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Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

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Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#91

Post by apitman »

gcr wrote: post #71
behnamoh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably for some security reason While I'm sure this is probably true, the number of features Apple is depriving us from due to alleged "security reasons" is baffling. It's a general excuse among firms that want to keep their monopoly and walled garden (OpenAI does the same).

Apple provides access to photos just fine, using a different API. Having a separate API for photo access is annoying while developing this use case, but it's appropriate for a couple different reasons: for one, if apps could access the raw files, that could reveal metadata like location. For another, filesystem access wouldn't properly handle cloud-synced photo libraries. Perhaps photos on iOS are persisted into some…

This should be the user's choice, not Apple's. Explain the security tradeoffs then let me do what I want with my device.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#92

Post by crossroadsguy »

adr1an wrote: post #35

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

Something is absolutely unavailable on iOS. All these other apps I’ve tried just don’t work. I think it’s that mobile operating system’s problem. Probably the devs don’t want to play a game that they know is rigged.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#93

Post by unexistential »

I LOVE Immich. Been using it for a few months now, first on a Raspberry Pi 4 and then an old x86 box. Before Immich I had tried for a while to use Photoprism with Syncthing to sync photos from my phone, but the transition to that from Google Photos was a frustrating one.

Immich on the other hand expressly tries to be a Google Photos replacement, and while I initially thought that was an audacious goal for a fresh open source project to have, I have been pleasantly surprised by how feature-rich it has become in a short amount of time.

I know the developer makes it very clear that it's not stable yet, so I'm making sure I back up everything from my server at regular intervals. But I've found it to be more and more stable with new releases, so hopefully a first stable release is not far away.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#94

Post by jader201 »

andirk wrote: post #13

Real question: is this easier and more reliable than emailing to myself for the past 20 years?

I’ll give you reliable, but how is emailing photos to yourself for 20 years easy?

I mean I guess sending emails is relatively easy, but doing that for every photo you want to keep — for 20 years — sounds like a ton of manual effort.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#95

Post by crossroadsguy »

scarface_74 wrote: post #76
barbazoo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is upvoted so much, I wonder what people's complete setup is for something like this to replace, say, Google Photos. So once the photos are on a "server", what do people recommend for albums, sharing, metadata, geotagging, search, etc?

I have absolutely no desire to manage my own backup. When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). When I had a personal computer, photos would sync to my computer and get backed up to BackBlaze also.

It gets backed up to all of these? On iOS I have tried all except Google and they are all finicky. Even iCloud/Photos.app seems to have a brain of its own.

And on the Mac Apple engineers have made sure the photos are not synced in a simple easy folder hierarchy that can be backed up elsewhere.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#96

Post by walrus01 »

with termux on android and an openvpn tunnel to my own stuff, it's quite fast and effective to use rsync to mirror the entire contents of the DCIM folder and other folders where images are stored. I just have to remember to run the backup job periodically, which I could almost certainly automate if I really put more time into it.

when I'm on the same LAN as my backup destination and on a 802.11ac 2x2 80 MHz channel AP, it's shockingly fast, whatever is the max real world speed of my wireless connection, somewhere around 40-50MB per second to do the sync.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#97

Post by Jedd »

scarface_74 wrote: post #76
barbazoo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is upvoted so much, I wonder what people's complete setup is for something like this to replace, say, Google Photos. So once the photos are on a "server", what do people recommend for albums, sharing, metadata, geotagging, search, etc?

I have absolutely no desire to manage my own backup. When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). When I had a personal computer, photos would sync to my computer and get backed up to BackBlaze also.

> When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime).

If you delete a photo on your phone, does it automatically get deleted from all those services in near-realtime?

Do you have an archive solution in place (distinct from your lack of a backup solution)?

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#98

Post by anderspitman »

TkTech wrote: post #25
cvwright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on building something similar. From what I can tell, Immich, Ente, and PhotoPrism are the best of the batch when it comes to open source photo storage and management. They are all good, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Personally, I want: E2E encryption, on-device face recognition, and the ability to self-host as well as a paid option for people who don’t want to manage their own server. The exi…

Photoprism had the critical flaw of being single user last time I tried it, making it neat but a complete non starter for someone with a family larger than 1.

Is there anyone in your family that you really want to have access to all your photos? Not even referring to just NSFW stuff. If your answer is "as the admin I'm the only one that can access everything" then consider the question from your family's POV. Not trying to discount your point only pointing out that single user and e2ee implementations have some value.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#99

Post by dabluecaboose »

unexistential wrote: post #93

I LOVE Immich. Been using it for a few months now, first on a Raspberry Pi 4 and then an old x86 box. Before Immich I had tried for a while to use Photoprism with Syncthing to sync photos from my phone, but the transition to that from Google Photos was a frustrating one. Immich on the other hand expressly tries to be a Google Photos replacement, and while I initially thought that was an audacious goal for a fresh ope…

Can I ask what specifically you like about it over Photprism? Just the sync?

I've also been questing for a Google Photos replacement, and right now Nextcloud functions admirably for auto-sync but like garbage for anything past that like viewing albums afterwards. I've had an instance of Photoprism up for a while and was debating bringing it into "production" on my homelab.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#100

Post by crossroadsguy »

glauber wrote: post #78
adr1an wrote: post #35

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

How to backup iCloud photos? I have an iPhone and Windows as desktop.

This doesn’t answer your question directly but iCloud is definitely not the way. Not only it’s unreliable and unusable largely, it is also designed in a way that discourage interoperability.

On Mac (I am aware you have said Windows) So if I were you I’d just dump app the photos locally in normal folder hierarchies (yes drag and drop; not going hunting in Library folder) and then backup wherever you want them. Here’s something https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT205323. Googled it. Absolutely no idea whether it works or how.

Then put something like Dropbox on the job on iOS and it’ll keep uploading your pics and videos which will show up inside one folder on your Windows as well.

My point is — you can’t rely on iCloud after you setup your backup up sync strategy. So get all your data at one point then start your parallel backup/sync setup (and maybe leave iCloud on as well if price is not a concern).

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