# SyncPhotos Help

## SyncPhotos System Components

SyncPhotos has 2 components.

SyncPhotos.app is the main way you interact with SyncPhotos. It displays the window showing all the other computers. From there you can browse and retrieve new photos on those computers, and configure automatic sync.

SyncPhotos Agent is a background app contained within the SyncPhotos.app bundle. It shows up as a small icon in the menu bar: (You can hide the icon in the SyncPhotos Preferences)

SyncPhotos Agent does 3 things:

- catalog your iPhoto Library's photos and videos, and automatically re-catalog whenever your iPhoto Library changes
- automatically retrieve new photos and videos from any other computers that are configured for automatic sync
- serve catalog information and photos and videos to other computers

When you first launch SyncPhotos, if SyncPhotos Agent is not running SyncPhotos launches it.

SyncPhotos also adds SyncPhotos Agent to the "login items" (if you permit it) so that whenever you're using your Mac SyncPhotos Agent is running and facilitating communication with SyncPhotos running on other computers on your network. You can enable/disable this by toggling the "Start SyncPhotos Agent at login" checkbox in the SyncPhotos Preferences.