Install SmartLog: Add It to Your Home Screen

1. Open this page in Safari. Not inside Instagram, Facebook or a messaging app. This step matters most.
2. Tap the red Launch SmartLog button above. The app opens straight away, ready to use. Ignore the Download button on iPhone and iPad, it will not give you a working app.
3. Tap the Share button in Safari. It is the square with an arrow pointing up, at the bottom of the screen on iPhone and at the top right on iPad.
4. Scroll down the share list and tap Add to Home Screen.
5. Leave Open as Web App switched on. That is what makes it open full screen like a real app and keep your log safely.
6. Tap Add at the top right. Done.

You now have a SmartLog icon on your home screen. It opens instantly, fills the whole screen with no browser bars, and works fully offline on set. No account with us, no subscription, and your logs stay on your device.

Because iOS has nowhere useful to put it. The download saves into the Files app as a single HTML file, and there is no reliable way to open it back up as a working app from there. You would end up with a file you cannot use.

The Download button is for Mac, Windows and Android only. On iPhone and iPad, use Launch SmartLog and Add to Home Screen instead. You lose nothing by doing it that way: the home screen version works completely offline, exactly like the downloaded file does on a computer.

Only the very first time. When you open SmartLog on a new device it downloads and stores itself in your browser, which takes a few seconds on any normal connection.

After that it is yours offline: opening the app, logging takes, attaching reference stills, cutting camera reports and exporting PDF, CSV and JSON all work with no signal at all. Perfect for a basement, a sound stage or a night exterior in the middle of nowhere.

Onto your device, and nowhere we can reach. They are saved into SmartLog's own storage on the device you shot them with, alongside the rest of your log. There is no upload to us, no server of ours and no account with us, so there is nowhere for them to go even if we wanted them to. If you switch on team sync they ride along with your log into your own cloud account, which stays yours.

Each frame is scaled down as it is saved, so a still is tens of kilobytes and a whole shoot day is a few megabytes. The only limit is your own device's storage. Your backups and JSON exports carry the stills with them, so moving to a new phone brings them along.

Open this page in Chrome, tap Launch SmartLog, then open the browser menu (three dots, top right) and choose Install app or Add to Home screen. You get an app icon that works offline, same as on iPhone.

Open SmartLog in Chrome or Edge and click Install: the small install icon at the right of the address bar, or Install SmartLog in the browser menu. It becomes a proper app window with its own icon in your dock or taskbar. On a computer you can also use Download SmartLog to keep the whole app as one file you own.

Yes, free forever, and there is no account with us to create and nothing of ours to sign in to. We do not track you. Everything you log is stored on your own device, and it stays there unless you switch on team sync, which writes to a cloud account you already own and that we have no part in.

Add SmartLog to your home screen rather than leaving it as a browser tab, and never work from inside an app's mini browser. Those are the two things that put a log at risk.

On top of that, open Setup and use the backup card. On Chrome, Edge and Android you can pick an auto-backup file once and SmartLog rewrites your whole log to it after every change. On any device, including iPhone and iPad, Back up now hands you a dated full backup you can save or send to yourself.

Everyone on the team connects the same Google Drive account, usually one made for the job, switches Team sync on, and SmartLog keeps a single shared log file in that account. Each device pulls in the takes the others logged and adds its own, so the whole camera team is reading the same day.

It is your account and your file. We never see it, we have no server in between, and it is off until somebody turns it on.

Nothing bad, and this is the point. Every take always saves to your device first, instantly, whether or not there is any signal. Logging, reports, PDFs and CSVs never need a connection.

When the device is back on a network, SmartLog quietly brings the shared cloud copy up to date on its own. You do not have to remember anything, and a dead spot cannot cost you a take.

No. Sync merges take by take and field by field: a teammate’s new takes appear on your device, gaps get filled in, and anything you typed yourself is never overwritten by an incoming copy.

There is also a Read only mode for producers, script supervisors and anyone just following the day: their device pulls the team log and can never write to it. And if a device carrying a different production connects to the team account, nothing merges until its owner agrees, so last month’s job cannot flood this one.

One honest limit: deleting a take removes it on that device, and it can come back on the next sync. Deletes deliberately do not travel between devices.

Yes, if you switch team sync on. They are part of your log, so they travel with it into your own cloud account and they come back when you restore, which is the point: a new phone gets the frames as well as the takes.

With team sync off, which is how SmartLog arrives, they never leave the device at all. Either way the only cloud involved is yours. We have no server that could receive a photograph, and we never see one.

Switch on Keep dated snapshots in the cloud options and SmartLog also writes one copy per shoot day, so a bad merge is recoverable from the day before. The shared file is a normal file in your own Drive, so your Drive’s own version history applies to it as well.

Deleting a take is the safest mistake to make: deletes do not travel, so any teammate’s device still has it and the next sync brings it back. And nothing is ever removed from your device by a sync, only added or filled in.

Team sync keeps a single file called smartlog-backup.json, written straight into your own Google Drive. With dated snapshots on you also get one smartlog-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json per shoot day. They sit at the top level of your Drive.

They are ordinary files and they are yours: you can open them, move them into a folder, share them with the crew, or delete them. Deleting is safe, because the next backup simply writes a fresh one. SmartLog can only ever see the files it created itself, so the rest of your Drive is none of its business.

Yes, and this is what the two QR codes are for. One device shows a code, the other scans it, a reply code goes back, and the log crosses directly between the two devices over the WiFi in the room or a hotspot from one of the phones. No cloud, no cable, no account, and on the same network it never touches the internet.

The transfer carries the whole log, reference stills and lighting diagrams included, and the receiving device checks it with a checksum before offering to merge it in or replace what it had. What crosses is the log itself, so the other person can then cut any report they need from it. To hand somebody a finished PDF instead, export the report and AirDrop or email it as usual.