Google Photos app on Android doesn’t offer a way to mass-download

Apparently the Google Photos app on Android doesn’t offer a way to mass-download a bunch of photos to the local device (which you might want to do for, just to pull an example out of thin air, taking GPS-tagged photos with your phone for reference while walking around a park and then saving them to a tablet where you can use an OpenStreetMap editing app that will show GPS-tagged photos on the local device on the map you’re editing).

You can download local copies individually.

You can remove the local copies of a selected group.

For this batch I just downloaded them one at a time. It took less than a minute. For bigger batches, though?

Huh… I bet Nextcloud has a download-a-bunch-at-once option.
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I should also look into desktop OSM editors that’ll show GPS-tagged images. It wouldn’t surprise me if JOSM could do it.

Now I wonder if I can run Vespucci on Waydroid and copy photos to someplace it can access…

Whatever. Something to dig into after work, not just during a break.
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Re: trying to get away from using Google Photos

Same. It’s very good at pulling your data in!

I keep meaning to look into something that would work as a complete replacement, but so far I just have Nextcloud auto-uploading to S3 storage at Linode. That way I at least have an offsite/online copy I can get at through the app, web interface and DAV mounts. I think link-based sharing should work with the S3 backend. Something to test.

The main problem I have is that there isn’t a good way to sync deletes AFAIK. So every so often I have to go into those folders and clear out a bunch of temporary photos I already deleted from my phone and Google.
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Nextcloud Apps

If you use a Nextcloud server, there’s a good collection of apps (some official, some third-party) that work with it. The ones I use:

Nextcloud – main app, does authentication, file access, optional auto-upload photos
Nextcloud Notes – kind of like Google Keep, but simpler. (IIRC Carnet is more like Keep, and also open) Nextcloud Talk – instant messaging, supposedly can do voice but I’ve never used it for that
Nextcloud News – RSS reader that syncs your feeds and read/unread through your Nextcloud server

Plus these apps that aren’t Nextcloud-specific, but work with it and other sync methods:

OpenTasks – ToDo list (needs Dav5x to sync)
DAVx5 – Syncs contacts, calendars and to-do items between any CalDav, CardDav or WebDav servers and your Android system, so you can access them with any local contacts or calendar app. (For instance: K-9 Mail can use contacts from my Google account and my Nextcloud account, and Simple Calendar can do the same with my calendars.)
Floccus – Bookmarks manager that can sync across multiple desktop browsers and the mobile app, using any of several sync options including Nextcloud

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Eventually I’ll familiarize myself enough with Alpine Linux and set up a manual Nextcloud…

OK! Eventually I’ll familiarize myself enough with Alpine Linux and set up a manual #nextcloud instance I can fine-tune, but for now, the snap package on Ubuntu made it super-easy to migrate it to a Linode.

Useful thread:
Migrate a Nextcloud Snap installation

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Trying out Nextcloud

Finally set up a #nextcloud server for the household. Hoping to replace several big-company and ad-based services with it.

File sync/sharing: straight-forward, works well across desktop, web and mobile apps. May need to add storage.

Next step: to-do lists. Looks like Tasks will do what I want (both personal & shared lists), but I need a good mobile app to use with it.

Then I need to experiment with Carnet. Already moved from Google Keep to SimpleNote, might keep going.

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