Back up phone photos to your own server
Signal on a phone can back up its photos and videos to your server, at home or away from home through your web address. Each person's go into their own library, and nobody else's account can open it.
- Their own library. The first time someone backs up, Reelhost makes a Home videos and photos library called Ava's phone backups, in a folder of their own, and gives only them access in Jellyfin. Backups never go into Movies or Shows. People who had All libraries in Jellyfin are moved to a list of every library except other people's backups. Libraries added later, by you in Jellyfin or by Reelhost, are ticked for them automatically, so nothing changes for them. If you untick a library for one of them by hand, Reelhost never ticks it for them again; new libraries still reach them.
- Where. In
Phone backups\<phone>\<year>\<month>inside that folder. New people's folders go inPublic\Pictures\Family photoson Windows (the Shared folder on a Mac) unless you pick another folder under Connect devices → Phone backups. In Docker, setREELHOST_PHONE_BACKUPS. - Only added, never replaced. A photo with a name that's taken is saved as
IMG_0001 2.JPG. A photo that's already backed up isn't sent again. Each one is checked byte for byte before the phone hears it's safe. - Free up space. Signal offers to remove photos from the phone only once they're safely on the server.
- Wi-Fi drops. An upload carries on where it stopped.
Limits and stopping
Backups pause when the server's disk is nearly full (Reelhost keeps some space free) and the phone says so. Under Connect devices → Phone backups you see each person's library, how much is in it and when it last got something; you can stop backups for one person or for everyone. Stopping never deletes what's backed up. Each batch is one line in Signal's Activity list.
When you remove Reelhost, the backed-up photos and the libraries stay unless you choose otherwise; only photos still exactly as uploaded can be deleted.