I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives
75 pointsby xmasterdev4 days ago16 comments
  • gerdemb3 days ago
    Where is the link? How can iPhone backup directly to an external hard drive?
  • gaudat2 days ago
    >home NAS setups aren't realistic for most users

    Citation needed. Get a Synology NAS and use their Photos app which backups Live photos on both iDevices and Androids. Buy it for life.

    • thenaturalist2 days ago
      Let's be real, that's already far less approachable to 90% of consumers I know.

      The simples hurdle just being knowledge.

      The existence of NAS is probably an unknown unkown to a large part of the population.

      Compare that to "there's an app for that" & plug USB.

      Drastically simpler.

      No skin in the game either way, but I can very much understand OPs reasoning and would reach the same conclusion.

    • pdxandi2 days ago
      I've been doing this for many years and am pretty happy with it. I can sync from my Android and my wife's iPhone. The Photos app is nice and smooth. Backups happen automatically in the background. It can even de-dupe and clean up old photos that have been backed up. All in all, quite pleased with it.
    • HuwFulcher2 days ago
      You’re looking at £300ish for an entry level Synology and the storage. That isn’t a realistic expense for many users.
      • Jnr20 hours ago
        Over time it saves money. I got a home server and a tiny remote backup server 8 years ago and it runs quite a few services saving me hundreds each month and costing in electricity and hardware (over time) about 15EUR/mo. The longer it runs, the cheaper it is. Most of the updates are automatic so no babysitting required.
    • MehdiHK18 hours ago
      Synology is still my go to with the model I already purchased. But I'm not sure I'll be buying them again after this:

      https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requ...

    • michaelraiweta day ago
      A Synology NAS doesn’t last for life.
      • uuddlrlrbabaa day ago
        And isn't protection against fire, flood, theft or other disasters.
    • kzisme2 days ago
      Or checkout https://immich.app/ !
  • jlarocco2 days ago
    I wouldn't use it personally, but I could see it being useful for my parents or family.

    ifuse and rsync works fine for me.

  • SwamyM2 days ago
    I would love this if it allowed me to backup all photos taken with the iPhone to an external drive. Currently, Apple dumps all pictures (from the Camera, from iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) into folder makes it difficult to backup just my pictures.
  • polymatter2 days ago
    Thank you for including a non subscription “lifetime” payment option.
  • atmosxa day ago
    I am using PhotoSync to backup photos from iPhone to a self-hosted Photoprism via WebDAV (accessible from everywhere via tailscale).
  • 2 days ago
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  • scriu6 hours ago
    Can you add a feature to upload to a ftp server?
  • 1970-01-012 days ago
    How is this different from iMazing?

    https://imazing.com/backup-iphone-ipad#:~:text=Choose%20iPho...

    • msh2 days ago
      It’s more like PhotoSync as it only does photos
    • tempodox2 days ago
      I loved the idea until I saw that it's only available as a subscription.
      • 2 days ago
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  • mindwork2 days ago
    Would immich work for this? You can run it locally in docker container
  • mfa19992 days ago
    Will it work with large (huge) photos libraries? Eg. 150k photos/videos - most of them in iCloud. Does it preserve album/folder structure?
  • mattfrommars21 hours ago
    Btw, there is also LocalSend. Pretty nifty app
    • coldtrait7 hours ago
      Isn't that to transfer wirelessly to devices?
  • mattfrommars21 hours ago
    Is this a native IOS app?
  • keroro2 days ago
    How much does it cost?
    • recury2 days ago
      In-App Purchases

      BackiGo Pro Yearly (1 Year) $6.99

      BackiGo Pro Monthly (1 Month) $0.99

      BackiGo Pro Lifetime $14.99

  • alain342 days ago
    [dead]
  • er0k2 days ago
    I just use rsync, works great
    • rsync2 days ago
      Would you explain how you are using rsync to backup photos on an iPhone ?

      I'm not aware of an iOS app named "rsync" and ... presumably you don't have a shell ... ?

      • sandreasa day ago
        Don't know if still works, but this is how I did it back in the days I had an iPhone:

        https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/access-and-recover-files-fr...

        Nowadays I'd use immich or ente.io, which has and e2e encryption cloud as well as self-hosted setup

      • slicktux2 days ago
        You can load the IPhone’s pictures on Linux using the folders namespace and then rsync from the loaded namespace to /local…
        • trinix9122 days ago
          But does it work for Live Photos which is the main premise of this app?
        • wood_spirit2 days ago
          I use a usb cable and a Linux laptop to copy to a couple of external hard drives (which I store separately). It’s all manual but not too orrenous although i ought backup more often. The biggest hassle is accessing the new heic format on pretty much everything.

          Could it all be made into a sd card image for a pi zero perhaps? Even with a web ui accessible over Wi-Fi? A basic cheap sync-cable-appliance that non-techies can easily use?

          • rsync2 days ago
            I think I heard that the latest 'rclone' now, finally, support iCloud ... but I think there is an issue there because you can't sync full quality / RAW photos to icloud, can you ?