the UK. Each frame holds 32GB on-device (about 40,000 photos), expandable via SD card or USB. Wi-Fi is used only to move photos from your phone to the frame; after that, the frame works offline.

Live Photos, kept alive. Live Photos have quietly become the default way most iPhone users capture moments — a still with a short clip of motion and sound around it. Most digital frames flatten them back to a single still on import, losing what made the moment worth keeping. The Pexar App plays Live Photos the way they were captured — the laugh mid-bloom, the wave at the camera, the candle flicker all there. As more of how we capture moments shifts to motion by default, a frame that treats them as still images is missing the point.

If You Already Own a Pexar Frame

Nothing about your experience changes. Your frame runs Frameo, and Frameo continues to be supported. The new app ships with a new product line — it's a parallel option, not a forced upgrade. If your family wants to add a frame running the new app, the two run as separate setups, each paired with its own app.

The Launch Window

The 11" 2K App Version is shipping in tiered allocations: Launch Special at $99.99, Super Early Bird at $119.99, Early Bird at $139.99 — against a regular price of $189.99. The first tier is almost gone as of this writing. Estimated shipping is May 2nd. If the no-subscription, local-storage model is what you've been waiting for, the launch page has the current allocation status.

FAQs

Is the Pexar App free? Are there any subscription fees?
No subscription, ever. Every feature — batch uploads, video, captions, reactions — is included out of the box.

Does the Pexar App store my photos in the cloud?
No. Photos live on the frame's 32GB local storage. Wi-Fi is used only to transfer new photos from your phone — once they're on the frame, no internet is needed. The Pexar App is GDPR, CCPA, and PSTI compliant.

I already own a Pexar frame running Frameo — does anything change for me?
Nothing changes. Your frame keeps running Frameo, which continues to be supported. The new Pexar App ships on a new product line — there's no over-the-air switch that would convert your existing frame to it.

What file formats and video lengths does the Pexar App support?
Photos: JPG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, RAW, WEBP. Videos: MP4, MOV, M4V up to 60 seconds. Live Photos are supported on iOS.

Will the Pexar App come to other Pexar models?
The first frame running it is the 11" 2K App Version, available now. More models are on the roadmap — we'll announce as they're ready.