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Does your phone silently and reliably upload all the photos to your server? My guess you're conceding on that part. How's the offline app support? My full libr

by halapro 10mo ago

Does your phone silently and reliably upload all the photos to your server? My guess you're conceding on that part. How's the offline app support? My full library (30k items) is available on my phone (not in high res). There are a lot more concessions I'm sure.

vachina 10mo ago
I’d gladly trade manual but bulletproof sync over paying a fee forever for essentially… storing files on drives. We got to this stage of having to sync because Apple can’t stand putting more storage on client devices.
- sebastiennight 10mo ago
  > We got to this stage of having to sync ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶A̶p̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶c̶l̶i̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶s̶. "because a company that sells you Cloud storage has very few incentives to give away more local storage, or compress/optimize the files generated by its camera app." might be more accurate
- dontlaugh 10mo ago
  More device storage wouldn’t help. I couldn’t fit all of my pictures on any phone sold today.
- volemo 10mo ago
  > We got to this stage of having to sync because Apple can’t stand putting more storage on client devices. It's not why I use sync services. All my photos fit on my devices (more or less). But I want to have seamless access to my files from both of my devices. And most importantly the sync is my first line of backup, i.e. if my phone gets obliterated I don't loose a day or two of files and photos, I only loose a couple of minutes.
WD-42 10mo ago
Yes, it does silently and reliably upload all my photos to my server. That's like, the entire selling point of the app? You even have control over how and when (on wifi or not) and the ability to change hostnames depending on what network you are on. And yes I can browse my entire collection back to 2001 no problem. I have no idea what the offline support is.
- palata 10mo ago
  That was my selling point for Nextcloud, and it turns out it doesn't work reliably. It works most of the time, but for backing up photos it's not enough, and when it fails it's super annoying (you have to resync EVERYTHING from scratch). People seem very happy about Immich, I'm tempted to try. But people seem very about Nextcloud as well, so it's difficult to tell.
  - esseph 10mo ago
    Nextcloud is dogshit. Immich is the best end user focused app I've ever ran in a container.
    - palata 10mo ago
      I find it harsh to call it dogshit. My feeling is that they focus on other use-cases than photo syncing.
andrew_eu 10mo ago
The sync really is quite good. On wifi it's basically seamless. If I had 30k new images though it would be much faster to use the immich-go tool mentioned in the blog post. Offline support is alright, though I haven't worried about this much. I think it doesn't do any local deletion, so whatever stays in your DCIM folder is still on device.
- palata 10mo ago
  > The sync really is quite good. Do you have to ever open the app though? On iOS/Android? In my case I would need it to run on the phones of my family members, and they probably will never open the app.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    iOS doesn't allow that sort of pattern for non-Apple applications last time I looked, so probably doesn't work on iOS at all.
    - palata 10mo ago
      The Nextcloud iOS app does it. For some reason it requires the location permission "all the time" for that, presumably as a way to "wake" the app from time to time? I decided to try Nextcloud exactly because of this. My problem with it is more that the whole thing is a bit unreliable. Like once in a while the app will get into a state where the only way I found to recover is to just erase everything and re-sync everything. And the app will resend ALL the pictures, even though they are already on the server. And I can't do that with my family members' phones. It doesn't matter to me if the app takes a month to sync the photos, but it has to require zero maintenance. I can deal with the server side, but I need it to "just work" on the smartphones.
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        > The Nextcloud iOS app does it. Searching for "nextcloud ios background sync" shows a whole bunch of forum posts and bug reports about it not working well unless you have the application open. One issue (https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2225 https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2225) been open since 2022, seems to still be not working properly. Another (https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2497 https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2497) been open since 2023. For something that works well it seems like a ton of people have a lot of issues with it. Are you sure you're on the latest iOS version? Seems like people experience the issues when they're on a later version.
Jnr 10mo ago
The offline sync was a bit problematic in the past but this year they finally got it working properly.
- SlightlyLeftPad 10mo ago
  Can confirm, they put in a ton of effort to fix it and they delivered. Flawless on ios since many versions ago.
armadyl 10mo ago
> Does your phone silently and reliably upload all the photos to your server? My guess you're conceding on that part. That’s my question. I’m sure it works fine on Android but I was under the impression that iOS/iPadOS restricts this unless the app is running in the foreground.

by halapro 10mo ago

vachina 10mo ago

I’d gladly trade manual but bulletproof sync over paying a fee forever for essentially… storing files on drives. We got to this stage of having to sync because Apple can’t stand putting more storage on client devices.

sebastiennight 10mo ago
> We got to this stage of having to sync ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶A̶p̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶c̶l̶i̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶s̶. "because a company that sells you Cloud storage has very few incentives to give away more local storage, or compress/optimize the files generated by its camera app." might be more accurate
dontlaugh 10mo ago
More device storage wouldn’t help. I couldn’t fit all of my pictures on any phone sold today.
volemo 10mo ago
> We got to this stage of having to sync because Apple can’t stand putting more storage on client devices. It's not why I use sync services. All my photos fit on my devices (more or less). But I want to have seamless access to my files from both of my devices. And most importantly the sync is my first line of backup, i.e. if my phone gets obliterated I don't loose a day or two of files and photos, I only loose a couple of minutes.

WD-42 10mo ago

Yes, it does silently and reliably upload all my photos to my server. That's like, the entire selling point of the app? You even have control over how and when (on wifi or not) and the ability to change hostnames depending on what network you are on. And yes I can browse my entire collection back to 2001 no problem. I have no idea what the offline support is.

palata 10mo ago
That was my selling point for Nextcloud, and it turns out it doesn't work reliably. It works most of the time, but for backing up photos it's not enough, and when it fails it's super annoying (you have to resync EVERYTHING from scratch). People seem very happy about Immich, I'm tempted to try. But people seem very about Nextcloud as well, so it's difficult to tell.
- esseph 10mo ago
  Nextcloud is dogshit. Immich is the best end user focused app I've ever ran in a container.
  - palata 10mo ago
    I find it harsh to call it dogshit. My feeling is that they focus on other use-cases than photo syncing.

andrew_eu 10mo ago

The sync really is quite good. On wifi it's basically seamless. If I had 30k new images though it would be much faster to use the immich-go tool mentioned in the blog post. Offline support is alright, though I haven't worried about this much. I think it doesn't do any local deletion, so whatever stays in your DCIM folder is still on device.

palata 10mo ago
> The sync really is quite good. Do you have to ever open the app though? On iOS/Android? In my case I would need it to run on the phones of my family members, and they probably will never open the app.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  iOS doesn't allow that sort of pattern for non-Apple applications last time I looked, so probably doesn't work on iOS at all.
  - palata 10mo ago
    The Nextcloud iOS app does it. For some reason it requires the location permission "all the time" for that, presumably as a way to "wake" the app from time to time? I decided to try Nextcloud exactly because of this. My problem with it is more that the whole thing is a bit unreliable. Like once in a while the app will get into a state where the only way I found to recover is to just erase everything and re-sync everything. And the app will resend ALL the pictures, even though they are already on the server. And I can't do that with my family members' phones. It doesn't matter to me if the app takes a month to sync the photos, but it has to require zero maintenance. I can deal with the server side, but I need it to "just work" on the smartphones.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      > The Nextcloud iOS app does it. Searching for "nextcloud ios background sync" shows a whole bunch of forum posts and bug reports about it not working well unless you have the application open. One issue (https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2225 https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2225) been open since 2022, seems to still be not working properly. Another (https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2497 https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/2497) been open since 2023. For something that works well it seems like a ton of people have a lot of issues with it. Are you sure you're on the latest iOS version? Seems like people experience the issues when they're on a later version.

Jnr 10mo ago

The offline sync was a bit problematic in the past but this year they finally got it working properly.

SlightlyLeftPad 10mo ago
Can confirm, they put in a ton of effort to fix it and they delivered. Flawless on ios since many versions ago.

armadyl 10mo ago

> Does your phone silently and reliably upload all the photos to your server? My guess you're conceding on that part. That’s my question. I’m sure it works fine on Android but I was under the impression that iOS/iPadOS restricts this unless the app is running in the foreground.