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Google photos, I have all devices syncing photos to one place and now I don’t need to worry about did in-law A remember to backup their phone when they inevitab

Google photos, I have all devices syncing photos to one place and now I don’t need to worry about did in-law A remember to backup their phone when they inevitably lose it at the grocery store. Arguably the only remotely important thing we have on our phones is photos and maybe chat history but it’s not earth shattering to lose that. Despite having more photos of ourselves than any other generation ever, It’s still soul crushing to lose family photos. That said, I’ve been gradually losing trust in Google storage services so I’m searching for alternatives (and not finding anything remotely as good unfortunately). Key features I live by * search by ocr, object, location, face * multi-platform sync * originals storage * auto-face match * duplicate detection

barbazoo 3y ago
I've been running Immich alongside G Photos and it's great all things considered.
- harrygeez 3y ago
  Can you share your experience of using Immich? I've played with the demo months back but haven't got around to actually use it myself
muzani 3y ago
Not clear if you use it, but there's a family setting to Google One too at no extra charge. So my wife gets the extra space for the same payment. We use about the same amount of space for photos, so it saved us from each having our own subscription. I'm not sure if this is related to having a YouTube family subscription but it worked seamlessly for us.
- runamok 3y ago
  Yes! I discovered this recently when my wife hit 95% of her quota. Remarkably fair and nice feature.
yasuocidal 3y ago
I have a server, a small project of mine, and i installed nextcloud. Now my whole family and close friends use it to backup our photos. The official app for it is exceptional for syncing (you can set it to ONLY do the sync when charging or other parameters). There are other benefits of nextcloud (contact backup/Calendar/Messaging etc) and you can set it up on a raspberrypi with an external hard drive, throw it near your router (preferably both on a UPS for an "always on" solution) and forget about it. All the management can be done though the web interface (updates, new apps which you could find something helpful to you, etc ) and the installation is pretty easy. If you decide to go with it, i recommend that you get a domain and set it up as a DDNS through cloudflare.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I could never bear the stress of being in charge of someone else's photo backups. Especially when the option is just for them to pay $10 or something to a huge company that'll have pretty much 100% uptime and zero chance of lost files.
  - LilBytes 3y ago
    Its really not that hard. Just don't fuck around with backups, throw them all into Backblaze B2, S3 or what ever else. I have the same setup as the person you're commenting to, initial setup was easy. Just test out your backup strategy thoroughly.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      This is a proper HN reply, two counts of "just" =) If it was a matter of "just" not fucking around and "just testing out the strategy", everyone would just resell B2/S3 capacity with a markup. Having the only copy of someone's family photos is not a responsibility I'm willing to have. YMMV though and more power to you if you want to do that.
- SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
  My preferred solution would be phone -> local backup (for safety) -> Google Photos (for convenience). If the sync to local is about as good as google this would be the best for me. Distant Plan b: phone -> google photos -> local backup. The problem here is that the only way to get your originals out of google photos is to use google takeout which is basically a dealbreaker here.
climb_stealth 3y ago
I have been paying for and running ente.io on the side for similar reasons. It works pretty well on Android. On iOS it's not quite set and forget yet. But I feel like it's getting there bit by bit. I don't trust Google Photos to be there for us in the long run. That said I have been paying for it and using it for years without a major gripe.
pcdoodle 3y ago
I would not trust google for longevity of service or privacy of my photos.

barbazoo 3y ago

I've been running Immich alongside G Photos and it's great all things considered.

harrygeez 3y ago
Can you share your experience of using Immich? I've played with the demo months back but haven't got around to actually use it myself

muzani 3y ago

Not clear if you use it, but there's a family setting to Google One too at no extra charge. So my wife gets the extra space for the same payment. We use about the same amount of space for photos, so it saved us from each having our own subscription. I'm not sure if this is related to having a YouTube family subscription but it worked seamlessly for us.

runamok 3y ago
Yes! I discovered this recently when my wife hit 95% of her quota. Remarkably fair and nice feature.

yasuocidal 3y ago

I have a server, a small project of mine, and i installed nextcloud. Now my whole family and close friends use it to backup our photos. The official app for it is exceptional for syncing (you can set it to ONLY do the sync when charging or other parameters). There are other benefits of nextcloud (contact backup/Calendar/Messaging etc) and you can set it up on a raspberrypi with an external hard drive, throw it near your router (preferably both on a UPS for an "always on" solution) and forget about it. All the management can be done though the web interface (updates, new apps which you could find something helpful to you, etc ) and the installation is pretty easy. If you decide to go with it, i recommend that you get a domain and set it up as a DDNS through cloudflare.

theshrike79 3y ago
I could never bear the stress of being in charge of someone else's photo backups. Especially when the option is just for them to pay $10 or something to a huge company that'll have pretty much 100% uptime and zero chance of lost files.
- LilBytes 3y ago
  Its really not that hard. Just don't fuck around with backups, throw them all into Backblaze B2, S3 or what ever else. I have the same setup as the person you're commenting to, initial setup was easy. Just test out your backup strategy thoroughly.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    This is a proper HN reply, two counts of "just" =) If it was a matter of "just" not fucking around and "just testing out the strategy", everyone would just resell B2/S3 capacity with a markup. Having the only copy of someone's family photos is not a responsibility I'm willing to have. YMMV though and more power to you if you want to do that.
SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
My preferred solution would be phone -> local backup (for safety) -> Google Photos (for convenience). If the sync to local is about as good as google this would be the best for me. Distant Plan b: phone -> google photos -> local backup. The problem here is that the only way to get your originals out of google photos is to use google takeout which is basically a dealbreaker here.

climb_stealth 3y ago

I have been paying for and running ente.io on the side for similar reasons. It works pretty well on Android. On iOS it's not quite set and forget yet. But I feel like it's getting there bit by bit. I don't trust Google Photos to be there for us in the long run. That said I have been paying for it and using it for years without a major gripe.

pcdoodle 3y ago

I would not trust google for longevity of service or privacy of my photos.