Many people are replacing their cameras with their smartphones. As said, one must backup or face the ultimate disaster one day- and with smartphones, there is the additional potential disaster of leaving your phone in a taxi (well, I did it twice!), drop it in a steamboat or whatever. I’m going to introduce a free app for Android phones first, for automatic backing up your photos whenever you’re charging your phone at home. You set it up once and can forget about it. Here’s a step by step guide”Firstly, you need a home wifi setup which both your mobile and your computer are linked to. There are 2 good apps you can use (both available from Google Play) – SyncMe Wireless (by bvaisoft) and SweetHome! service. I use SyncMe Wireless which I found more straightforward and below is the step by step guide:-
- download the app here
- install and follow the guide there- you need to know where (which folder) your photos are and which ‘shared’ folder on your computer you want these to be backup to
- Where are photos stored in your mobile? – for default where photos taken are stored in the Device, then likely it would be at /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera. If you chose to store your photos onto your external SD card, typically look under /storage/extSdCard/DCIM/Camera OR /storage/extSdCard/CAMERA. Just navigate there guided by the app screen and confirm by going into that folder and see all the photo files with dates there.
- Now on your computer, you need to set up a shared folder (say create one “Mobile photo backup” under Pictures), and share it for Everyone’s Read and Write. In Mac, use “Get Info” and share it in the bottom (you may need to unlock to do it with your boot up password)
- Choose this folder in the app
- Under Schedule, select “when Charging“
- Under Copy to, select “Copy to computer only“
- Under Overwrite same name files , click to select “Yes” – this means that newer files will be copied, identical files will be skipped.
- You may not choose other more advance options unless you pay for the “Pro” version, but I think the free version options are adequate.
- You can set up additional folders (photos in other folders, whatever data on your mobile you want) for backing up similarly too.
Enjoy and be rest assured that you now have a backup of all your precious photos on your mobile!