this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Only issue is I have had my phone stolen once and dropped into a drain once by a drunk friend. So for me backup of photos is critical (with apple I have never lost photos even after this happened). My photo library is currently 205GB and the other phones in my family are 249gb of data.
So I have the 2tb icloud plan and the apple one plan so it is all shared (currently using 463gb/2.2TB) among my family. 4 people use these 2 subscriptions.
How am I supposed to get a service that auto backs up my photos daily for me, and for 3 other phones unless I use apples offering?
Genuine question. I have not been able to answer this question for over 3 years now. Other services I tried like amazon photo backup expected me to open the app to make photo backups. Makes the service pointless imho.
It's a limitation imposed by Apple, so you won't find anything that can sync as seamlessly as iCloud. Apps can only sync for up to 60s in the background when receiving a wake-up notification from the server.
I can recommend Nextcloud. Its self-hosted, supports ios, android, windows, mac and linux and can auto upload photos in the background . It also allows you to syncronize any other files, like icloud.
This way youre not locked into only using apple devices and can freely choose your next phone.
It can also sync contacts, notes, calendars, and more. You can have as many accounts as you want and (optionally) use shared folders. The only limit is the size of the Disk in your server.
But you will need some technical knowledg
You need an old desktop pc (i have one with a 12 year old dual-core cpu and its works just fine), install a 2tb HDD and finally install Linux and Nextcloud. There are many good tutorials for all of these steps.
I like Nextcloud because its free (exept for the hardware and electricity your server needs) and you actually own your data meaning its acessible even without internet, or any external server.
Nextcloud gmbh (the company behind the open-source project) doesnt collect any data, so it is as private as can be.
You should of course do backups of the server disk from time to time, just incase the HDD fails or your house burns down or gets flooded.
I have been using it for my documents and photo backups for years and its great, but it requires some maintenace and is definitly less easy to use than icloud or google photos.
If you used Android you would have the freedom that makes it doable instead of paying extra money to have limitations artificially imposed on you (literally this is the entire apple business model). Syncthing automatically syncs to my home machine and it costs nothing except a little setup time and electricity
If it’s family photos, we bought SmugMug basic $75/year, and set up the same account on our phones. Boom. All our photos are backed up and shared with each other. And there s no limit in sight.
“It's important to note that any HEIC images will be converted into JPGs when uploaded to SmugMug, and LivePhotos will be converted into still images. “