LANPics

A lightweight photo & video album viewer for your home network. Drop your folders of images/videos, start the server, and anyone on your WiFi can browse them from any device.

Features

• Auto-discovers albums — scans your photos folder recursively; each leaf folder with images/videos becomes an album
• Thumbnails — auto-generated and cached for fast loading
• Video support — plays MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM and more right in the browser
• Full-screen lightbox — keyboard arrows, swipe on mobile, click outside to close
• LAN accessible — binds to 0.0.0.0 so any device on your WiFi can view
• Responsive — works on phones, tablets, and desktops
• Config file — change port and photos folder without touching code

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies

cd D:\Workbench\LANHub
npm install

2. Configure

Copy .env.example to .env and edit it:

PHOTOS_FOLDER=E:\YOUR_FOLDER

Setting	Description
PHOTOS_FOLDER	Absolute path to your root photos/videos folder

3. Run

npm start

Open http://localhost (or your LAN IP) in a browser.

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Permanent Hosting with PM2

PM2 keeps LANPics running in the background and auto-starts it when your PC boots.

Install PM2 (one-time)

npm install -g pm2
npm install -g pm2-windows-startup

Start LANPics with PM2

cd D:\Workbench\LANHub
pm2 start server.js --name lanpics
pm2 save

Enable auto-start on Windows boot

pm2-startup install

Useful PM2 Commands

Command	What it does
pm2 list	Show running processes
pm2 logs lanpics	View live logs
pm2 restart lanpics	Restart (after config changes)
pm2 stop lanpics	Stop the server
pm2 start lanpics	Start it again
pm2 monit	Real-time monitoring dashboard

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Unhosting / Removing

Stop and remove from PM2

pm2 stop lanpics
pm2 delete lanpics
pm2 save

Remove auto-start on boot

pm2-startup uninstall

Fully uninstall PM2 (optional)

npm uninstall -g pm2
npm uninstall -g pm2-windows-startup

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Finding Your LAN IP

Run this in a terminal to find the URL to share:

ipconfig | findstr "IPv4"

Share the IP with people on your WiFi, e.g. http://192.168.29.65

Since port 80 is the default HTTP port, no :port is needed in the URL.

Project Structure

LANHub/
├── config.json        # Port & folder settings
├── server.js          # Express server
├── package.json
├── public/
│   └── index.html     # Frontend (single-page app)
└── thumbcache/        # Auto-generated thumbnails (gitignored)

License

MIT