Maybe recent events made you aware that Google can arbitrarily suspend your Google account forever depending on the things you take pictures of. Even if they’re harmless things and the activity on your account was innocent and legal. What can you do if you want to avoid this risk and stop using Google Photos, but still want somewhere to put your phone snapshots?

For me, the auto-sync features from Android devices was Google Photos’ killer feature, so that’s what I wanted to replace. Now I have the following self-hosted solution:
- Nextcloud for synchronizing photos to a small staging area on cloud storage
- FolderSync because Nextcloud on Android can’t do proper two-way sync for photos
- PhotoView to view photos from the NAS where they’re sorted and stored long-term
I’ve experimented for some weeks before settling on this configuration, read on if you want to know what my workflow ended up being.
Continue reading “A half-decent escape from Google Photos”