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I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives

75 points xmasterdev | 5 comments | 23 Jun 25 04:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.933s | source

I noticed so many iPhone users are dealing with the same storage nightmare. Here's a common scenario that sounds familiar to a lot of people:

The widespread problem: iPhone storage fills up crazy fast, not everyone has a Mac, many don't want to pay monthly for iCloud storage, and home NAS setups aren't realistic for most users. The manual approach of creating folders and selecting photos one by one is tedious, and keeping up with new photos becomes overwhelming

So I built an app called BackiGo that addresses this exact pain point - it allows direct backup of Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives, no Mac needed.

What makes it useful:

Backs up your Live Photos with all the motion intact

Can restore Live Photos back to your iPhone camera roll

Super easy to backup new photos

You can browse and view all your saved Live Photos directly from the external drive without having to restore them first

You can test it out with up to 500 photos & videos backup before deciding if it works for your needs

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er0k ◴[25 Jun 25 18:45 UTC] No.44380614[source]▶
I just use rsync, works great
replies(1): >>44380671 #
rsync ◴[25 Jun 25 18:51 UTC] No.44380671[source]▶
Would you explain how you are using rsync to backup photos on an iPhone ?

I'm not aware of an iOS app named "rsync" and ... presumably you don't have a shell ... ?

replies(3): >>44380951 #>>44383976 #>>44388897 #
1. slicktux ◴[25 Jun 25 19:20 UTC] No.44380951[source]▶
You can load the IPhone’s pictures on Linux using the folders namespace and then rsync from the loaded namespace to /local…
replies(2): >>44381070 #>>44381509 #
2. wood_spirit ◴[25 Jun 25 19:34 UTC] No.44381070[source]▶
I use a usb cable and a Linux laptop to copy to a couple of external hard drives (which I store separately). It’s all manual but not too orrenous although i ought backup more often. The biggest hassle is accessing the new heic format on pretty much everything.

Could it all be made into a sd card image for a pi zero perhaps? Even with a web ui accessible over Wi-Fi? A basic cheap sync-cable-appliance that non-techies can easily use?

replies(1): >>44381731 #
3. trinix912 ◴[25 Jun 25 20:25 UTC] No.44381509[source]▶
But does it work for Live Photos which is the main premise of this app?
4. rsync ◴[25 Jun 25 20:54 UTC] No.44381731[source]▶
I think I heard that the latest 'rclone' now, finally, support iCloud ... but I think there is an issue there because you can't sync full quality / RAW photos to icloud, can you ?
replies(1): >>44383449 #
5. RockRobotRock ◴[26 Jun 25 01:31 UTC] No.44383449{3}[source]▶
rclone has support for iCloud Drive, but it sounds like you are talking about iCloud Photos, which is a different service.

This project lets you download from the latter: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...