Linux has been my daily driver since about 98, and I’ve been successfully using Syncthing for a couple of years for getting photos of the familys phones, but then the missus went an got an Iphone! (And I guess it was time for an upgrade anyway)

In other words, I have a pretty well rounded IT-background, but I’m new to the world of Nextclound, and it would be great to get a little sanity check to see if I’m on the right track to accomplish what I want.

So the main thing is taking care of all the family photos (currently about 160GB). Syncthing works great for that on Android, especially with my setup where I would automatically keep only X months worth of photos on the phone. On IOS however, I have found no clean way to give Syncthing access to the photos.
A problem with this approach is also that it’s cumbersome for the rest of the family to view and organize the photos.

After some research I concluded that Nextcloud may have the best app for both Android and IOS, and the other features and community to be worth investing my time in, and so I have signed up to a hosted Nextcloud provider and started playing around.

I have installed the Memories gallery, and the corresponding app, and after some fiddling, got it working. The Idea is to configure BackBlaze for bulk storage once I get everything set up.

I have two issues I have not quite figured out yet.

1. How will I handle disk usage on the phones? I don’t want to upload and delete immediately, that seems both risky and wasteful. I want to upload ASAP on LAN, but only delete from the phone after some time, or when X GB is used or similar.
2. How will I configure Nextcloud and “instant upload” optimally for sharing and viewing photos within the family? It seems there are several ways to accomplish this, but I have not been able to find a good guide that explains the options and tradeoffs. The only thing I know is that I want to keep some folder structure, to make it easier to know the origins of stuff. ie, to clean up old screenshots and the like.

So, am I on the right track here? Is Nextclound the best tool for the job?

And if so, maybe I’m lucky and somebody can give me some tips about the two points above?

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