Synology Photos is the photo and video gallery for storageDRIVE. Like iCloud Photos or Google Photos — except the pictures sit with us and not in the US. Auto-upload from the smartphone, people recognition, album management, sharing via link.
Web browser or mobile app
You can use Photos two ways:
- In the DSM browser under the Photos icon
- Mobile app on iOS and Android —
Synology Photosin the App Store / Play Store
Auto-upload only works through the mobile app.
Your space in Photos
storageDRIVE runs with exactly one user account. All photos sit in your personal space — nobody sees them automatically, only you. Auto-uploads from the smartphone land there too.
DSM additionally knows a “shared space” for setups with multiple accounts. storageDRIVE doesn’t have it: DSM doesn’t map shared quota pools cleanly in a multi-tenant environment — what we can’t run reliably, we don’t sell. Sharing happens via sharing links (see below). If several people need their own logins, take a plan per person or Nextcloud Hosting with unlimited users and shared storage.
Auto-upload from the mobile app
Open the app → Settings → Photo backup.
- Enable the backup task
- Source: which smartphone albums (default: camera roll)
- Destination: a folder in your Photos space
- Conditions: Wi-Fi only, only while charging, minimum battery % — we recommend all three enabled
- Existing photos: yes, or only new ones from now on
With auto-upload enabled, new photos and videos land in storageDRIVE automatically — as soon as the smartphone has Wi-Fi and the app runs in the background.
Auto-upload conditions — what we recommend
- Wi-Fi only: saves mobile data
- While charging: spares the battery
- Above 30% battery: so the smartphone doesn’t die during the day
On newer smartphones, auto-upload mostly runs at night while charging — perfect.
Gallery view
In the browser or in the app:
- Timeline — chronological overview
- Albums — created manually or automatically by topic
- People — face recognition (see below)
- Places — a map with GPS tags
- Tags — auto-classification (“beach”, “mountains”, “dog”)
People recognition
Synology DSM does this locally on the server — no cloud AI from Google/Apple. People data stays in your cloud.
The first indexing takes time depending on collection size:
- 5,000 photos: ~1 hour
- 50,000 photos: ~12 hours, runs overnight
After indexing: people are grouped, and you can name them.
Enable it: Photos in the browser → Settings → People → “Enable face recognition”.
Place recognition
If photos carry GPS EXIF data (the default for iPhone photos): they appear under Places on a map.
Photos uploaded manually from a computer often have no GPS — they won’t show on the map.
Albums
Creating one manually
In Photos: Albums → New album → select photos.
An album is a set of links — a photo can be in several albums without using storage twice.
Smart albums
Definable with filter rules:
- “All photos from the beach day into the album”
- “All photos with person ‘Mom’”
- “Photos from May 2026”
They update automatically when new photos arrive.
Photo sharing
Public link to a photo / album
File or album → Share → public link with:
- Password
- Expiration date
- Read or write access (write = others can add photos)
Handy e.g. for wedding photos: guests get the link and can contribute their own shots.
One account, shared albums anyway
Album sharing between multiple accounts within the same plan doesn’t exist on storageDRIVE — one plan, one account. For family and friends the public link is enough: recipients need no account, and with write access they upload their own photos straight into the album — club-party pictures from three photographers still end up in one album. If you want true multi-user albums with individual logins: Nextcloud Hosting.
Photo editing
In the browser: open a photo → Edit opens an editor:
- Crop, rotate, flip
- Brightness, contrast, saturation, filters
- Drawing / annotation
- Save as a new version (the original stays)
Not as extensive as Lightroom or Photoshop. Fine for quick corrections.
Photo search
Search bar at the top:
- People names
- Places
- Tags
- Date
- File name
Combinable too: “Mom in 2024 in Berlin”.
RAW files
Synology Photos shows RAW files (.ARW, .CR2, .NEF, .DNG) as previews. Full RAW editing happens in Lightroom etc. — you can keep the Lightroom catalog in your Drive sync folder, RAW files get uploaded.
HEIC files (iPhone)
iOS saves in HEIC format by default. Synology Photos displays HEIC correctly and exports to JPG on request.
Pitfalls
Auto-upload not active in the background
The smartphone’s power-saving mode can pause auto-upload. Solution: check the mobile app’s permissions — enable “background refresh” and switch off battery restrictions for Synology Photos.
Duplicate uploads
If you have auto-upload active in BOTH Drive mobile and Photos mobile: the photo lands in both target folders. Recommendation: only Photos for photos, only Drive for documents.
Smartphone storage full because of local photos
Auto-upload stores photos in the cloud but doesn’t delete them locally. If you want to free up storage:
- Make sure all photos are on the server in Photos
- Delete them locally in the smartphone gallery
- Storage is free
On iOS there’s the “Optimize Storage” option for iCloud — with Synology Photos you’d have to do that manually.
Frequently asked questions
How much storage do thumbnails need? Synology generates thumbnails server-side. Storage for that: roughly 5–10% of the original photo volume.
Does photo auto-upload work at full resolution? Yes, original quality. Compared to Google Photos’ free “compressed” variant: with us it’s always the original.
How do family members get my photos? Via sharing link — with password and expiration date; recipients don’t need an account. With write access they can upload their own photos into the shared album.
Synology Photos on Apple TV / Fire TV? Synology has an Apple TV app and a Fire TV app — the Photos gallery on the big screen. Handy for family photo shows in the living room.
What if the smartphone redoes the backup — everything duplicated? Photos recognizes file hashes — already uploaded photos aren’t uploaded twice. After a complete reinstall of the app, the very first sync can produce duplicates, but Synology deduplicates them in the background.
Can I export photo metadata (tags, people names)? EXIF tags stay in the files. Synology-specific metadata (albums, manual people assignments) only lives in the database — it’s lost on export. When migrating to another system: the pure files with EXIF come along, the album structure you’d have to rebuild.
Live Photos (iOS) — how are they handled? Legacy format: a Live Photo consists of a JPG + a short video. Both files go into the cloud. In the gallery it’s shown as a still image, the video playable manually.
Storage optimization — is there such a thing? Synology Photos has no automatic storage optimizer. You can manually export photos at lower resolution or compress them with third-party tools.
What’s next
First login to DSM
What you receive after ordering and how to log in to your storageDRIVE account for the first time.
Account and quota — how your storageDRIVE storage works
One plan, one user account, a fixed quota: what counts toward the quota, what happens when it's full, and how upgrades work.
File Station — the file manager in your browser
The classic file manager in DSM. Upload, download, creating folders, ZIP creation, previews, sharing links.
Mounting storageDRIVE as a drive (SMB)
How to connect your storageDRIVE via SMB as a drive — in the Mac Finder, Windows Explorer and as a mount on Linux. Step by step, including auto-mount and Time Machine.