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

75 points - last Monday at 4:36 AM


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

  • gerdemb

    last Tuesday at 9:44 PM

    Where is the link? How can iPhone backup directly to an external hard drive?

      • Amorymeltzer

        last Wednesday at 5:56 PM

        I believe it's this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/backigo-live-photos-backup/id6...

        • criddell

          last Wednesday at 8:17 PM

          Plug it in to the USB port on the phone. iPhone Pro can transfer at up to 20 Gbps but the non-pro models are much slower.

          The iPhone camera can also shoot directly to an attached SSD.

            • discostrings

              last Wednesday at 9:31 PM

              > iPhone Pro can transfer at up to 20 Gbps

              Citation/proof strongly needed on 20 Gbps

                • criddell

                  last Wednesday at 11:01 PM

                  Right you are. I was going off my (bad) memory. It’s a 10 Gbps port.

              • supportengineer

                last Wednesday at 8:28 PM

                I have bad news for you, that's not a real iPhone

      • gaudat

        last Wednesday at 7:28 PM

        >home NAS setups aren't realistic for most users

        Citation needed. Get a Synology NAS and use their Photos app which backups Live photos on both iDevices and Androids. Buy it for life.

          • thenaturalist

            last Wednesday at 9:36 PM

            Let's be real, that's already far less approachable to 90% of consumers I know.

            The simples hurdle just being knowledge.

            The existence of NAS is probably an unknown unkown to a large part of the population.

            Compare that to "there's an app for that" & plug USB.

            Drastically simpler.

            No skin in the game either way, but I can very much understand OPs reasoning and would reach the same conclusion.

            • pdxandi

              last Wednesday at 8:33 PM

              I've been doing this for many years and am pretty happy with it. I can sync from my Android and my wife's iPhone. The Photos app is nice and smooth. Backups happen automatically in the background. It can even de-dupe and clean up old photos that have been backed up. All in all, quite pleased with it.

              • HuwFulcher

                last Wednesday at 9:11 PM

                You’re looking at £300ish for an entry level Synology and the storage. That isn’t a realistic expense for many users.

                  • Jnr

                    yesterday at 4:55 PM

                    Over time it saves money. I got a home server and a tiny remote backup server 8 years ago and it runs quite a few services saving me hundreds each month and costing in electricity and hardware (over time) about 15EUR/mo. The longer it runs, the cheaper it is. Most of the updates are automatic so no babysitting required.

                • MehdiHK

                  yesterday at 6:31 PM

                  Synology is still my go to with the model I already purchased. But I'm not sure I'll be buying them again after this:

                  https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requ...

                  • michaelraiwet

                    yesterday at 4:28 AM

                    A Synology NAS doesn’t last for life.

                      • uuddlrlrbaba

                        yesterday at 1:35 PM

                        And isn't protection against fire, flood, theft or other disasters.

                    • kzisme

                      last Wednesday at 11:26 PM

                      Or checkout https://immich.app/ !

                  • jlarocco

                    last Wednesday at 7:44 PM

                    I wouldn't use it personally, but I could see it being useful for my parents or family.

                    ifuse and rsync works fine for me.

                    • SwamyM

                      last Wednesday at 7:38 PM

                      I would love this if it allowed me to backup all photos taken with the iPhone to an external drive. Currently, Apple dumps all pictures (from the Camera, from iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) into folder makes it difficult to backup just my pictures.

                      • atmosx

                        yesterday at 5:12 AM

                        I am using PhotoSync to backup photos from iPhone to a self-hosted Photoprism via WebDAV (accessible from everywhere via tailscale).

                        • polymatter

                          last Wednesday at 8:42 PM

                          Thank you for including a non subscription “lifetime” payment option.

                          • last Wednesday at 8:26 PM

                            • scriu

                              today at 6:51 AM

                              Can you add a feature to upload to a ftp server?

                              • 1970-01-01

                                last Wednesday at 5:57 PM

                                How is this different from iMazing?

                                https://imazing.com/backup-iphone-ipad#:~:text=Choose%20iPho...

                                  • msh

                                    last Wednesday at 6:37 PM

                                    It’s more like PhotoSync as it only does photos

                                    • tempodox

                                      last Wednesday at 7:14 PM

                                      I loved the idea until I saw that it's only available as a subscription.

                                        • last Wednesday at 7:38 PM

                                  • mindwork

                                    last Wednesday at 8:04 PM

                                    Would immich work for this? You can run it locally in docker container

                                    • mfa1999

                                      last Wednesday at 9:23 PM

                                      Will it work with large (huge) photos libraries? Eg. 150k photos/videos - most of them in iCloud. Does it preserve album/folder structure?

                                      • mattfrommars

                                        yesterday at 3:59 PM

                                        Btw, there is also LocalSend. Pretty nifty app

                                          • coldtrait

                                            today at 5:45 AM

                                            Isn't that to transfer wirelessly to devices?

                                        • mattfrommars

                                          yesterday at 3:59 PM

                                          Is this a native IOS app?

                                          • keroro

                                            last Wednesday at 6:39 PM

                                            How much does it cost?

                                              • recury

                                                last Wednesday at 7:12 PM

                                                In-App Purchases

                                                BackiGo Pro Yearly (1 Year) $6.99

                                                BackiGo Pro Monthly (1 Month) $0.99

                                                BackiGo Pro Lifetime $14.99

                                            • alain34

                                              last Wednesday at 9:40 PM

                                              [dead]

                                              • er0k

                                                last Wednesday at 6:45 PM

                                                I just use rsync, works great

                                                  • rsync

                                                    last Wednesday at 6:51 PM

                                                    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 ... ?

                                                      • sandreas

                                                        yesterday at 3:37 AM

                                                        Don't know if still works, but this is how I did it back in the days I had an iPhone:

                                                        https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/access-and-recover-files-fr...

                                                        Nowadays I'd use immich or ente.io, which has and e2e encryption cloud as well as self-hosted setup

                                                        • er0k

                                                          yesterday at 4:26 PM

                                                          here is the script I use https://gist.github.com/er0k/86843b62fedc2f533068f04c689be97...

                                                          • slicktux

                                                            last Wednesday at 7:20 PM

                                                            You can load the IPhone’s pictures on Linux using the folders namespace and then rsync from the loaded namespace to /local…

                                                              • trinix912

                                                                last Wednesday at 8:25 PM

                                                                But does it work for Live Photos which is the main premise of this app?

                                                                • wood_spirit

                                                                  last Wednesday at 7:34 PM

                                                                  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?

                                                                    • rsync

                                                                      last Wednesday at 8:54 PM

                                                                      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 ?