I am just starting out with Synology Photos (and I don’t yet have a clear idea of how it keeps track of which photos have been backed up).
On my iPhone, I installed Photos Mobile and got it to back up the photos on my phone to my personal space on the NAS.
Then using the Photos web client on my desktop, I moved the photos into various folders in the shared space on the NAS, so my family could see them.
Finally I wanted to free up space on my phone by removing the backed up photos. I clicked “Free Up Space” but it said, “No backed-up items to clear.” I had expected it to remove all the photos from my phone’s (Apple) Photos app’s camera roll.
When I click the info icon on any photo in Photos Mobile, it says the photo is “On device” and also “Backed up” to “/Personal Space(null)”.
The null thing looks odd – is that because I moved the backed-up photos from the default backup location?
I have two further questions:
How should I remove the backed-up photos from my phone? I can of course delete them manually from the (Apple) Photos app, but I was under the impression Photos Mobile should do this.
Will it be different for photos I take in the future or will I have the same problem?
Aha, I just took a new photo to see what would happen.
Photos Mobile immediately backed it up to my personal space on the NAS, as expected.
Clicking the info icon on the photo says the photo is “On device” and “Backed up” to “/Personal Space/MobileBackup/iPhone/2025/05/”.
Clicking “Free Up Space” finds this photo and removes it from (Apple) Photos’ camera roll, as hoped.
So it looks like “Free Up Space” won’t work if the photos have been moved from their backup location on the NAS.
In order to get “Free Up Space” to work in the future, I need to leave the backed-up photos in place on the NAS. Which means I need to solve these two problems:
how to share with the family?
how to organise photos into occasions/events?
I have always liked using folders/directories to organise photos (for maximum portability) but it seems Synology Photos prefers “albums”, whatever an album actually is.
I just realised the solution to my Free Up Space problem: do it before moving the backed up files around on the NAS, not after.
That just leaves albums vs folders, but it’s a separate topic I suppose. (If I were implementing albums, I would create a folder per album in a separate part of the directory tree and symlink the files into it from whichever folders they live in).
Folders are physical locations, albums are virtual locations or virtual folders that only exist in Synology Photos. Forget about folders to organize and share images. Use albums. Albums are far more flexible and fun.
That brings me to sharing. If it is mainly you who is sharing photos, create albums with images and share these albums with family. You can do this from Personal Space. There is no need to use Shared Space. Shared Space is more complex to maintain concerning access permissions.