How I use Synology and Google Photos to build the perfect photo backup system

Google Photos is the go-to photo backup app for quite literally everyone. It’s fast, reliable, and everyone has a Gmail account, so it’s the most accessible app out there for backing up your family memories. It’s got tons of smart features and uses AI like no other photos app, from its almost magical AI editing to something as simple as natural language searches. It just works.

However, a lot of things have weakened the case for Google Photos. For instance, I have to deal with media compression to save space — otherwise, I’d be hitting storage caps if I were to upload everything in full quality. Or worse, I’d have to keep upgrading my subscription and pay Google more every few months just to preserve my media in original quality. My current plan wouldn’t even last a couple of months, and 2TB isn’t worth the fee for me, despite the perks.

I’d rather get my own storage for the same price — and I don’t mean an external hard drive that awkwardly dangles from my computer.

I invested in a Synology NAS a few years ago. While it has streamlined my digital life but my most prized setup remains Synology Photos. It has changed how my family and I back up our media and turned it into a unique system. I’ll tell you how I pieced it together and why it’s perhaps the go-to strategy for a lot of home users who own a NAS.

We all know how good Google Photos is. It’s the benchmark in smart media management that all other apps should look up to. Besides its AI perks, it’s also the easiest tool to create cross-platform shared albums. I have numerous of them with my family and friends, all of which I treasure. So, it was out of the question that I’d ditch the app entirely, no matter the platform I’m on. I want all the convenience, but I wanted something that didn’t cap me in any way.

When I first got my trusty Synology DS920+, I played around with a lot of its built-in features. What stood out were Synology Drive and Photos — almost exact replicas of Google’s apps, as if Synology was trying to make things familiar for people switching over — if their names weren’t already a dead giveaway.

Synology Photos has quite a lot of similarities with Google Photos, from the general layout to facial tagging for easy searches. You can create albums, share media with your family, cast them to your TV, add widgets that auto-rotate your photos, and whatnot. And the best part — you’re not limited by cloud storage capping. Sky’s the limit (or the remaining hard drive space).

I’ll admit Synology Photos isn’t the most intuitive app by far, so it’s not something I’d want to use every day. It feels more like a ‘tool’ you pull out when needed — which is why I needed a middle ground.

I didn’t want to give up Google Photos and was tempted by the freedom Synology offered. So, I did what any sane person would do — I included both in my setup. And they now work beautifully together.

Google Photos remains my primary app to access media on my phone. It’s fast, easy, and always accessible. Most importantly, I’m not missing out on the thousand AI features Google keeps adding. Whenever I need to look up an old photo, I fire up Google Photos like it’s muscle memory — even on iPhone. It’s my default for quick photo editing and album sharing too.

Meanwhile, Synology Photos also gets the same copies of my media — but in full quality. It’s my bottomless pit where I dump all my high-res photos in bloated formats while all my 4K videos stay crisp. All our phones and devices back up to the NAS with zero worries about running out of space, poor internet, or compressing files.

My NAS is my safe space for all our family media. Things happen to our devices and the cloud all the time. Even if I hit the limit with Google Photos, lose my phone, or accidentally delete something from Google, I know a full-res copy still exists on local storage. They live on a server I control, and won’t be subjected to random cloud policy changes I must reluctantly agree to.

But there is one downside to this otherwise flawless system. Indian summers don’t let me run the NAS all day — it’d fry the drives if I did. In the little window that it works every day, there are times when Synology Photos misses backing up some media. And if it goes on for a few days, I end up with a backlog of unsaved photos.

It’s made worse by the fact that I don’t open the Synology Photos app on my phone that often, putting it in deep sleep, I have to wake it from every few days — or weeks — depending on my memory. That’s the only hiccup in this otherwise fully automated setup.

And this dual strategy works really well for anyone tired of ballooning Google One bills, but who can’t stop taking a zillion photos and videos on vacations. And honestly, you shouldn’t either — capturing memories over everything else, always!

If you’re a first-time NAS user or on a tight budget, any brand would work in case you want something to just set and forget, though Synology Photos remains more intuitive among NAS offerings (not a high bar). Even 8TB is more than enough for regular home use and storing ‘unlimited’ photos, while Google handles all the smarts in a low-storage version of your library.

That double backup is far more trustworthy and gives extra peace of mind. And given how moth-eaten and torn my old, physical photo albums are, I wouldn’t take any chances with my memories.