So I’m looking to disconnect myself from Google and their tracking (as much as possible) and I was thinking about installing GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. I mostly use my phone for Lemmy, Signal, NewPipe and taking photos. The last one is my biggest bother at the moment. The Google Photos environment is so convenient - I take a photo, it uploads it to my Google Photos collection, and after a while, it deletes it from my phone to clear space, keeping only the cloud backup. Is there a functionality like this disconnected from Google that I would be able to implement on my GrapheneOS phone? I’m looking to invest in the Proton environment (mainly Mail and Drive) so I could use that for storage. Cheers
Nextcloud, as mentioned, is a great option but does require a bit of work, albeit not much. I would recommend a Synology server. They’re fantastically simple and this was my approach after trying Nextcloud. I did this to divorce myself from Google. Synology has many mirrored services
But it’s a more costly option correct? Because rather than using an old machine, I would have to purchase a $500+ machine from them.
It is expensive but trust me Synology DSM is awesome and beatiful and it works really well.
second/third this. synology nas’s are great! I’ve been running one for almost a decade now. They run a good line between being very powerful and very user friendly so you don’t have to be super technical to get them working. To a large extent, they can almost be completely plug and play, depending on what you’re looking for.
So if I understand correctly, Synology DSM is operating system that can be installed on any NAS drive? Or do you have to first buy their enclosure to use it? I found a used Synology enclosure with 2tb disk for $200 and I’m wondering if I should get it. Is stuff like Synology Moments (which is presume is just an app on the DSM system) free or is it extra?
Yes, DSM is the OS on all the synology nas enclosures. I’ve heard you can install it on custom built nas devices, but I don’t know the details there, or if its easy to do or not. I would suspect its probably more difficult than not, just because synology is in the business of selling their nas devices more than anything. I have no idea how it would work installing it on 3rd party hardware at all, though.
As for synology moments, its an app that can be installed on DSM. Most of the additional apps are free (moments included), but off hand i know of one notable exception: Surveillance. You need a per camera license for their surveillance software, and IIRC every nas device comes with a “free” 2 camera license, but you have to purchase more if you want more cameras.
They actually have a pretty good ecosystem of apps on synology as well, including things like docker, plex, git, etc. that can all be installed directly on the nas itself and run as a service off of it.
It’s worth noting that if you’re buying the enclosures directly from synology, they generally don’t come with any HDDs at all, you have to buy those separately. Not sure where you’re seeing your “$200 for enclosure + 2TB”, but i just wanted to put that out there as “make sure it actually includes drives if its through an official store or something” warning.
Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions!
Is there any benefits of buying directly from them? I think I would get a single bay enclosure and 4tb disk (I should be able to close in a $200$250 range).
It probably wouldn’t be just me using it though - I would probably include my partner in it. Is it possible to have separate accounts for Drive and Moments so our photos/files wouldn’t overlap?
EDIT: Have you used the self hosted email functionality? Can you recommend it over let’s say Proton Mail?
A single bay “J” model should be around $200 including a 4tb drive. You can achieve a lot with that, especially if your focus is automated photo backup
Do you keep an offline backup of your Synology NAS drive? In case it’s disk craps out.
Yeah, backup is very easy, I backup to a locally attached external hard drive as well as to a cloud service. There are loads of options and ways to manage backups
I’ve been using Immich. Very useful and easy for non techies to use. I know it says beta software, and it is; but it is more reliable than Lemmy…
What’s your hardware setup for this?
VM on a Proxmox host, running Rocky Linux. 4G Ram, 2CPU, sshfs to NAS for picture storage.
Sshfs to Nas? Does that mean you have a persistent ssh session open from your host and are using it as a file system to a self hosted Nas at your home? Or did I misunderstand that?
Using SSHFS ; so yeah basically a long running SSH session. You can use other methods that your NAS and OS host support if you feel like it though. The NAS is located on the same network as immich is. NAS has 10TB storage, the vm only has 25GB, enough for the system install and running updates.
Are you using it with multiple users/devices syncing? I’m looking to get out of Photoprism, and Immich caught my eye a little while back.
it deletes it from my phone to clear space, keeping only the cloud backup
One copy of of anything isn’t a backup, it’s a move. Yes, in this case, Google is doing its own backups but you’re giving them all the trust and control.
If you can setup a small server (nothing fancy, an old refurbed office PC does just fine) you can setup NextCloud. I use it for a Google Drive/Photos replacement. Doesn’t have as many nice features, but it works if al you want is archiving.
You can also check out the Self-Hosted Git Guide, there is a whole section for Photo/Video management. https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#photo-and-video-galleries
Syncthing is another good option. I’ve never used NextCloud, though, so I’m not sure which is better.
Syncthing is great if you wanna to sync everything inside a folder, i’ve used in the past to backup savefiles of drm free games, but for photos nextcloud is a better option since work almost the same as google photos auto finding the folder with images and asking kf you wanna to sync them instead of doing manually
Is there a capability of having stuff on the cloud, but not locally, but they will still be accessible on the phone given the computer/server is on and that I’m online on my phone.
EDIT: See if I had a half decent computer, but with a decent storage (let’s say 1tb) and I had on all time - could I potentially use it as my own self hosted cloud?
To your edit:
Yes.
Yes, i did with my old pc, i used zero tier one to connect with it from outside my wifi, sadly a storm came while i was at work and it fried the motherboard
Apart from the ones mentioned there’s also Murena cloud. Good if you have e/os phone
Ooooooo I like the sound of this. What’s the community’s opinion on them when it comes to privacy? I don’t mind paying a monthly fee if it’s all taken care for me.
from my very limited research, it’s not the most private OS especially when compared to GrapheneOS. They do make it easier to switch to a de-Googled product with replacements out of the box. I do recall a lot of their other products like the Drive and what not are open source
Immich! I’ve been using it for a while and it’s amazing
I replaced Google Photos with a Synology NAS + Synology Moments (app). It handles the backup from my phone, organizes the images, has facial recognition, object recognition, etc. Object recognition was REMOVED from the newer Photos app, but Synology is apparently bringing that feature back this year.
You can clear up backed up photos from your phone through the Moments app (not sure about the other Photo apps from Synology), but you’ll still want to have an actual backup solution for what’s on your NAS.
How much did you pay for your Synology setup? What is it? Do you have an offline backup?
Nextcloud is good. I actually have an instance on my server if you need one. A+ rating on server security test lol
Since we’re discussing alternatives to Google, does anyone know of a self-hosted alternative to Google’s location sharing? (For family members etc?)
I’m keeping my eyes on Locus: https://github.com/Myzel394/locus
