Using Syncthing with PhotoPrism

Hey there,

I’m looking to sync images from my Android devices to a PhotoPrism instance running on a Raspberry Pi and someone pointed me towards Syncthing. I imagine that setting up a one-way sync from the Android devices to PhotoPrism’s import folder should make it work.

Now, I found a number of helpful tutorials online on how to set Syncthing up on the Pi, but I have no idea where PhotoPrism’s Import folder is actually located and if Syncthing would even be able to see it in the first place (since it’s running in a docker container). I tried asking in the PhotoPrism community, but no luck. I heard that one solution is to create a separate folder on the Pi for the devices to sync to, then somehow make PhotoPrism check that folder periodically for importing. Maybe someone here is using Syncthing with PhotoPrism? :eyes:

Appreciate any help!

What, photoprism people can’t tell you where their import folder is? That doesn’t sound plausible. Docker is not a problem, you’d just mount a directory into docker as a volume and point syncthing to the host path.
However Syncthing doesn’t do one-way sync, depending on what you want exactly (where should the photos be in the end after taking them on android) you either don’t even need one-way sync or need to build some workflow around plain Syncthing behaviour.

Thank you for the reply! I figured out how to add subfolders to the import folder in Photoprism via the docker-compose.yml file :slight_smile:

Then I told Syncthing to share that folder. On the server side, it’s set to only receive changes, on the Android it’s set up so that it only sends changes from the camera folder. I want the images to stay on my Android after they’re synced and after a couple test images (and manually excuding the Screenshots folder), it seems to work perfectly! Isn’t this essentially one-way sync, or is this about to go catastrophically wrong?

The only caveat now is that I have to manually start the import via the PhotoPrism interface – apparently PhotoPrism only tracks automatic changes made via WebDav.

Depends on what happens on the receiving side: If PhotoPrism removes the files in the shared directory then you’ll get out-of-sync. That kinda works, but you’ll get a button in the Syncthing web UI to revert the changes. That will then re-download everything if pressed and acked in the popup.

Yup, I’ve set PhotoPrism to remove the files in the shared directory to save storage and I did also see that button. I guess the worst thing that could happen is: I accidentally press the button, the files are requested from the Android device again and on the next import, PhotoPrism will recognize the files as duplicates and delete them without adding them to the photo feed. Sounds idiot-proof to me! :smiley:

Thank you for your time, I really appreciate it!

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