Me too!

I don't trust to open my network to the internet though. So I've created a VPN to connect with my ubiquity network from mobile. Sadly, I can't share photos with other folks or allow my family to participate easily.

I'm a layman in terms of networking. I always wonder how people can sleep if they open their home network. In this case either by using QuickConnect or forward ports and access the machine through a custom domain secured by TLS. I mean that would be perfect but I just can't convince me to take that burden of maintaining that open door into my network.

I've read about creating sub networks with the power of ubiquiti (or any other router), but I will never trust anything I configure there either because I can't confirm it's secure.

So I'm stuck with Google Photos additionally to Synology Photos because of the convenience of sharing.

My solution is to not open it. Use the cloud for browsing, use the home machine to copy the files down. You rarely need to browse on the home machine, it's really just there if the cloud provider ditches you.

I own a Synology NAS, and now believe that it would have been easier to just set up a computer for the tasks I use it for. There are just too many cases where the solution is to use a container (and the clumsy web interfaces for reverse proxying &c), and if I end up SSHing into it too much, I prefer to have a more controllable environment.

It does fit some workflows very well though, you just have to assess if your needs over the next few years fit their business intentions.

Synology has an app which will automatically back up your photos to the NAS/server (only when on WiFi). I haven't been able to find an alternative to this on Android, have you? (photosync looks good but seems to only work for iOS last I checked).

As I said, I do use Synology :) And iOS. So maybe not the best person to answer.

Nevertheless, Nextcloud keeps offering to sync my photos, and I think it also does that on Android.

You may be able to run a VM on your Synology via their app.

I run a Mac VM on mine but via iscsi as the actual VM host hasn’t enough storage to hold my library.

Yes. Containers are also fine. Synology’s added value disappears if that’s your primary mode of usage.

+1'ing this too. Very user friendly with its web interface. And I think it is the only self-hosted solution that can backup live photos from iOS devices.

There is only one significant issue that I found: Backing up large videos fails If I put the Syno behind Cloudflare. Because the photo backup app uploads it as one large HTTP form data and CF does not like it. So now I need to make do with basic firewalling at my place.