**You must own a Synology NAS with DiskStation Manager 7.0 or above version to run this app, and be running the latest Synology Photos to get the complete set of features**
A flexible and comprehensive management tool that allows photo backup and browsing by chronological order or folder structure. Explore photos of loved ones or favorite vacation spots through automatically created albums. Group photos by themes or topics of your choice. Enjoy cherished memories in the palm of your hand.
Although it is a good alternative to the likes of Google photos, it is lacking some functions that could’ve made it great. (1) not having a native video playback is rather annoying since you’ll have to use a third party app. (2) no way to search up faces of pets. (3) no capability, at this time, to edit any of the photos. Besides these three glaring lacking functionalities, there are still some minor ones that do not break the app. Hopefully future updates will add in these features.
Review by Mike Snyder on 5/31/21 includes all my same comments. Very basic photo backup, bad user interface with some functions not operating and some missing. What needs fixing/adding – 1) An upload queue that works 2) Native video playback 3) Basic photo editng like crop, enhance colors, etc. 4) Show me all photos on my phone regardless of whether synced; checkmark on completed backup good idea. 5) Free up space by giving option to delete from phone photos & video that is already backed up.
Really liking the dsm 7 photos app. A few things i would like to see. 1. Recycle bin for photos and make it easy to see from within the app. 2. Auto backup when connected to a specific wifi only (home wifi). Also when I’m connected to a vpn it seems to try to sync endlessly and not stop when it can’t connect. Make it stop trying after a couple failed attempts? 3. Would LOVE an option to auto compress pictures and video. Especially video. That’s the thing i miss the most from Google photos.
It is the best alternative for the Google photos app. I have two main issues with this app that doesn’t let me to give it 5 stars. First, It only shows the pictures and videos that have already been backed up. It means it doesn’t show the recently taken photos immediately. So it can’t be used as the main photo app on your phone. Second, it uses other video players to play your videos. I like to have an embedded video player so I can go to the next picture or video without pressing the back btn.
When I ran Moments, the photos that were sent to me via Messages were backed up as well as all the photos I took with my phone. It worked flawlessly. When I purchased a new Synology DS220+ with DiskStation 7, it no longer backed up photos sent to me with Messages. I’ve checked and double checked the settings several times both on my phone and on my DiskStation. It still does not backup photos sent via Messages.
Ew. I don’t usually leave negative reviews, but for something this prolifically terrible, I’ll make an exception. It’s a buggy mess. Backup is buggy. Auto-clearing space after backup is buggy. The app actually recommends you use HTTP instead of HTTPS if your NAS uses a self-signed cert. It makes the recommendation directly in the app, right next to the option to use HTTP. I’ve worked in cyber security for over a decade. Self signed cert > no encryption. Ridiculous recommendation. Horrible app.
The new update to your Drive APP has new options to view and organize photos, but it can’t “see” into the Photos folder that this APP uses. In turn, this APP can’t see into my Drive folder to help organize those photos. I NEED a photo APP that can help me organize ALL of the photos on my NAS. Jumping between APPs is frustrating.
Overall has been very good! I really wish that this would also have a viewer to see photos on the device instead of only the photos that have been uploaded. If I’m out and about and take pics, I have to use the default gallery on my phone instead of being able to use this as a one-stop-shop. Being able to view photos that are not yet uploaded would make this a true google photos replacement
I’ll give it 3 stars for the time being AND for the following reasons: 1 – Does what it is supposed to do. 2 – Looks somewhat nice. 3 – Basic functionality is all there. What will they need to improve upon? 1 – Upload queue: How you guys going to throw this in the app and not even make it work? What is the point of putting in a place holder? Either put it in or don’t! 2 – Native video playback is nonexistent. THIS needs to be fixed. 3 – Native photo editing is nonexistent. Really? 4 – Change the way this operates! Instead of only showing me the photos/videos that have already been synced to the Synology, show me ALL the photos on my mobile device! Do the same in this app as you do on the Drive app – Show me a small checkmark on the photos/videos that have been synced; Nothing on the unsynced photos/videos. Your aim is to replace the native gallery app on my phone and don’t try to say it isn’t – What would be the point of having a gallery and this? 5 – Auto clean, please? How about a setting that allows me to ‘Auto-delete photos from this device that have been backed up’. 6 – What is ‘Processing’ on my mobile device? Isn’t the processing of videos and thumbnails done on the Synology? So why the f#$% would my phone need to stop sending files while the SAN is processing a file? Ever heard of multi-threading?
A potential Google photos alternative! The backup is more reliable than moments was. One major problem is the lack of exif data reading. Imported photos are sorted by metadata only which is unreliable at best. I have photos from Christmas 2008 which are placed in the timeline at September 2017 (because they were moved on that date) . Fix this and it’s bye-bye google photos. A great addition would also be to have an in built video viewer and basic photo editor but I’m guessing that’s on the way.
After the initial disappointment, i continued to use for a few days. Overall synology photo is better than Ds Photo. It has a deeper learning curve but the new features are nice. HOWEVER, the android app is so much worse compared to the iOS or the web version. So many bugs, photos in folder keeps disappearing and re-appearing, random freeze, really bad performance. The rating is only for the android app. Please fix the issues with the app cuz right now it is not usable.
Recently updated to DSM 7.0 and set up the DS Photos application. The automatic backup does not seem to find any of my photos automatically even if I tell it to use all folders or a custom list of folders. Manual uploads seem to work fine but that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid doing manually. I’d at least like an easier way to see debug information in the event that there are issues detecting files or uploading them automatically. I have given it around 48 hours to detect and upload files on its own with no luck.
Looks amazing, but occasionally gets: Unknown error occurred: empty response body, and can’t upload anything anymore after that. It seems to happen with screenshots and downloaded images the most. While I’d like this to be fixed on the back end, ideally this would not block uploading every other photo in the meantime. All in all, can’t wait for the official release.
I was super hyped about getting rid of Google Photos and self-hosting. I bought a Synology NAS (920+) specifically for this purpose. Imagine how upsetting it was then when immediately upon installing Photos I learn that it can’t even point to my existing photos folder structure… WHAT?! That’s right, if, like any normal human being, you’ve been saving photos for the last couple decades and have them neatly organized in a folder structure on your computer or on your storage device and you buy a brand new NAS and import that folder structure onto the NAS, Synology Photos has absolutely no way to point to that structure. This is crazy. The only way for Synology Photos to work is to have every photo you want in the system in a Root folder that the application creates. This means either moving your entire legacy folder structure out of it’s place or duplicating it and having to forever more worry about syncing it. These are both unacceptable solutions to a problem that should absolutely not exist on a $550+ professional NAS device. I would expect this from some cheap no-name Walmart device, not Synology. Devs, you need to fix this immediately. How hard is it to have a list of folders the app scrapes for content? I haven’t even had a chance to be able to review the remainder of the app as I can’t even get photos into it. But given this, my fears are high. I will update my review if and when the developers allow Users to actually use their own folder structures for the application.
This app has been working great! Imported a couple thousand photos/videos from Google photos. Albums are accurately created using the metadata. I saw in one of the previous reviews posted on 7/17/21 that the individual complained about folder structure. You indeed are able to import folder structures and view them in such a way. I did it with mine. On the mobile app, you have to click on the ellipsis and choose “switch to folder view” and voila, folder structure. I’m using Samsung Note 20 Ultra.
Overall excellent app with one MAJOR problem. It can’t play videos and local files. When you click on a video thumbnail it can open in Google Photos. After that is if you click “back” you are stuck in Google Photos. This is very unfortunate because otherwise this app would be a great replacement for Google Photos, especially if you own Synology NAS.
“Uploaded Suspended – No Permissions” endlessly cycling forever and ever. This app CANNOT figure out how to do the simple task of uploading all my photos. Some it can. Some it completely refuses to do. What a disaster. It’s almost as if this app is specifically designed to not handle the simplest of use cases like the old DS Photo app did. All I want to do is have my entire family’s devices automatically backup pictures to a single common shared album we can all then open and view on our phones. As if we are taking polaroids and tossing them into a shoebox. It can’t even do that. Instead it backs up photos by scattering them all over folders spread across my NAS’ share structure that it creates on-the-fly. No option to just dump them into a single ALREADY EXISTING share like before. I can’t even get my old album to show up on my phone AT ALL at is is, so it wouldn’t even mean much if I could backup photos to that album. They’d just vanish from view entirely. Such a huge disappointment.
Same design issues as DS Photo. You cannot specific scope of what to backup by clicking a folder and including all child folders. Which means every time you organize your photos on your phone and craft a new folder, you must update this app. Not a date was to know you’re covered! The ago does not preserve the hierarchy of the folders. If you happen to have 2 or more folders named xyz, then they merged on the NAS. This is chaos. This app goes into a power draining loop when you leave wifi.
I’m new to Synology Photos and haven’t used previous versions. When it works, it does a decent job. I’ve run into frequent “your session has expired” alerts forcing me to sign back in. When I sign back in, I have to re-enable photo uploads. The Upload Queue section of the app has never populated. I’m unable to see what is pending upload or what has finished uploading. I’m can’t free up space as the app doesn’t have permissions to the DCIM folder and no clear way to enable it in Android 12.
3 stars because it at least works and I can view all my photos. One super annoying thing is when I backup from my phones to a specific directory its creating a DCIM folder with the below folder structure following what is on the phone instead of just uploading the pictures/videos to the folder selected. DS Photo did not do this and it worked great. Hopefully this is just a programmatic oversight and will be fixed soon. Would also be nice for the app to check for photos missing on the NAS and upload those. I took pictures after I updated to DSM 7.0 and DS Photo stopped backing up and they will not upload, only uploads newly taken pictures or video.
Does a nice job of presenting your photos and videos, but the app is slow to startup, and videos take too long to load. Revising down to 2 stars. Auto backup stops and doesn’t startup again automatically. Was hoping to display Google photos but it needs more work. Also, load speed is very slow despite caching. These problems make this app not fully usable at this state.
Decent. Needs some polishing. Auto free up space after upload, notifications/email when new images are shared with me or added to a shared album. Face detection is weak and crude, many bad groupings, love the feature but needs improvement. Find pictures on map instead of looking up by name. Object detection would be bonus. Despite that, fairly happy with the app and stability.
Videos are not automatically included in “Places” albums. This is so inconvenient to see photos from certain places and not be able to watch related videos. Google photos has this feature, OnePlus gallery has it so it is 100% possible. Please implement this feature in the next update. Thanks. Other than that – very promising app!
I have my DS920+ setup to serve internally over HTTPs on port 443 with a LetsEncrypt cert. WireGuard to connect remotely, which also specifies internal DNS. Synology Photos handles this without any issues. Failure to renew the cert will result in a connection failure, but to be expected. The app is a good local alternative/addition to Google Photos but it’s not perfect. The sync options could stand for a bit more granularity but the All Photos option is precisely what I wanted.
Disappointed with this app. I’ve not had issues with the photo backups like others have. It’s been backing up fine for me, no issue. My biggest beef is that I cant select what folder to use. I am so irritated with this. I already have a folder structure, why can’t I continue use it!? Why am I forced into a new structure that just completely muddies my existing folder structure? I had reached out to Synology awhile ago about this and they said go back to DS file. But that no longer work on DSM 7!
I invested in a Synology 920+ RAID 10 specifically to backup + enjoy our extensive digital photography library. I thought it would be easy to leverage DLNA to stream albums continuously to digital frames, but alas, Synology doesn’t have a Photos app for Google TV or Samsung, and the slideshow experience via native DLNA interfaces is completely awful. Chromecast was never intended for this use case. So, the main reason I spent so much time and money seems on my Synology setup seems to be a fail
It’s terrible. Please bring back DS Photo on DSM 7! My whole prior photo backup was structured by file folders and sorted by date and personal/work groupings and then had permissions applied accordingly. DS Photo was great with simple layout and ease of management. This new Photos app sucks!!! They moved my file locations. I can’t share or not share like before. This split save locations of Personal and Share locations is a pain. Just a really terrible experience!
Terrible step back from DS Photos why would I want to default to a personal space and not where all of my photos are. Can not see the folders that my photos are stored in. Backups stop randomly have to be reintialized. Not even sure that the videos are backing up need to check. I am hoping synology does not upgrade anything else if this is how upgrades are going to work going foward. Upgrades should not elminate key user features.
I like the look n’ feel, but the app is useless because it doesn’t sync in background. After setting it up and returning later, no pics were backed up. I need an app I can count on it. It’s hard to sell it to friends if other similar public cloud apps are just doing this basic functionality fine.
Pretty weak backup capability. I purchased a Synology NAS for sole purpose of creating a easy use family backup solution for our mobile phones. The initial backup ran fine from phones source DCIM folder but now I can’t add other source folder to the backup. I have several source folders checked in the backup settings tab, but the app just won’t back them up. And there is no ‘refresh’ backup or sync option.
Auto back up is awesome, when it works. Decent app now that view “by directory” works. Still does not backup automatically without running app once after reboot or removing adaptive battery… Suggestion: if app opens and backup is enabled but has not been running, is not up to date or failed app should throw a warning. Should autorun after every reboot to check backup status. This app had went over a week without backing up photos, more than once.
Excellent Photo Backup Solution! I was able to backup 12GB of photos and videos from my Samsung Galaxy Note 9, to my Synology DS918+ home NAS. It took about 2 hours to complete. I can now see the media in Synology Photos on my NAS, which is organized by date, and is very quick. It copies new photos automatically in the background for me, when on wifi. No need to pay for expensive cloud storage!
DS Photos actually worked, this app does not. 1. Background uploading doesn’t work. 2. Backlog of photos never decreases, as if nothing is being uploaded. 3. Upload Queue is never populated, so I can’t see which file is preventing the others from uploading. 4. Large video files consistently fail to upload. I’m going to uninstall Synology Photos and attempt to go back to DS Photos again.
Excellent improvement over Synology Moments. I can actually choose to backup my SD card contents now, and my photos are all automatically uploaded to my DS1618+ without having to launch the Synology Photos app. If it helps any of those having issues with auto uploads, I’m on a Galaxy S9+ running Android 10. DSM 7 on a 1618+. No issues whatsoever and the responsiveness has improved as well.
Not as feature complete as Icloud or Google photos, but good enough! Has all the core features I need (decent user experience, auto backup of photos on mobile device, capability to automatically backup photos to shared space to be able to auto share photos with my wife.) Making 4 star review since there are still improvements to be made: – links don’t always get work properly for non admin users (maybe I have my NAS setup wrong) – better facial recognitions (does good, could be better)
This app is slow, the functionality is limited (compared to DS Photo which was not a speed demon itself) and makes no sense. No UX thought was put into anything. The backup scheme is #1 stupid and #2 inflexible. The explanation for the settings make no sense. On the plus side, it works, I guess. Thus the 2 stars.
Great app for those wanting a slick, easy to use photo storage solution. I think many of the issues mentioned by other reviewers have been resolved. Photos are stored under /homes//photos/MobileBackup/. The auto-delete option is under settings. You can also choose which folders to backup. Only dropped a star as there’s some small UI polishes that could be added like automatically ticking existing photos when adding to an album.
Critical bugs that never ocurred with DS Photo. The app showed a folder twice with the same name: one was empty and the other one had pictures in it. Deleted the empty one and then both folders disappeared, losing all the pictures. The deleted folders don’t even show on the Recycle Bin. Contacted Synology Support to see if they have a way to recover deleted files and all they can do is SSH into the NAS and say “We don’t see a folder with that name”. Obviously. The data is permanently lost.
New user so not sure what’s changed, but no issues at all with the app. 1. Folder structure created is per login, per device. 2. Great that the back ups can be spilt by year and month too 3. Individual albums can be shared publicly (back up everything and only share holiday snaps) 4. The app has a setting for “only backup photos taken since my last backup” so when I move photos from the per login, per device folders to a central folder structure, there are no duplicates. On the whole very good
It could be great. The backup function works well. But when away from home and not on the WiFi, all you get is black thumbnails. It doesn’t matter if you’re on 5G, 4G, 3G, they just don’t load. As such, it’s only good for backing up your device. Not for looking at your images when out and about like you can with Google Photos. The app needs a lot of bugs fixed before I can up my score. These updates don’t seem forthcoming.