Need a self hosted solution to offload old Photos's from iPhones to make space in iCloud for new ones

[will_a113@lemmy.ml]

Correct but there are really only 2 parts (3 if you’re adding a front-facing proxy which it sounds like you know how to do). If you’re using something like truenas or proxmox there are prebuilt containers for both iCloudpd and immich/photoprosm/whatever and even if not both have generic Docker containers or can be run out of their own repo checkout. So you just need:

1. iCloud <—> local folder via icloudpd
2. local folder <—> local web front end with immich
3. local web <—> public web with your proxy or cloudflare setup

Good luck!

[hperrin@lemmy.ca]

Immich does have a command line uploader, and you can download photos 1000 at a time from the iCloud website. It’s an extremely tedious process, especially when your mom has 130,000 photos to migrate, and she’s not techie enough to do it herself.

[reddwarf@feddit.nl]

Exactly as I had it in my head atm!
This setup is very clear to me and doable. Thanks for all your help and suggestions!

[reddwarf@feddit.nl]

Understood.
And please accept my belated sympathy for your endeavor with your mom's Library of Congress sized photo album vault, that must have been tiring.

[hperrin@lemmy.ca]

Thanks. It took about 10 minutes to do each set of 1000 photos, because she wanted to keep both the originals and the modified versions, so 2000 individual per 1000 photos. It took roughly 22 hours to do them all, which I did over the span of about four days. I never want to do that again! xD

[hybridsarcasm@lemmy.world]

I have implemented what you’re looking for using Immich on my wife’s iPhone.

Immich backs up the “Recents” album - which means it backs up everything. What’s important to remember is that it backs it up, not syncs it. This allows me to delete photos from the iPhone and they stay in the Immich library. This is how I keep my wife’s phone from running out of storage.

Works well for us so far, even if I have to manually delete the photos off the phone from time to time.

[hybridsarcasm@lemmy.world]

Not from iCloud, just from the phone’s local storage. So, to backup all of iCloud from the phone, those photos would have to be downloaded to the phone first.

Alternatively, you can download all the photos from iCloud to a computer, then upload those photos manually to the Immich web interface.

[rikonium@discuss.tchncs.de]

Oh no, I don't think it would be able to pull from iCloud directly, I believe there is an option to delete uploaded photos on the iOS device after uploading in the Nextcloud app but I don't know if that is automatic or requires the user to acknowledge a prompt unfortunately.

[reddwarf@feddit.nl]

That is a good method it seems. So Immich has a feature to backup iCloud/Photos files and use these images. If so then deleting is the only thing left. Did you ever consider using icloudpd to do the transfer of files and have that also delete the files in iCloud? That seems like a solution where you are no longer required to manually delete the files anymore.

[reddwarf@feddit.nl]

Ok, thanks. I think that the combo Immich and icloudpd seems to be a way forward for now as that combo seems to be able to download iCloud files to local (my server) and delete them from iCloud. Once on my server I can move them to Immich and that should just about be it. Famous last words, I know, but I think it will be fine.