Auto backup of Android camera photos to PC? Difficulty level: mom-proof
December 30, 2019 9:54 AM Subscribe
My mom has a Samsung Galaxy S7 and I'm trying to come up with a way for her phone photos to automatically sync to her Windows 7 PC in some way so she can move them into her organized photo folders on her computer without needing to download them. I need it to happen automatically because my mom is terrible with technology and will struggle to manually transfer the photos off her phone onto her PC.
Me and my mom are set up on Dropbox, but the "camera uploads" option doesn't seem to be doing anything. I would, however, like something that syncs Dropbox-style onto her computer locally in the form of files she can just move around via file explorer.
Any other tried and true methods people have used that are idiot-proof? (Sorry, mom.) I'd prefer not to use something that costs money because I feel like with all the various cloud services and apps, there has to be something free. She doesn't take enough photos or videos to hit any bandwidth or usage limits above free versions.
Like I said, she has a Samsung Galaxy 7 phone and Windows 7 PC. (We'll need to upgrade to Windows 10 but probably not until next Christmas 2020. Will probably upgrade her phone then too.) She uses Gmail, and I generally set up her computer and phone via TeamViewer but I'm hoping to get a solution in place before I leave her house after New Years Day. Thank you!
Me and my mom are set up on Dropbox, but the "camera uploads" option doesn't seem to be doing anything. I would, however, like something that syncs Dropbox-style onto her computer locally in the form of files she can just move around via file explorer.
Any other tried and true methods people have used that are idiot-proof? (Sorry, mom.) I'd prefer not to use something that costs money because I feel like with all the various cloud services and apps, there has to be something free. She doesn't take enough photos or videos to hit any bandwidth or usage limits above free versions.
Like I said, she has a Samsung Galaxy 7 phone and Windows 7 PC. (We'll need to upgrade to Windows 10 but probably not until next Christmas 2020. Will probably upgrade her phone then too.) She uses Gmail, and I generally set up her computer and phone via TeamViewer but I'm hoping to get a solution in place before I leave her house after New Years Day. Thank you!
Cloud services to try:
Google Photos is free with her gmail account
Flickr is free up to 1000 photos
Amazon has free photo space for Prime Members.
All three will automatically back up her photos if you change the settings to do so. You may want to only allow those uploads on Wifi and disallow them on cellular, if the settings allow for that. They all let you set up albums and share photos, but Google does not have a way to find photos you haven't put in an album yet. The search works pretty well, though. If she is going to have prints made, many photo places will let you load files directly from a cloud service.
Before someone suggests using IFTTT as part of your process, I can tell you Dropbox is not working on IFTTT and they are not responding to people who report it. I would not rely on them for mission critical tasks.
posted by soelo at 10:14 AM on December 30, 2019
Google Photos is free with her gmail account
Flickr is free up to 1000 photos
Amazon has free photo space for Prime Members.
All three will automatically back up her photos if you change the settings to do so. You may want to only allow those uploads on Wifi and disallow them on cellular, if the settings allow for that. They all let you set up albums and share photos, but Google does not have a way to find photos you haven't put in an album yet. The search works pretty well, though. If she is going to have prints made, many photo places will let you load files directly from a cloud service.
Before someone suggests using IFTTT as part of your process, I can tell you Dropbox is not working on IFTTT and they are not responding to people who report it. I would not rely on them for mission critical tasks.
posted by soelo at 10:14 AM on December 30, 2019
Response by poster: >Is there a specific reason it needs to be on her computer instead of just saved via the cloud?
Yes, because like I said in my question, I want her to be able to move the photos into the folders she already uses to organize her photos on her computer rather than having to download them all manually first. As I clearly specified in my question, it needs to be a backup solution that involves automatically putting files locally on her computer and I am not interested in any solution that doesn't do that. My mom already has a system she uses and I am not going to force her to change it. Also, no, my mom's photos are not in Google Photos.
posted by AppleTurnover at 10:42 AM on December 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yes, because like I said in my question, I want her to be able to move the photos into the folders she already uses to organize her photos on her computer rather than having to download them all manually first. As I clearly specified in my question, it needs to be a backup solution that involves automatically putting files locally on her computer and I am not interested in any solution that doesn't do that. My mom already has a system she uses and I am not going to force her to change it. Also, no, my mom's photos are not in Google Photos.
posted by AppleTurnover at 10:42 AM on December 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Microsoft Onedrive will automatically upload your Camera Photos from your phone and sync it back to your Onedrive folder on your PC. I use it, it works really well, invisibly and seamlessly. There is a 5GB limit on the free plan, but if she's moving them anyway to her filing system, it shouldn't be an issue.
posted by Boobus Tuber at 10:42 AM on December 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Boobus Tuber at 10:42 AM on December 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Dropbox is mostly great for this, but you need to log in to Dropbox from the phone after any phone restarts to kick this into motion. I do this once a week because most weekends I see a movie or two, during which I turn off my phone.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:19 AM on December 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Sunburnt at 11:19 AM on December 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think Sunburnt is right. I had an S7 until recently and had the same problem where sometimes Dropbox just wouldn't do anything to move my photos from the phone to the cloud. To solve it, I installed Tasker on the phone to automatically launch Dropbox at 3 a.m. every night so that the automatic photo uploads would kick in. You could do something similar. All you need is for Dropbox to launch. Perhaps set Tasker so that every time the phone is plugged into power for longer than five minutes then Dropbox is launched.
(The cause of it, by the way, is mostly Samsung's battery-saver function. You can go into the Android system settings and exclude Dropbox from the battery-save function, which *should* solve it, but I still had occasions where for some reason even after Dropbox should have never been shutoff in the background, it was.)
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:47 AM on December 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
(The cause of it, by the way, is mostly Samsung's battery-saver function. You can go into the Android system settings and exclude Dropbox from the battery-save function, which *should* solve it, but I still had occasions where for some reason even after Dropbox should have never been shutoff in the background, it was.)
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:47 AM on December 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have used FolderSync Pro to automatically upload from my Android phone to an SFTP or FTP server on various different LANs. If you can find a server that'll run on her computer...
posted by straw at 1:43 PM on December 30, 2019
posted by straw at 1:43 PM on December 30, 2019
Here we go: The aforementioned FolderSync Pro in conjunction with OpenSSH for Windows. The challenge may be that it really is a sync (although the sync can be one way), so if she's only got upload enabled files that she moves out will appear again. But if she's okay with the sync being two-way, then files that she moves will disappear from her phone, too.
posted by straw at 1:58 PM on December 30, 2019
posted by straw at 1:58 PM on December 30, 2019
Response by poster: So after fiddling around with Dropbox, it looks like I have successfully set up so whenever my mom puts her phone on her charger for the night, all her phone camera photos will start uploading to Dropbox and then appearing in the Dropbox on her computer, and she doesn't need to launch Dropbox herself at all. It doesn't seem to always happen immediately, but it does eventually do it. Having it upload the photos on a rolling basis every day or so should be sufficient so when she is ready to organize them, they will almost all be in there. The key is that this seems to work without her doing anything at all, and it saves me from having to walk her through how to do anything - yay! I'll keep testing it over the next few days and make sure it keeps working.
If I run into problems again, I will give OneDrive a shot since that also sounds like a promising solution. Thanks.
posted by AppleTurnover at 5:12 PM on December 30, 2019
If I run into problems again, I will give OneDrive a shot since that also sounds like a promising solution. Thanks.
posted by AppleTurnover at 5:12 PM on December 30, 2019
Response by poster: Just as an update, Dropbox hasn't been working that well so I set up OneDrive and it works like a charm.
posted by AppleTurnover at 2:30 PM on January 14, 2020
posted by AppleTurnover at 2:30 PM on January 14, 2020
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posted by JZig at 10:08 AM on December 30, 2019 [3 favorites]