Synology Photos

Finally sick of paying for Google storage as our photo library will just continue to grow, and started the process of migrating photos from Google to my NAS. 10+ years ago we had a Nikon D90 DSLR, and there are more than a few raw .NEF files. All of them fail to display in Synology Photos. They actually open fine in File Station, but Photos shows "Unable to identify this file format" I see that I can try generating a thumbnail, and I can install the Image Assistant extension, but I don't run Windows or Mac (Ubuntu), and there does not seem to be a Linux option for the required (I guess) desktop application. I don't get why File Explorer displays these files fine, but Photos does not.

Issue where a verification code screen pops up over and over

I have many years of photos backed up on my Synology NAS and unlike Apple Photos which instantly generates thumbnails the Synology app is BRUTALLY, UNACCEPTABLY slow to generate thumbnails for years past. It's just awful. It's good for backing up but wow.

The app is completely broken currently. The moment I launch it it pops up a small box requesting a 5 digit verification code. The synology 2 factor authorization app generated a 6 digit code, so I don’t know what 5 digit code they want. Also, the box pops up over and over and over, even before you can enter a code, so the point is moot. It really feels like Synology hates their consumer hardware and software, it’s bad, buggy, and falling apart.

The app is great but it doesn't support HDR10 for viewing photos in 2026. This is a bit redoculous since almost every phone since 2014 has taken HDR10 Photos and then you can't even view them in HDR but yet the videos play in HDR.

App has bugs. Several items left in my album that could not be backed up.

It's search function is basically useless . It can't find words in documents, command words are useless. If I was able To actually find the photos I need it would be much more useful . Once that is done I will update my rating

Can’t easily download to photo library or other apps for editing.

This app is so bad. 1. Log in was confusing and the error messages were unhelpful. Took a second to even get in. 2. All my photos were already loaded (imported from elsewhere to my NAS) yet they load very slowly. 3. Ever since initial setup, I’ve been unlucky and haven’t been able to get the app to work since. Only the few thumbnails that were generated at the start are still visible. 4. Yet, even though it’s clearly not working, the app gives me no status on the actual sync / loading state. Just perpetual loads. I’m thankful I’m not trusting this thing to back up the photos I take on my phone (like I said, I’m mostly using this as a viewer) because wow is it unreliable. Unfortunate that’

When I open the app, it just pops up the PIN code dozens of times. It’s like it’s trying to convince me I don’t know my PIN code, but when I shut down the app and reopen, the PIN code works… until I let it run in the background again. It’s great that this syncs with my nas when it actually works, but the user experience for syncing this makes me want to just delete the app and just use iCloud.

Needs to be worked up, or just let us contribute to this app

Works sometimes. Usually, you just sit with the app open, waiting for the ONE photo you uploaded to your NAS to appear in the folder you’re browsing. I will definitely be looking at another brand of NAS when it’s time for an upgrade.

This app resulted in my iphone becoming unstable when I entered “Focused Backup” mode. Not only did it result in messing with my apple accounts and apple watch, it also resulted in various issues that i’m finding out as I use my phone. Some of my contact names were removed and some phone started going out of sync with my Apple ID and account. Overall, it was a clumsy mode and I wish I would’ve done my first backup by moving all my pictures out of the phone and from a laptop instead of using this app.

Sync seems to get stuck when connectivity is unavailable (eg, VPN to home is disconnected). When connectivity is restored, it stays stuck on that one picture - wasting precious time for travelers. Please add a “cancel” button so the user can get unstuck. Force quit does not work.

I am having same issues like others reported, not being able to view shared space. After hrs of troubleshooting on my own . I figured out when you click on personal space if you click right under the line you can access shared space. Seems like you needs updating. Horrible, spent hrs troubleshooting.

I have been synching photos to Synology drives for a while. After recent updates, I just can’t see the photos that are not available on my phone! The whole point of using this app is lost if I can’t find photos synched to the private cloud. Please fix this.

For a NAS brand who's reputation is built on software first and foremost, this app does not live up to that lofty reputation. It does the basics well enough, and i trust it to back up my photos, but: 1. This level of UI jank should not be acceptable in a first party app. 2. Smart search is a critical function. And almost every other app, especially Immich, are LIGHTYEARS ahead. For jank, I'll get specific. When you scroll up, the date/location tab and the photos header descend down at fixed rates not matching the movement of your finger. Bad UX decision, and made worse by fact that they descend at *different* rates. So the photos header reveals a sliver of your photos above the location ta

It just keeps on not saving any of the photos from the photo app to this one

Syncing of large files is such a pain. Always need to constantly check the progress and stay on the screen. If soething fails - it reuploads the file from scratch, even if it's a 2 Gb file. Always problematic. If you want - as a QA I can help you test it properly. Otherwise, it's barely usable at this point.

Building on the relatively stable experience on my phone, I recently tried using Apple TV. The interface looks good, and browsing photos works fine. However, when I played 4K videos shot on my phone and DJI, it would freeze every few seconds, sometimes for more than 5 seconds. I didn't encounter this problem on my phone. My phone and Apple TV are accessing the NAS on the same network, so it's not a network speed issue. I think the TV version doesn't solve the problem of decoding high-quality videos.

App closes a lot / crashes as I’m trying to back up photos. Very sluggish

Addendum: So many issues have emerged. Something is absurdly off with caching. Like I removed all limits on cache memory on my iphone and it keeps doing a fresh pull down of the already extant album lists, this is frustratingly aggravating. the app clearly has the prior cache when i first open it, but for some reason it invalidates it and then spends forever re-downloading thumbnails. This is a time consuming waste when I'm on the local network shared withe the nas server, it makes the app virtually unusable when using mobile data, the lags frequently are astronomical, but needlessly, like this core usability and is very poorly managed or architected caching logic. please fix this! If I'm gi

1. The app keeps logging me out saying and then I have to log back in and setup my backups again and let that run 2.. anytime I create a new shared album I have to log out of the app for it to show up. Again having to step my back ups etc 3. I use my nas for storage of my family and they have the same issues and since their accounts is on dual factor they constantly have to check the app to see if things are backing up. They get logged out of the app even when it’s remember my device it still prompts for dual factor.

Normally, the app works but recently it will no longer allow me to put in the security code. Help.

Just says xxx items to be detected and hangs forever …

Why is Image Assistant needed on IOS, when IOS natively deals with HEIC photos and HEVC videos?

When it comes to hide unknown people on the “people album” is a nightmare. The interphase makes it so hard and i spend too much time doing it.

升级iOS26之后，打开图标的透明样式synology photo的桌面组件变白无法正常显示，请及时修复

希望可以喺資訊描述添加批量操作。同埋好似iPhone相片添加說明一樣可以顯示相片以及操作介面，還有左右切換唔使退出編輯介面。

HDR is important for iOS photo applications

Hi. When I type Mexico in search field it will show me only my photos from Mexico not any videos. Please add the feature to search videos Or just let the app list photos together with videos.I know its hard for app developers to make geo-tagged videos from Apple IOS. Thanks

Newest update makes a new mfa prompt popup every second so I can’t sign in. Great when it works. Unfortunately I can’t get past the sign in screen.

Synology Photos allows you to view your photos and backup your iPhone pictures, but it does not let you filter your photos. This app lacks a significant amount of functionality when compared to the desktop app. Let’s not even waste time trying to comparing it to the Apple Photos app. If this app had full parity with desktop this would be 5-stars without a doubt.

After installing it on both the Synology system and my iPhone. It asks to enable all these features to function and backup everything properly. Once it’s all done, you have to select every picture individually to backup. SUGGESTION: They should add a “Select All” button.

This app was terrible when I 1st started using it but it seems like they are actually trying to make it better. As updates arrive, improvements are actually happening. HOWEVER…. There is one area of improvement that needs to happen - the “Deletion Settings” in the main Settings Menu. Why are there only two options? And the two options are not good options! “Delete from NAS & phone” or “Delete from NAS only”. There also should be an option of “delete from phone only” (retain on NAS). My partner has had the worst confidence in this app because they don’t believe that things that are said to have been backed up will be retained on the NAS after deleting either in this app or in their phone p

I like this app but it ALWAYS syncs my videos even though I have “photos only” toggled on. I’ve played with the settings SEVERAL times but it’s still trying to sync all 240 of my videos which I don’t want it to do.

This App allows me to automatically backup all of my photos to my local NAS and free up space on my iCloud. Works flawlessly.

I love the app. It helps me clear up space on my phone by backup up all my photos. One suggestion: under the “Free Up Space” utility, 1 year doesn’t free up enough space for me, but 1 month is more aggressive than I am comfortable with. Could you give an option for like 6 months? Or maybe customizable.

Definitely can be better. The biggest complain is bad face recognition. Its basically nonexistent. If Synology hardware is not capable producing good face/ object detection, maybe offload that workload to a desktop app? I mean you already have one , Just add feature to rescan library for face and object tagging. I really like synology photos, but cmon make photos better, this is one of the reasons alot of people even buy it. Now you make it really shine and the market is yours.

I tried reboot my iPhone but still not working. Keep saying backing up, but kept working on the same photo for hours under focus on mode

I love that it backs up from all my devices. Also, the main feature I wanted so that I could replace google is the ability to search by face so I’m very happy they have this feature. My only request would be to be able to search by date unless I’m doing it wrong because it doesn’t work for me.

When creating a shareable photo album and it creates a password protected link, add a button on mobile phone sizes so that users can click “download all”. There currently is not a way to download all on iphone 16 screen sizes.

This app is great! I love it so much and I am using it every single day. The only thing is the UI is so outdated that needs to improve. I wish this app can update with iOS 26 modern UI. Thank you!

Please integrate machine learning and hidden folders in the app. If not hidden folders, guest view mode for handing your phone off, or pin protected folders. Easy.

I can not access shared space on the app. There are only pertional space. My iOS 26.0.1 and Dsm 7.3 Ds920+.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the synology photos app. It backs up all my photos and videos from my phone to my NAS at home. One major issue and this is a big one. The search feature is nearly unusable. With the advancement of AI this should be something that can easily be added to psychology photos. Searching Apple photos is great on my phone. If I search the synology Photos app, 90% of the time it comes back with nothing. This is the only major downside to using this app I use it so my photos can be backed up and then I can free up space on my phone. But finding a photo by search is nearly impossible. I hope they fix this soon. If they do, I will bump it up to five stars.

Works great so far! No issues backing up my videos and photos.

This app is very good, however it should give us control over when to backup. Like backup while charging or backup at night.

Flawless backups every day from all our iPhones — fast, reliable, and always original quality. The web version makes photo & video editing so much easier. Can’t live without it!

I hope to add the function of filtering photos and videos separately in the Synology Photos mobile app (Android/TV/IOS). The web version has Quick Filter, but Synology Photos on mobile phones or TVs does not have it. It is very troublesome to watch videos separately. I hope to add the function of filtering separately. Thank you

The New stacking feature is a great step in the right direction