I’m looking for a way to sync the photos from my android phone onto my server at home.
I wouldn’t want all of that data on google. The best solution I could find was syncthing but it seems to be overkill. Do any of you know of neat alternatives?
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The termux terminal emulator allows you to install all sorts of packages, including rsync and ssh. There is a termux widget that’ll display shellscripts so you can tap and run the script. So you could rsync the directory from your phone to the server. I think the unison package is available as well, if you want two way sync.
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Also if you have nextcloud, the android client will upload all photos automatically if you wish.
That sounds like a quite deep rabit hole to fall into. 
Do you know if there is any way to trigger the rsync job automatically after a new photo is taken (or even better, just scp it)?
I believed you can use an app like tasker to trigger an event, such as when you connect to your home WiFi, trigger the script. There is a termux tasked plugin as well.
Rapid Photo Downloader 0.9.x downloads from MTP devices including phones. Of course you have to plug it in to your PC using USB.
Yeah, I’m trying to avoid having to plug it in. Mostly because of lazyness. But I guess it would be the simplest option. I kinda like @paperdigits approach too, just use existing unix tools.
I also found https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.touchbyte.photosync which seems to do the job, but is not open source.
I’ve been quite happy with Nextcloud on my own server at the house, but it’s possibly overkill for only phone syncing (though it was one of the main reasons I initially set it up).
I suppose the side bonus is your own Dropbox/Google Drive?
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How is syncthing overkill? I’d say for mobile applications nextcloud would be better, but I gave up setting it up (mostly because I saw bad people behind every imaginary corner hacking into my system due to my cluelessness). Syncthing in comparison is pretty simple.
Disclaimer: I am hugely biased as a maintainer of syncthing
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@rasimo I share your feeling about exposing a huge pile of php to the internet running on a machine which contains important data.
Regarding the overkill/potential drawbacks there are a few factors for me:
- Basically I just need one way file copying to a specific host. I don’t need two way multi node, mutli version replication.
- I don’t need any service discovery or similar. At least for now I just want to sync within my own network. If I want to sync outside of it I can setup a hostname and the proper firewall rules.
- I’m not really sure how well go/syncthing work on android.