Nextcloud app. It works alright.
On iOS it’s a different story though… (my wife has an iPhone)
Can I ask what doesn’t work with Nextcloud to your expectations? Just sounded like “works alright” implies something is off from what you’d like. I am asking because I have recently set this up for myself and haven’t noticed any issues yet. Well apart from a recent issue with one of the latest app updates crashing those auto uploads.
The sync on Android itself is pretty stable. Every now and then it throws errors about not being able to sync but those could be because of bad reception.
The Nextcloud app on Android has another weird error for me. It doesn’t show the content of a notification (like “Update for app xyz available”) but “NEXTCLOUD_NOTIFICATION”. I tried to resolve it using different approaches from the internet but it followed me even to a new phone. I just gave up for the time being.
The sync with iOS is somewhat bad. To get all the images from my wife’s phone to the cloud I have to plug it in, deactivate screen timeout, and open the app. Sync will stop once I close the app.
Last but not least compared to iCloud/Google Photos watching and browsing the photos on a device is just way slower. I understand why that is but in the end it’s just an annoyance making the switch harder for people in my family. They understand why I am passionate about selfhosting and privacy but they still have a reasonable expectation that things just work.
All in all nothing really severe. Little annoyances along the way. I am still quite happy with the solution all in all.
They understand why I am passionate about selfhosting and privacy but they still have a reasonable expectation that things just work.
That’s somewhat where my head is at too at the moment. I do want to go the privacy route but I do also want something where it can “just work” (hence why I’m looking closely at third party solutions like entee and filen or proton drive). I do care about privacy, but having all the creature comforts that companies like Google has provided is still a bit difficult to let go.
Sync will stop once I close the app.
This is an iOS limitation, so no going around that unfortunately.
Syncthing.
App on the phone and host on the server.
I second this, I use syncthing for phone camera to pc and laptop and have never had a problem. It’s almost instant too, it’s kinda nuts that it doesn’t even need Internet to connect between devices. I a world where everything needs an account, and tracking, syncthing is a simple grace I take for granted
But syncthing deletes images when they are deleted on the phone right? I just tried it, and this is what seems to happen. Is there a way to set it up such that I can delete things on my phone, but they won’t be deleted on the server?
https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html
Adjust the config settings:
sendreceive The folder is in default mode. Sending local and accepting remote changes. Note that this type was previously called “readwrite” which is deprecated but still accepted in incoming configs.
sendonly The folder is in “send only” mode – it will not be modified by Syncthing on this device. Note that this type was previously called “readonly” which is deprecated but still accepted in incoming configs.
receiveonly The folder is in “receive only” mode – it will not propagate changes to other devices.
receiveencrypted Must be used on untrusted devices, where the data cannot be decrypted because no folder password was entered. See Untrusted (Encrypted) Devices.
Yeah, I have the folder on the phone on sendonly. But this sends also deletions to the server, apparently.
You can make it so that you can have a folder ignored by your syncthing on your computer called something like backup but have your phone still recognise that folder as not ignored. Then when you want to delete a photo in your phone, just move it to that folder, wait until it syncs and then delete it. Your computer should not delete the photo since it ignores any changes in that folder.
I’ll test this when I get home if you would like?
Thanks, but this is too labourous for me. I would like to be able to delete photos directly from my phone without the need to move them first.
I am now thinking about setting up a cronjob on the server that backs up the pictures every minute or so to a different folder with rsync…
I use self-hosted Immich with their Android app. You can also use PhotoPrism with PhotoSync.
I use foldersync and sftp
