Hi,
I’m trying to find a way to have my iPhone’s photos be automatically (or even manually) backed up/synced with my home server.
I heard about photo prism here and got it up and running, however I could not find a free app that lets you sync. Photo sync is their main recommendation and it puts high quality photo backup behind premium.
Is there any solution that lets you backup your photos through home wifi?
Thanks in advance.
Edit: thanks to the suggestions, I found this handy chart listing many and comparing them: https://meichthys.github.io/foss_photo_libraries/
You must log in or # to comment.
Nextcloud. Works super well.
Like everyone is saying, Immich.
But keep an eye on updates because it is under active development so breaking changes tend to happen every once in a while.
Does Immich auto update / breaking changes?
The server doesn’t, except if you have watchtower or something similar.
The app auto updates on your phone though, unless turned off.
Does Immich auto update
Only if you auto-update the docker images on your server.
There have been a few breaking chances, but it just takes a minute to tweak the compose file and it’s up and running again.
Apparently docker images must be manually updated, so currently I don’t. Thanks for the info.
Sounds overkill just for backing up files.
This is amazing, exactly what I was looking for!
Absolutely phenomenal. Great app, hosting, and development community.
It’s a good reason to start self hosting.
This. Its excellent. Cross platform. AI search. Location tagging. Everythibg u want.
Immich has completely replaced Google Photos for me, love it!
My only bugbear is that it is updated very frequently (what a nice problem to have!) which in my case requires a manual once-over of my docker-compose file every time in case there are breaking changes.
I go the other way, auto-update and fix the file if it goes down lol
As a developer myself I’m not sure if I would trust any application to safely handle a configuration that has become invalid due to a breaking change, especially not an app that is still under active development! Better safe than sorry.
It’s docker compose changes (at least the ones in the last 2 years have been), so it’s not really config related with a worry about breaking stuff from that.
But also multiple backups are in place anyways, so worst case I restore from that.
I use Immich, and I love it.
I think right now it is a throwdown between:
- Nextcloud Photos
- Immich
- Ente Photos
Immich has a setting that does automatic photo backup over WiFi, I use the android app as a Google photos replacement. You can choose however many folders on your phone as you want (I just do camera roll) and enable only backup over WiFi and it backs up all the photos in original quality. I self-host the server on my Synology with a reverse proxy (can’t forward ports at my current place due to cgnat) so I can access it from anywhere.
I believe the app is cross platform so the iPhone version should be identical to the android one.
Nextcloud’s instant upload feature?
Whenever I take a picture or screenshot it’s uploaded there.Nextcloud might be overkill if that’s the only feature you need. I’ve never used the more involved stuff like chat or document editing, just sync.
Nextcloud has so many bugs when you store a lot of files, and photos on a phone accumulate to a big number. Both their Android app and server doesn’t deal with a few years’ worth of photos.
I have years worth of photos backed up from my phone (android) on Nextcloud, it’s working pretty well… but it matters how you set up the auto upload and a few other things, and I’mnot claiming it’s without issues.
For example, I set it to move files into Nextcloud’s folder after uploading, so they appear as locally synced, and can be deleted to free up space if needed (maybe even automatically, not sure). Also, I set it to also upload existing files, because since they get moved, anything that’s still there clearly needs to be uploaded.
There are a few issues viewing media from the app, sometimes, but I use the Memories app :)
I’ve been meaning to try immich, looks pretty good, but I use Nextcloud for much more than just photos, so I’d have to keep both and have them sync somehow, and I’m not sure how to do that.
Yea only times I’ve had issues is if I run out of space allocated to the container that runs it.
I currently have 16GB of phone uploads and 540G overall, it works fineAnd you don’t have your notification bar on the phone full of upload errors? Nextcloud doesn’t open 15 seconds on the computer? Can you get to older photos in under an hour, while Nextcloud slowly loads one thumbnail per second?
It is really unbeleviable how there are some people for whom Nextcloud just works, and the rest of us.
I gave up on my personal self-hosted instance a long ago, and at work we use commercially hosted Nextcloud and have to get a new account ~yearly because it slows down like Windows 95 when data accumulates.
And you don’t have your notification bar on the phone full of upload errors?
I get a bunch of upload errors for photos that I delete or move before nextcloud has a chance to upload them, those are safe to ignore. Not sure which errors you’re getting…
Can you get to older photos in under an hour, while Nextcloud slowly loads one thumbnail per second?
Forget about the plain nextcloud photos app, use the Memories app (incl. the android app).
Not as good as immich, from what I understand, but if you already have nextcloud, or need more than just photos, it works well.
It is really unbeleviable how there are some people for whom Nextcloud just works, and the rest of us.
It’s definitely not perfect, but since I was able to set it up to work well for me, I’m keeping it, at least until I have time to install immich and figure out how to sync the two (and maybe get a more powerful server to use its ML features). I’m currently running it off of a decade old chromebox …
And, to offer something positive too: I like Photoprism, it’s very fast, browsing old photos just works with no extra delay, there’s search by date, location, tags, even face detection.
Legit have had none of these issues.
I do get a notification once in a while if I modify a picture fast enough, like a quick crop and it’s still uploading. Like snap pic and edit within the same 5 seconds or so.
Basically just a: “there are multiple versions of the same file (which is true), which one do you wanna keep”.Then again mine is running on a pretty beefy server which might hide issues rooted in performance.
I remember it being hell when I was running it on a RPi.I had it on a beefy server too. Glad that it works for you, every nextcloud thread on social media has a discussion like ours.
Yea, it’s not the first time I’ve seen this discussion either.
I don’t wanna seem like I’m not believing you or belittling your experience, I just find it weird that we (we, users, as a whole, not just you and I) have such wildly different experiences with it.As is, I have a vastly better experience with my own nextcloud than with corporate’s onedrive, with more stuff on mine.
Wish I knew why it’s so inconsistent.
Even though my nextcloud experience is fine, I know plenty of people with the opposite.
I have all my photos synced to iCloud and have Apple Photos running on my Mac with the option to “always download originals” enabled. Then, I run a daily backup of my Mac’s photo library to my NAS. For this, I’m using CCC at the moment but I’m planning to switch to restic.
