Thanks, Will, I've been setting up my new Synology DS1821+ for the last few days, and your videos have made it super easy. I decided to put my 17,000+ photos and videos into a separate folder and was able to set it all up and start the upload to my NAS by the time this video finished.
Good video. A few things to check are: did the video get converted to a less quality photo; did it lose metadata like dates and gps location. This seems to happen with newer phones.
Hi Will, quick question - I’m considering getting a Synology for this purpose. Question: I’m an iOS user and use iCloud with the 2TB subscription. I have more photos stored in iCloud Photos than my iPhone itself could actually store locally. When using the steps you describe in the video, is this an issue? I.e. does each photo not cached locally get downloaded from iCloud to the iPhone one by one and then copied over to synology? Thanks.
@@soldermecold7456 so I took the plunge. Turns out it does download from iCloud Photos behind the scenes when a photo isn’t cached locally. It’s completely transparent and works just fine! I’ve backed-up my entire library using the Synology Photos app, which were mostly not cached locally, and wouldn’t all fit on my iOS device at the same time. The way that iOS apps access the photo library is handled behind the scenes by Apple’s API’s.
@@DyslexicChris awesome, thanks for the reply! Were you able to confirm if it’s unmodified originals or the compatible version of the file only? Same for video?
@@soldermecold7456 original HEIC files for photos. I’m assuming the equivalent for video too. Appears to be the same at least - using a mov container. No transcoding happening as far as I can tell.
Thank you Will! The recently released update of Synology Photos app also contains an auto-rename feature too for naming photos after date/time take, very nice! Also dark mode is now possible 😍
Hello, great video, thank you! My question is: can I enable sync instead of backup? The difference in my mind is that all photos taken on my phone would be copied to the NAS as with backup function. Then, as I delete photos from the phone they would also be deleted on NAS, and visa versa. This would include delete photos on phone using the Android Photos app, or on the NAS via the phone Synology Photos app, or on the NAS via Windows File Explorer. Thanks again.
I use an app called PhotoSync on my iPhone ( presumably also available for Android ). I upload using my home Wifi and SMB to my NAS or, if I'm away and on public Wifi, I use SMB and Tailscale. The app is extremely flexible as to full size photos or reduced size, video, custom file names, cell data or wifi, etc. For about $20 or so, it's invaluable.
Unfortunately it didn't backup all photos. Also, concerned that I am having difficulty with having all the photos in my personal space as well. Between the two they are not synced. Curious if I can start over and whether or not I did something wrong in the process.
Thanks Will. I'm finally getting around to my pictures but I can't find out how to delete the photos and videos after backing up. I need to free up my drive for new pictures
How does it work IF I delete photos from my phone, does it also remove it from the NAS? Eg my phone is running out of space and I want to delete half my videos to free up storage
Is there any to do this via direct connection? over Wi-Fi is so slow. I have photos by the thousands on the phone and it’s been taking weeks to finish the upload.
I can't sign in on my mobile. I can sign in on my computer through the web-browser but the app on my android just says: "Please check the network connection or the IP address of your NAS.
Got it, could not connect to quickconnect through PC either, just when I used my IP address in the searchbar. I needed to change some dns settings in dsm, now it works.
Question for you. I have the synology photos app and it's backing up my photos from my phone but for some reason every photo is shown twice. How do I fix that?
Thanks @spacerex Will. You mention at the start to select "Backup all photos" instead of "continue to back up new photos" for the first time backup. Once that's finished, should I switch the setting to "continue ti back up new photos" or leave as is?
It is to my understanding that the iphone keeps lower resolution images on your phone and uploads the higher resolution to your icloud. So if you backup via Synology Photos this means you are not getting your true quality images? I am confused by this which is why I am asking. Shouldn't you push everything to the cloud and then download your entire cloud storage of photos and video and then upload them to your Synology?
Yes truly it took me 8 months to upload my photos and had to do it twice , practically lost a year and half of synology life for it:(( I am very very reluctant now to up load photos with the option all as it will take again weeks but I noticed that the number of photos on my Iphone and on my Synology are not equal and for example my last trip I got 2200 pictures approximately in my iPhone but when I check my synology only 1000 where are the other thousand photos gone? I wonder if when I synchronise with my synology apps if all pictures get uploaded to synology??? to check one byu one is hell any option to assure all photos in Iphone are transfer to synology???thanks a lot
Hey, great vid. I didnt find way how to make synology photos work with another destination of fotos in synology. I have my own structure....is there way how to order synology photo work with other destination then Home? Thanks
Will, thank you so much for this and all the other Synology videos you have shared with us. I noticed that in this video, your "Backup Destination Path" was set to "Customize". Can you please elaborate what is the best location for storing mobile backups? Thank you
SpaceRex, I did not find this answer in your video. If “optimize phone storage“ is enabled; will this backup method transfer the full resolution photo or a compressed version? If the answer is “compressed version “ do you k know of a workaround? Thank you for your time 😊
As I take photos with my iPhone, does it automatically back up, or send to the Synology? I have been having to manually periodically, but can it just send the photos automatically?
Can you select specific folders? And is it by directional, if I delete a photo on my fone will it delete from the nas? I don't want it too delete from the nas if u delete it from the fone
This is SO powerful! I just did it and my Android phone now backs up all my photos to my Synology :) I wonder if it only backs up the photos, or the videos too?
iCloud Photo only keeps « optimized size » pictures on my iPhone/iPad. How to make sure Synology Photo ends up with the full quality/ resolution picture? Thanks for the vid!
So your iPhone just uses those optimized photos to show you. When Synology Photos asks for the photo from your phone your phone will hand it the full res file
hello i need help, if i want to reduce unwanted photos from iphone and synology at the same time how do i do it? is synology smart enough to delete the same photos i delete at phone ? how do i add familly member? i loged in my wifes phone with mine ids and use it as mine profile, would be nice to have folders from her phone and mine separate, but bot accesable for us. can you help me with this?
Hey Will, I really love all of your videos. I have a synology NAS and backup all the family mobile devices via Photos to this NAS. To the respective personal spaces. What is the best way to get the relevant photos to the shared space? Should I copy them? I tried moving them, but then the backup function is reimporting from my mobile to the NAS, and they are double on the NAS. Sharing the complete mobile backup folder in personal space is not really an option as there are sometimes photos taken that other members of the family do not need to see.
I don't really understand how to add my wife's phone to backup. I have created an user account for her and given her access permissions as well as home directories. The issue is when i put quick connect setting into her iphone, it backs up to my user account.
A few problems with droid. Most people I suspect will be uploading to Google photos and then removing local content to save space on their phones. They aren't using Google as a backup, it is their only storage. Often. Moving those photos from Google is awkward and unreliable. Their export strips the meta data but often just leaves some out all together. Most often dates. Getting complete info is nearly impossible especially for a large library. Sadly, you also don't seem to be able to synch multiple versions of Google photos accounts, one for each user, into the NAS either. I am currently wondering if you can do one time synchs for each user, to get started?
You may want to look at Conrad's comment (in reply to Not ReallyME) which goes over a script to sync that meta data (Attached bellow): "I just had to do the same process recently. I can recommend you mattwilson1024's scripts on Github. Just search for google-photos-exif. He describes very clearly what steps you need to do to associate the JSON files with the photos. I have merged over 10000 photos with the tool and there were no problems."
Hello after 1st backup ...if I take like 100./200 photos per day the app can make de backup in background or still with app open with full screen ? Thanks
If I do this process, can I delete all my photos from iCloud so as to free up space on my iCloud account, and then from there on, I'll take a photo and it automatically go to my synology photos?
Hi! Thaks for the video, it's great! Is there any app for iOS, that I can mirror the photos, not just copy, so if I delete a photo on the iPhone, it will delete on the NAS too?
It works fine with Android, I quit Google last year after I finished organizing my life with my NAS. I only keep one account and the minimal drive size for clients who insist at exchanging files with me with that system.
good afternoon. i use ds220+ and mobile photo app to backup my iphone. there are a lot of bursts of photos on the iPhone, but when you upload them to sinology, he sees them as one photo. And if I save this photo from the NAS to the phone, then the iphone sees that the frame was taken in a series, but the photo is the same inside the queues. Is this normal behavior for Synology? Synology can't handle burst photos? I would like to keep the original packages on Synology, how can I do that?
on playstore there is feedback that it does not do the job properly. can you do an new video with those issues in your video as well, and see if it really works.
Great Video, thanks for the tutorial. I was wondering though before I sync, should I turn off optimize storage for photos, otherwise the originals are stored on Icloud I believe.
Great tutorial. I do have a question that perplexes me. When you open synology photos it starts up on the photos page which in my case shows evey photo In synology photos. What if I don't want that to show when I open it, is there a setting somewhere. Also I have albums set up under peoples names yet all the photos also show in the photos page with no indication of them being in an album. How do I tell if it is in an album with out looking through hundreds of photos? I just submitted feedback to synology and they agreed it is a feature they will be adding in a future release
Great video and started following you :) Can I ask if you take any new photos, are these automatically backed up to your NAS no matter where are you and do you need to keep opening the app for the backup or does it just upload them ?
This is a great intro to Synology Photos. However, what I'm really looking for is the ability to take my Synology NAS and keep it offsite somewhere and have my family's phones able to back up content to it remotely. That way it is a true offsite backup. So far I have found out how to remotely VIEW the photos backed up to it, but not to configure the Synology Photos app to write to that remote URL. Anybody know a solution? Thanks!
Thanks Will for the walk through. Is this only relevant for back up from photo to Synology photos? It is a different process for migrating from Google Photos to Synology ?
I did this setup in March 2023. I now see a "03" and "04" folder on my Synology NAS File Station. I had not opened the Mobile App since apparently April ('04"), so it does NOT appear to auto backup my iPhone photos continuously like I had hoped. Do I have to open the Mobile App each time to create a backup, which would defeat the purpose as I know I will forget. Or, am I doing something wrong?
For me I have had no issues with it backing up, even after not opening the app for months. There are a few things you want to make sure, to make sure that iOS / Android will keep letting the app run: 1) don't quit the app 2) for iOS make sure background refresh is enabled and allowed for the app
Thank you for your tutelage. My NAS arrives Monday and I have tons of questions. You've answered most of them but if you will indulge me I have a couple more. If I have numerous computers and phones can I create a single volume for all the devices or does each device require its own volume and user name? If I can use a single volume can all the devices initiate backup simultaneously? Also, does this work as a photo gallery or do we leave Apple photo gallery in place and just turn off iCloud. I have many more questions but I'll leave it here for now. Thanks again.
I feel like an idiot, what address did you enter when you were logging in ? I have tried IP address , name and nothing seems to work. i am on the right network and I am using 2 networks, everything else works fine
Thanks for your video, what if i deleted a photo in my mobile, will it be deleted in the nas as well? As I want to keep current statues of my phone not an older version of my phone
I've set up auto backup of photos taken on my phone to my Synology NAS but what's the best way to copy previously taken photos on Google Photos to the NAS? I thought you had a video on this somewhere but . 🤷♂️
Great video! It seems that there is now a feature called "Sleep time backup" which means the app doesn't close and keeps backing-up up photos! Question - is there any way to over-write the backup (I have done my initial backup and noticed some old photos I am happy to delete) - should I delete from the phone or backup? Also - can the app automatically backup for any new photos taken on an iphone (like icloud)? (or is it only a manual thing that you need to go into the app to do)! Thanks!
Great guide! After the first time upload, do we need to manually open the app to backup our new photos or can it upload/backup automatically without firing up the app daily?
Is there an option to add people manually to uploaded pictures. Synology Photos AI isn't completely accurate and misses some people, especially when there are multiple people in the same picture. This feature shouldn't be too hard to implement. Yet as of March 2023, I still don't see a GUI option for doing this. Same for random strangers in pictures. The Photos app keeps asking me who they are.
How about videos? I have 3 phones having DS photo and everything is ok with photos back up, but none of the video get into Nas :(. I unticked "photos only" and still no difference. I played with specific folders to back up, and still no luck. App uploads photos only :(. Any way around this?
Its really designed to run in the background and not overwhelm your phone. Normally it can complete an initial backup overnight while you are charging, and from there it will just stay backed up pretty easily, even if you take hundreds of photos in a day
Yes and no. The personal space is 'private' to each user where no regular users can see each others. However anyone with admin privlages on the NAS will be Able to see everyones photos
Question: "Is it safe to delete my photos from my iPhone after backing them up? Is there an automatic way to delete them? Additionally, is there a way to keep only the photos from the last year on my phone? To clarify, I want to do a full backup of my photos first, then delete everything except for the photos from the last year. After that, I want to continue backing up my photos every day/week and, when a photo becomes 1 year old, delete it from my iPhone but keep it in Photos/Backup."
@@SpaceRexWill Thanks so much!! Appreciate the videos. I bought the 420+ a week ago and then realized why did I buy this...saw your other video on 1522+ Do you have a video on how to migrate my drives to the new nas? It comes on Tuesday next week.
Hey, any tips on backing up google photos to DSM without using google takeout? Cloud sync doesn't seem to be possible with Google photos (absurd to me why)
I don't use google photos so I can't quite do that. May take some time to set it all up though. Google photos wants to make it as hard as possible for you to leave
any tip for easy way to migrate from DS File backup of iOS photos -> Synology Photos iOS backup from now on? should I just migrate the already backed up folder within DSM directories?
If I were you to ensure everything works perfectly I actually would archive the DS file backup and start a new from the iOS Photos app. If you have not deleted any pictures you want to keep or anything out of your photos. Otherwise I would copy them through DSM into the right folder then select "backup future photos" in Photos
I'm still wondering how to handle the new photos. Is there a way to create a shortcut that it opens the Synology photo app to upload the newest images overnight? Otherwise you always need to open the app each day to upload the newest images right?
The issue I have is when I am away from home the mobile app will not load the photos or thumbs/previews. I have 5G UC with good signal on my phone and a 1Gig upload speed at my house, yet it will not load my library. I would expect it to be slower, but many minutes go by without loading more photos to view . Google photos does not have this issue.
@@SpaceRexWill it doesn't say/show it is. Nothing significantloaded onto if for weeks other than a photo a video from my phone a few times a week. I think it may be the way I logged into it from my phone?? I used the IP address and I noticed you had a web address? I am still a little confused about the quickconnect stuff with multiple users.
Another great video as always thanks but having trouble trying to work out if and how my wife & I can both use the same folder to view all our photos and upload them from each of our iPhones so we can both see each others pics within the 1 Photo folder. Can you help me out please?
@@SpaceRexWill thank you and does it make any difference or matter if my wife is set as Admin, which she is and hence why I thought she should be able to see all the photos in the same folder?
Another great video! Will this process only backup photos stored on your iPhone or will your iPhone actually backup all pictures including the iCloud stored pics my phone has access to?
Yes, the only thing you would want to do is make sure that when you switch it to your phone (after the iPad is done) you make sure its not having issues with duplicates. If its having issues with duplicates you can set the "new photos only" option to make a clean switch over
Please let us know if you figure out how to merge json metadata after downloading all my photos from Google Photos. I’ve made the switch to a Synology Nas and your videos have helped a lot. But after downloading all my photos from Google they have no metadata (no dates specifically) and I don’t know what to do with the json files. I might just have to learn how to write a Python script.
I just had to do the same process recently. I can recommend you mattwilson1024's scripts on Github. Just search for google-photos-exif. He describes very clearly what steps you need to do to associate the JSON files with the photos. I have merged over 10000 photos with the tool and there were no problems.
Instead of using takeout, I just downloaded them directly. Select and choose download. The downside is that you can only select 500 photos at a time, and if you have a lot of photos it will take a while. I have ~80,000.. so it took a fairly long time, but you only need to do it once and everything has the metadata. I would recommend trying to do a year at a time, and then uploading to your NAS.
@@notreallyme425 I can't find your new comment, so I'll reply here. First, download the complete scripts and unzip the ZIP file. In the src folder there is a config.ts which determines which file types are taken into account (jpeg, png etc.). You can already adjust this and set the corresponding types to true. To use yarn I installed it via the npm package manager. I did the migration via Windows and installed node.js for npm first. node.js already contains npm as a bundle. You can download node.js on nodejs_org (I installed version 16.14.0 LTS). Using npm, "npm install --global yarn" should be sufficient to install yarn. After that create 3 folders (input, output, errors) and put your Google Takeout files unpacked into the input folder. Don't change anything in the Google Takeout structure and put a copy of your original photos in the input folder in case something goes wrong. After that you only have to change the paths for the following command "yarn start --inputDir ~/input --outputDir ~/output --errorDir ~/errors". Run the command in the console and it should show you a progress bar. If photos cannot be assigned, they will end up in the errors folder. If you have any questions, please let me know. Good luck
I had problems on both Android and iPhone that backup sometime stopped to start, so I created a simple rule (by Tasker on Android and Commands on iPhone) that launch Synology photo mobile everytime I recharge the phone (tonight iPhone backed up 800 video/photos that stopped to backup on April...😕)
My backup says it has about 22500 photos to backup .. this is my full Icloud photo library I think. So .. does the backup entire library function download the full quality photo from Icloud first before it backs it up to my Synology 1821+ ? As I understand it my phone only stores a lesser quality picture to save space... if I use Icloud. Or does it backup a lesser quality version? Or only the quality that might be found on the hard drive of my iphone? In the past I have downloaded all recent photos directly from Icloud and then uploaded them to the 1821+ .. this might have the full quality versions? If it does download the full quality photo of all 22500 photos from ICloud does that then take up more memory on the phone before being uploaded?
What will happen is every photo will be downloaded full res before sending it to synology. Then as the files are not needed they will be deleted to save space (and the optimized versions kept)
Thanks, Will, I've been setting up my new Synology DS1821+ for the last few days, and your videos have made it super easy. I decided to put my 17,000+ photos and videos into a separate folder and was able to set it all up and start the upload to my NAS by the time this video finished.
Good video. A few things to check are: did the video get converted to a less quality photo; did it lose metadata like dates and gps location. This seems to happen with newer phones.
Thanks for the video, but what will happen for the photos on the camera roll? Should be them or they gonna just stay on the phone storage
Hi Will, quick question - I’m considering getting a Synology for this purpose. Question: I’m an iOS user and use iCloud with the 2TB subscription. I have more photos stored in iCloud Photos than my iPhone itself could actually store locally. When using the steps you describe in the video, is this an issue? I.e. does each photo not cached locally get downloaded from iCloud to the iPhone one by one and then copied over to synology? Thanks.
Excellent question, I’d like to know as well.
@@soldermecold7456 so I took the plunge. Turns out it does download from iCloud Photos behind the scenes when a photo isn’t cached locally. It’s completely transparent and works just fine! I’ve backed-up my entire library using the Synology Photos app, which were mostly not cached locally, and wouldn’t all fit on my iOS device at the same time. The way that iOS apps access the photo library is handled behind the scenes by Apple’s API’s.
@@DyslexicChris awesome, thanks for the reply! Were you able to confirm if it’s unmodified originals or the compatible version of the file only? Same for video?
@@soldermecold7456 original HEIC files for photos. I’m assuming the equivalent for video too. Appears to be the same at least - using a mov container. No transcoding happening as far as I can tell.
@@DyslexicChrisThanks, had a client asking me exactly that today, great that you were successful :)
Dude your videos are amazing! Thankyou for this one, was checking it out a few days ago before taking the leap.
Thanks for your work. I’ve learned a lot about my synology from your videos.
Thanks!
So awesome! i got my synology about 3 months ago and am still struggling with getting things set up. I think i'm well on my way.
Can you also back up your photos from a different location than home?
Yes! If you have quick connect
@@SpaceRexWill thank you for the fast answer! 😊
Great tutorial - very well presented, nice touch having the phone app displayed too for clarity. Well done. you earned a sub!
Thank you Will! The recently released update of Synology Photos app also contains an auto-rename feature too for naming photos after date/time take, very nice! Also dark mode is now possible 😍
Hello, great video, thank you! My question is: can I enable sync instead of backup? The difference in my mind is that all photos taken on my phone would be copied to the NAS as with backup function. Then, as I delete photos from the phone they would also be deleted on NAS, and visa versa. This would include delete photos on phone using the Android Photos app, or on the NAS via the phone Synology Photos app, or on the NAS via Windows File Explorer. Thanks again.
Another awesome video. You put a lot of time and energy into your channel. I always enjoy looking forward to the next video.
I really appreciate that!
I use an app called PhotoSync on my iPhone ( presumably also available for Android ). I upload using my home Wifi and SMB to my NAS or, if I'm away and on public Wifi, I use SMB and Tailscale. The app is extremely flexible as to full size photos or reduced size, video, custom file names, cell data or wifi, etc. For about $20 or so, it's invaluable.
Unfortunately it didn't backup all photos. Also, concerned that I am having difficulty with having all the photos in my personal space as well. Between the two they are not synced. Curious if I can start over and whether or not I did something wrong in the process.
Hi, why use ds photos for this and not ds file? Is it something different?
Just backing my photos up now after watching the tutorial, not sure if its an ios18 issue but i do not have the enable sleep time back up option?
So if you delete a foto from your iPhone will it also delete from Synology fotos?
Used to use the Photo backup feature on DS File and that still works very well, but this looks interesting
Thanks Will. I'm finally getting around to my pictures but I can't find out how to delete the photos and videos after backing up. I need to free up my drive for new pictures
How does it work IF I delete photos from my phone, does it also remove it from the NAS?
Eg my phone is running out of space and I want to delete half my videos to free up storage
you can delete from your phone and it will stay on the NAS
@@SpaceRexWill lovely! Exactly what I wanted.
Now I just need to research which Synology model to get :)
@@panman2632 which one did end up going with?
What happens if I upload a photo that’s already on synology photos?
Can i do this on ds223 ??
Is there any to do this via direct connection? over Wi-Fi is so slow. I have photos by the thousands on the phone and it’s been taking weeks to finish the upload.
I ordered my synology just now. How do I seet it up?
Bedankt voor je uitleg en het vele werk steeds, ik kijk al je tutorials zelfs meerdere keren, en leer er steeds heel veel van. groetjes uit Nederland
Thanks!
Thank you very much indeed. I've just bought a DS920+ and find your videos really helpful..
I can't sign in on my mobile. I can sign in on my computer through the web-browser but the app on my android just says: "Please check the network connection or the IP address of your NAS.
Got it, could not connect to quickconnect through PC either, just when I used my IP address in the searchbar. I needed to change some dns settings in dsm, now it works.
Question for you. I have the synology photos app and it's backing up my photos from my phone but for some reason every photo is shown twice. How do I fix that?
Thanks @spacerex Will. You mention at the start to select "Backup all photos" instead of "continue to back up new photos" for the first time backup. Once that's finished, should I switch the setting to "continue ti back up new photos" or leave as is?
Really useful video, thanks very much 😀
Thanks!
Hey there! Great videos on Synology tutorials. I have a question about photos backup, it keeps showing "insufficient space". How do I address this?
It is to my understanding that the iphone keeps lower resolution images on your phone and uploads the higher resolution to your icloud. So if you backup via Synology Photos this means you are not getting your true quality images? I am confused by this which is why I am asking. Shouldn't you push everything to the cloud and then download your entire cloud storage of photos and video and then upload them to your Synology?
Can you set up albums with sub albums inside for example Holiday Pics > 2023 > Australia
I do not think so
Is there a way to sync up (or back up) the whole Google Photos (which can have more photos than my Android device) with Synology Photos? Thanks
Yes truly it took me 8 months to upload my photos and had to do it twice , practically lost a year and half of synology life for it:(( I am very very reluctant now to up load photos with the option all as it will take again weeks but I noticed that the number of photos on my Iphone and on my Synology are not equal and for example my last trip I got 2200 pictures approximately in my iPhone but when I check my synology only 1000 where are the other thousand photos gone? I wonder if when I synchronise with my synology apps if all pictures get uploaded to synology??? to check one byu one is hell any option to assure all photos in Iphone are transfer to synology???thanks a lot
i did that all but for some reason..everything got deleted from my synology..idk why does it happened
Hey, great vid. I didnt find way how to make synology photos work with another destination of fotos in synology. I have my own structure....is there way how to order synology photo work with other destination then Home? Thanks
Will, thank you so much for this and all the other Synology videos you have shared with us. I noticed that in this video, your "Backup Destination Path" was set to "Customize". Can you please elaborate what is the best location for storing mobile backups? Thank you
Thanks for nice video. Is that possible to send photos from different network or different Wi-Fi. For example directly from work to home. Thanks
SpaceRex,
I did not find this answer in your video.
If “optimize phone storage“ is enabled; will this backup method transfer the full resolution photo or a compressed version?
If the answer is “compressed version “ do you k know of a workaround? Thank you for your time 😊
As I take photos with my iPhone, does it automatically back up, or send to the Synology? I have been having to manually periodically, but can it just send the photos automatically?
Can you select specific folders? And is it by directional, if I delete a photo on my fone will it delete from the nas? I don't want it too delete from the nas if u delete it from the fone
This is SO powerful! I just did it and my Android phone now backs up all my photos to my Synology :) I wonder if it only backs up the photos, or the videos too?
iCloud Photo only keeps « optimized size » pictures on my iPhone/iPad. How to make sure Synology Photo ends up with the full quality/ resolution picture? Thanks for the vid!
So your iPhone just uses those optimized photos to show you. When Synology Photos asks for the photo from your phone your phone will hand it the full res file
@@SpaceRexWill If it’s really the case, that’ll be awwwsome! Thx
hello i need help, if i want to reduce unwanted photos from iphone and synology at the same time how do i do it? is synology smart enough to delete the same photos i delete at phone ? how do i add familly member? i loged in my wifes phone with mine ids and use it as mine profile, would be nice to have folders from her phone and mine separate, but bot accesable for us. can you help me with this?
Great video!! But I have an android... can I delete my photos now off of my phone? I need to free up space on my phone. Thank you!
Hey Will, I really love all of your videos.
I have a synology NAS and backup all the family mobile devices via Photos to this NAS. To the respective personal spaces.
What is the best way to get the relevant photos to the shared space? Should I copy them? I tried moving them, but then the backup function is reimporting from my mobile to the NAS, and they are double on the NAS.
Sharing the complete mobile backup folder in personal space is not really an option as there are sometimes photos taken that other members of the family do not need to see.
I don't really understand how to add my wife's phone to backup. I have created an user account for her and given her access permissions as well as home directories. The issue is when i put quick connect setting into her iphone, it backs up to my user account.
A few problems with droid. Most people I suspect will be uploading to Google photos and then removing local content to save space on their phones. They aren't using Google as a backup, it is their only storage. Often.
Moving those photos from Google is awkward and unreliable. Their export strips the meta data but often just leaves some out all together. Most often dates.
Getting complete info is nearly impossible especially for a large library.
Sadly, you also don't seem to be able to synch multiple versions of Google photos accounts, one for each user, into the NAS either.
I am currently wondering if you can do one time synchs for each user, to get started?
You may want to look at Conrad's comment (in reply to Not ReallyME) which goes over a script to sync that meta data (Attached bellow):
"I just had to do the same process recently. I can recommend you mattwilson1024's scripts on Github. Just search for google-photos-exif. He describes very clearly what steps you need to do to associate the JSON files with the photos. I have merged over 10000 photos with the tool and there were no problems."
Hello after 1st backup ...if I take like 100./200 photos per day the app can make de backup in background or still with app open with full screen ? Thanks
If I do this process, can I delete all my photos from iCloud so as to free up space on my iCloud account, and then from there on, I'll take a photo and it automatically go to my synology photos?
Hi! Thaks for the video, it's great! Is there any app for iOS, that I can mirror the photos, not just copy, so if I delete a photo on the iPhone, it will delete on the NAS too?
Hey I keep getting asked for a 6 digit code on my Android phone when logging in but I have no code any help would be great?
I think that's for the 6-digit 2FA code from your authenticator, log into your authenticator and put that six digit code at the log in screen
It works fine with Android, I quit Google last year after I finished organizing my life with my NAS. I only keep one account and the minimal drive size for clients who insist at exchanging files with me with that system.
Hey good to know! I had heard of people using it on android but it’s hard to get a “yes this works well with no bugs” from the internet sometimes
good afternoon. i use ds220+ and mobile photo app to backup my iphone. there are a lot of bursts of photos on the iPhone, but when you upload them to sinology, he sees them as one photo. And if I save this photo from the NAS to the phone, then the iphone sees that the frame was taken in a series, but the photo is the same inside the queues. Is this normal behavior for Synology? Synology can't handle burst photos? I would like to keep the original packages on Synology, how can I do that?
is there any advantage to backing up photos with Photos App vs DS File app on IOS?
This is setup much cleaner and purpose build
Great video but do you have one for moving tons of photos from your PC system (Google Takeout) to the NAS?
But can you finally change the destination directory and the way it manages the folder structure? 🤔
on playstore there is feedback that it does not do the job properly. can you do an new video with those issues in your video as well, and see if it really works.
Great Video, thanks for the tutorial.
I was wondering though before I sync, should I turn off optimize storage for photos, otherwise the originals are stored on Icloud I believe.
No need. They will be downloaded at full resolution
Great tutorial as always. Is it possible to backup your videos as well?
Great tutorial. I do have a question that perplexes me. When you open synology photos it starts up on the photos page which in my case shows evey photo In synology photos. What if I don't want that to show when I open it, is there a setting somewhere. Also I have albums set up under peoples names yet all the photos also show in the photos page with no indication of them being in an album. How do I tell if it is in an album with out looking through hundreds of photos? I just submitted feedback to synology and they agreed it is a feature they will be adding in a future release
Thanks for it mate! Is it possible to backup the iPhone directly on NAS? I have a MacBook Air with only 128GB ssd, you know..
Unfortunately as far as I know the only thing you can backup to your synology is your photos
Thank you so much for this walkthrough.
Glad it was helpful!
Hey, can you to a tutorial on Synology Note Station vs ..........
For some reason my Synology Photos app uploads twice every single photo or video I take. Dunno how to fix this. Any idea? Cheers
Great video and started following you :)
Can I ask if you take any new photos, are these automatically backed up to your NAS no matter where are you and do you need to keep opening the app for the backup or does it just upload them ?
does this backup screenshots and other photos in other folders on the phone?
Yes it will everything in your photos
This is a great intro to Synology Photos. However, what I'm really looking for is the ability to take my Synology NAS and keep it offsite somewhere and have my family's phones able to back up content to it remotely. That way it is a true offsite backup. So far I have found out how to remotely VIEW the photos backed up to it, but not to configure the Synology Photos app to write to that remote URL. Anybody know a solution? Thanks!
Thanks Will for the walk through. Is this only relevant for back up from photo to Synology photos? It is a different process for migrating from Google Photos to Synology ?
I did this setup in March 2023. I now see a "03" and "04" folder on my Synology NAS File Station. I had not opened the Mobile App since apparently April ('04"), so it does NOT appear to auto backup my iPhone photos continuously like I had hoped. Do I have to open the Mobile App each time to create a backup, which would defeat the purpose as I know I will forget. Or, am I doing something wrong?
For me I have had no issues with it backing up, even after not opening the app for months.
There are a few things you want to make sure, to make sure that iOS / Android will keep letting the app run:
1) don't quit the app
2) for iOS make sure background refresh is enabled and allowed for the app
Thank you for your tutelage. My NAS arrives Monday and I have tons of questions. You've answered most of them but if you will indulge me I have a couple more. If I have numerous computers and phones can I create a single volume for all the devices or does each device require its own volume and user name? If I can use a single volume can all the devices initiate backup simultaneously? Also, does this work as a photo gallery or do we leave Apple photo gallery in place and just turn off iCloud. I have many more questions but I'll leave it here for now. Thanks again.
I feel like an idiot, what address did you enter when you were logging in ? I have tried IP address , name and nothing seems to work. i am on the right network and I am using 2 networks, everything else works fine
Thanks for your video, what if i deleted a photo in my mobile, will it be deleted in the nas as well?
As I want to keep current statues of my phone not an older version of my phone
Keep in mind I am using DS file to backup my whole Samsung phone.
HI Will, Do you still use photos on your mac now or just this??
I use this for all my high res DSLR images and videos, with iPhone photos staying in iCloud, but I am ok deleting images as I know they are backed up
I've set up auto backup of photos taken on my phone to my Synology NAS but what's the best way to copy previously taken photos on Google Photos to the NAS? I thought you had a video on this somewhere but . 🤷♂️
I have not done a video on this yet as I do not use google photos. You use google take-out
Great video! It seems that there is now a feature called "Sleep time backup" which means the app doesn't close and keeps backing-up up photos!
Question - is there any way to over-write the backup (I have done my initial backup and noticed some old photos I am happy to delete) - should I delete from the phone or backup?
Also - can the app automatically backup for any new photos taken on an iphone (like icloud)? (or is it only a manual thing that you need to go into the app to do)! Thanks!
Great guide! After the first time upload, do we need to manually open the app to backup our new photos or can it upload/backup automatically without firing up the app daily?
You should never have to open it again!
Is there an option to add people manually to uploaded pictures. Synology Photos AI isn't completely accurate and misses some people, especially when there are multiple people in the same picture.
This feature shouldn't be too hard to implement. Yet as of March 2023, I still don't see a GUI option for doing this.
Same for random strangers in pictures. The Photos app keeps asking me who they are.
How about videos? I have 3 phones having DS photo and everything is ok with photos back up, but none of the video get into Nas :(. I unticked "photos only" and still no difference. I played with specific folders to back up, and still no luck. App uploads photos only :(. Any way around this?
Try photos instead of DS photo. Works great for me and my videos
Why can it only transfer one photo at a time when backing up, and the speed is about 2 photos per second
Its really designed to run in the background and not overwhelm your phone. Normally it can complete an initial backup overnight while you are charging, and from there it will just stay backed up pretty easily, even if you take hundreds of photos in a day
Do every users of the NAS can have own private photo library?
Yes and no. The personal space is 'private' to each user where no regular users can see each others. However anyone with admin privlages on the NAS will be Able to see everyones photos
I have a question if I delete a photo at my phone does this also delete it from my Nas?
It will be kept on the synology
@@SpaceRexWill nice.thanks a lot
Question: "Is it safe to delete my photos from my iPhone after backing them up? Is there an automatic way to delete them? Additionally, is there a way to keep only the photos from the last year on my phone? To clarify, I want to do a full backup of my photos first, then delete everything except for the photos from the last year. After that, I want to continue backing up my photos every day/week and, when a photo becomes 1 year old, delete it from my iPhone but keep it in Photos/Backup."
Did you find a way to do this? I also want the same thing
if I delete photos of my phone will it delete photos off my nas?
no
@@SpaceRexWill thank you
This is probably the first time I saw SpaceRex without a Hawaii inspired clothing.
hahaha I have a Pi video coming out with this shirt on where my start is “wait, is this a Hawaiian shirt”
@@SpaceRexWill Can't wait to see it. lol
Always learning new things from you about networks. Take care
😂😂
How do you get synology photos? I am having the hardest time finding this application to run on my macbook! There needs to be a tutorial of that.
Ah, when on desktop you only use the web interface to use synology photos or the SMB share
@@SpaceRexWill Thanks so much!! Appreciate the videos. I bought the 420+ a week ago and then realized why did I buy this...saw your other video on 1522+ Do you have a video on how to migrate my drives to the new nas? It comes on Tuesday next week.
Hey, any tips on backing up google photos to DSM without using google takeout?
Cloud sync doesn't seem to be possible with Google photos (absurd to me why)
I don't use google photos so I can't quite do that. May take some time to set it all up though.
Google photos wants to make it as hard as possible for you to leave
any tip for easy way to migrate from DS File backup of iOS photos -> Synology Photos iOS backup from now on? should I just migrate the already backed up folder within DSM directories?
If I were you to ensure everything works perfectly I actually would archive the DS file backup and start a new from the iOS Photos app. If you have not deleted any pictures you want to keep or anything out of your photos. Otherwise I would copy them through DSM into the right folder then select "backup future photos" in Photos
@@SpaceRexWill hmm sounds good, I'll give it a try,
thanks for the tip and video! :)
Can We do it on TrueNAS?
Looks like there are not a ton of great FreeBSD Jails as an equivalent. If you are running SCALE then photo prism is your best bet
I'm still wondering how to handle the new photos. Is there a way to create a shortcut that it opens the Synology photo app to upload the newest images overnight? Otherwise you always need to open the app each day to upload the newest images right?
No need. Just make sure to turn on “background app refresh”
@@SpaceRexWill ok thanks. I have it turned on and even when the app is closed or open in the background it doesn’t make any backups or uploads.
yes create a shortcut to open app...i have mine trigger when Do Not Disturb enables at 11pm daily
@@skinny_panda yes I just did that but even then it’s not uploading something at all. Just did a relogin etc.
The issue I have is when I am away from home the mobile app will not load the photos or thumbs/previews. I have 5G UC with good signal on my phone and a 1Gig upload speed at my house, yet it will not load my library. I would expect it to be slower, but many minutes go by without loading more photos to view . Google photos does not have this issue.
That is really strange. When I am away I have never had any issues getting thumbnails with no lag. Any change your NAS is busy running many things?
@@SpaceRexWill it doesn't say/show it is. Nothing significantloaded onto if for weeks other than a photo a video from my phone a few times a week.
I think it may be the way I logged into it from my phone?? I used the IP address and I noticed you had a web address? I am still a little confused about the quickconnect stuff with multiple users.
Another great video as always thanks but having trouble trying to work out if and how my wife & I can both use the same folder to view all our photos and upload them from each of our iPhones so we can both see each others pics within the 1 Photo folder. Can you help me out please?
2 options: 1) upload them to shared space
2) in photos just share the backup folder with your wife
@@SpaceRexWill thank you and does it make any difference or matter if my wife is set as Admin, which she is and hence why I thought she should be able to see all the photos in the same folder?
Another great video! Will this process only backup photos stored on your iPhone or will your iPhone actually backup all pictures including the iCloud stored pics my phone has access to?
Do you mean the “optimized photos” then yes
@@SpaceRexWill Perfect Thank you! To save upload time from my phone can I upload the initial photos from my ipad?
Yes, the only thing you would want to do is make sure that when you switch it to your phone (after the iPad is done) you make sure its not having issues with duplicates. If its having issues with duplicates you can set the "new photos only" option to make a clean switch over
Please let us know if you figure out how to merge json metadata after downloading all my photos from Google Photos. I’ve made the switch to a Synology Nas and your videos have helped a lot. But after downloading all my photos from Google they have no metadata (no dates specifically) and I don’t know what to do with the json files. I might just have to learn how to write a Python script.
I just had to do the same process recently. I can recommend you mattwilson1024's scripts on Github. Just search for google-photos-exif. He describes very clearly what steps you need to do to associate the JSON files with the photos. I have merged over 10000 photos with the tool and there were no problems.
@@pascalconrad7879 awesome, thanks! I’ll check it out!
Instead of using takeout, I just downloaded them directly. Select and choose download.
The downside is that you can only select 500 photos at a time, and if you have a lot of photos it will take a while.
I have ~80,000.. so it took a fairly long time, but you only need to do it once and everything has the metadata.
I would recommend trying to do a year at a time, and then uploading to your NAS.
Thanks Pascal Conrad! I never used google photos so haven't been able to make a video on it!
@@notreallyme425 I can't find your new comment, so I'll reply here. First, download the complete scripts and unzip the ZIP file. In the src folder there is a config.ts which determines which file types are taken into account (jpeg, png etc.). You can already adjust this and set the corresponding types to true. To use yarn I installed it via the npm package manager. I did the migration via Windows and installed node.js for npm first. node.js already contains npm as a bundle. You can download node.js on nodejs_org (I installed version 16.14.0 LTS). Using npm, "npm install --global yarn" should be sufficient to install yarn. After that create 3 folders (input, output, errors) and put your Google Takeout files unpacked into the input folder. Don't change anything in the Google Takeout structure and put a copy of your original photos in the input folder in case something goes wrong. After that you only have to change the paths for the following command "yarn start --inputDir ~/input --outputDir ~/output --errorDir ~/errors". Run the command in the console and it should show you a progress bar. If photos cannot be assigned, they will end up in the errors folder. If you have any questions, please let me know. Good luck
I had problems on both Android and iPhone that backup sometime stopped to start, so I created a simple rule (by Tasker on Android and Commands on iPhone) that launch Synology photo mobile everytime I recharge the phone (tonight iPhone backed up 800 video/photos that stopped to backup on April...😕)
Another great video, awesome thanks
My backup says it has about 22500 photos to backup .. this is my full Icloud photo library I think.
So .. does the backup entire library function download the full quality photo from Icloud first before it backs it up to my Synology 1821+ ? As I understand it my phone only stores a lesser quality picture to save space... if I use Icloud.
Or does it backup a lesser quality version? Or only the quality that might be found on the hard drive of my iphone? In the past I have downloaded all recent photos directly from Icloud and then uploaded them to the 1821+ .. this might have the full quality versions?
If it does download the full quality photo of all 22500 photos from ICloud does that then take up more memory on the phone before being uploaded?
What will happen is every photo will be downloaded full res before sending it to synology. Then as the files are not needed they will be deleted to save space (and the optimized versions kept)
Very helpfull, thx!
What does he mean by “or use this new feature….” Where is the new feature? I dont see a link to it
Just update the app