Self-Hosting Photos
First rule of internet is same as the first rule of boxing first rule of boxing, “protect yourself at all times”.
In early 2023, I did a DNA test with 23andme. Of course, I made the rookie mistake of using my real name to create a profile. It might be too late for me but maybe this post helps others.
Creating a fake name would have been totally viable (according to some Reddit posts). As I got the reports back and became more aware of the subject (and how DNA data can be abused), it felt “wrong” to store it on a cloud service (iCloud, I did enable end to end encryption, so there is hope).
This + watching too much sci-fi birthed the idea of self-hosting everything including photos, media and files and having control of the email domain.
This year, the goal to move off Google and Apple photos was achieved. But first, let me talk about why I want to go off cloud for this (besides just privacy reasons)
I use an iPhone and Google Photos, so the pictures were getting synced to both clouds
iCloud capacity was 200GB, Google’s capacity was 2TB - didn’t like this mismatch
Wasn’t sure if either / both these upload the full quality picture or pre-process them
Wasn’t sure about the relationship between the two clouds. Which one was the source of truth?
Privacy concerns (obviously)
Current setup - Synology Photos + Tailscale
Hardware
Synology DiskStation DS224+ 2 Bay Dekstop NAS
Seagate IronWolf 4TB Internal Hard Drive x 2
Setup
Synology Hybrid Raid SHR (3.6TB usable space)
Google Drive for backups (more later)
While I didn’t purchase Synology NAS for Photos. It was meant for sensitive files like DNA data, identity document scans. In my research I quickly realized that synology photos has come a long way and can actually replace Google/Apple photos app.
The Synology Photos app offers a “backup” feature that downloads original quality pictures from Apple Photos and then you can optionally delete photos from Apple Photos. This is what I use but my “backup” is the “real” copy of my photos.
To access it on mobile devices, I use Tailscale and point the Synology Photos app to the Tailscale IP.
I could delete Google Photos. Apple Photos is not deletable (as the app is also the OS level API to move things around, duh) but I disabled photos sync to iCloud.
Experience so far
Since I suddenly had much more storage space available. I started recording videos in Apple Log format and started taking photos in DNG (digital negative) format.
DNG / Log - this is still experimental, log needs to be processed and DNG needs to be converted to JPEG (possible in Synology) before posting to socials.
Tailscale makes accessing the library remotely easy BUT makes using a VPN hard. As iOS can only have one VPN at a time and I haven’t explored split DNS VPN on iOS yet (maybe it isn’t possible?). I can use Tailscale + Mullvad integration in dire situations.
Backups still go to Google Drive, but they are encrypted on the device.
Ending this post with this security quote
If something is on the network, assume that it is exposed.
Hit me up if you have any questions about the setup.