Whether you're a professional photographer or you're just looking to back up and share photos with friends and family, Synology Photos comes with all the tools you need to efficiently manage your photos. Automated tools help you group, filter, organize, and share your content while keeping your memories safe and secure.

Why use Synology Photos?

All-in-one photo and album management

• Browse automatically generated albums grouped using face and object recognition, geolocation, tags, file types, and taken time/date.
• Let each user manage their own photo storage and/or enable Shared Space for collaboration.
• Filter photos by time and date, camera model, lens, and other parameters to instantly display results.

Keep your memories within reach

• Good things are meant to be shared. Securely share photos with other users or anyone else with restricted file access.
• Enable mobile backup and synchronize all images on your Android or iOS device to Synology NAS. Free up space on your device without losing content.
• The Synology Photos TV app is available on Apple TV and Android TV. View photos and videos on the big screen via the TV app or by casting through AirPlay or Chromecast.

• Synology Photos requires DSM 7.0 and replaces Synology Photo Station and Moments from previous DSM versions.
• For HEIC support: Check out this FAQ for details.

Install and launch the package

1. Using a DSM administrator account, go to the Package Center and install Synology Photos. Launch the package once it's done downloading.
   • In DSM: Go to Main Menu and click Synology Photos.
   • Directly via IP address or QuickConnect ID: Go to DSM Control Panel > Login Portal > Applications. Double click on Synology Photos and enter "photo" in the Alias field. You can then use the following addresses to directly access Synology Photos. Make sure to replace Your_NAS_IP_address or Your_QuickConnect_ID with your information:
     http://Your_NAS_IP_address/photo
     Your_QuickConnect_ID.quickconnect.to/photo
     If you are in China, please use this address instead:
     Your_QuickConnect_ID.quickconnect.cn/photo
   • Refer to the Synology NAS External Access Quick Start Guide for more information on how to access your NAS.
2. Read through the welcome pages and tick Enable the People/Subjects album in my Personal Space to enable face and object recognition features. You can enable or disable the People and Subjects album for each space in Synology Photos Settings.
3. Use the QR codes to download the mobile app, where you can not only access your stored photos, but also regularly back up photos from your mobile device.
4. If you need to add new users, such as family and friends, refer to Create a User for instructions. During setup, make sure to allow users access permissions to Synology Photos.

Enable the Personal Space

One of the benefits of using Synology Photos with Synology NAS is that you can create user accounts for multiple people. In Synology Photos, each user can have their own Personal Space to keep their own photos.

Go to DSM > Control Panel > User & Group > Advanced > User Home and tick Enable user home service. This will also create a folder in DSM File Station, /home/Photos, for each Synology Photos user.

Upload your photos

• Click Add Photos or use the drag and drop function to upload items to Synology Photos.
• If you already have photos stored in File Station and you want to maintain the exact same folder structure in Synology Photos, all you need to do is move or copy the folders directly to /home/Photos. The user home service (Personal Space) must be enabled in order to do this.
• You can also upload photos to the /home/Photos (Personal Space) or /photo (Shared Space) folders in File Station via your computer using SMB (macOS or Windows).
• Another method that you can use to upload photos is to sync photos between your computer and Synology Photos using Synology Drive Client.

Migrate photos from another service

• Migrate photos from Google Photos to Synology Photos

You can use the Photos, Albums, and Sharing tabs to navigate the portal.

Photos

On the Photos tab, you can change between Personal or Shared Space (if enabled) by clicking on it.

Click the icons to upload photos, create folders, sort, apply filters, get share links, play a slideshow of your photos, and more. For more detailed information on functions on this tab, see Manage Photos.

Click the Change to Timeline View or Change to Folder View icon to view your photos the way that you want.

Select one or multiple photos and use the bar that pops up to share photos, add/create albums, download photos, and more. You can use the same functions when opening an image to view it.

Albums

On the Albums tab, you can view auto-created albums and the albums that you've created manually. For more detailed information on functions on this tab, see Manage Albums.

The People album

The People album includes photos grouped together by similar faces. This function uses automatic face recognition, which can be toggled on or off in settings.

• Add names to faces by clicking on Who's this?.
• If there are multiple faces of the same person, click Who's this?, select the correct name, and then click Merge to merge them together. Or, you can click More ⋮ > Merge people, select the people you want to merge, then click Merge.
• To hide people you don't want to see, click More ⋮ > Show/Hide people, select the people you want to hide, and click Done.
• If some photos are incorrectly recognized, select them and click More > Remove or reassign this photo. You can either remove the photos from the person or assign them to someone else.

The Subjects album

The Subjects album offers a convenient way to organize and view photos that are automatically grouped together based on their recognized objects or themes. Once enabled, you can quickly find photos by entering a specific object or theme in the search box.

The Places album

In the Places album, you can view photos grouped together by where they were taken.

Other automatically created albums:

• Tags: Includes photos and videos grouped together by the same tags. You can edit tags by selecting any photo or video and clicking the More ⋮ icon.
• Videos
• Recently Added

Sharing

On the Sharing tab, you can see the albums that are shared with you, albums that you've shared with others, and photo requests.

Create albums and add photos

• On the Photos tab, select items you want to add and click the Add to Album icon in the action bar that appears. Select New album and click OK.
  
• On the Albums tab, click the Create Album icon > Select photos to create album, select the photos you want to add, and click OK.

Create a conditional album

Items with the conditions that you set can be automatically added to an album.

1. On the Albums tab, click Create Album > Set conditions to create album.
2. Name the album and set the following properties:
   • Folder source
   • File type
   • Date taken
   • Rating
   • Conditions (file names and descriptions, named people, objects, general tags, locations, cameras, lens, focal length, exposure time, aperture, and ISO)
3. Click OK.
4. After the album is created, you can always open the album and click the Conditions icon to modify them.

Once you've set up Synology Photos on your NAS, you can download the app from Google Play, the iOS App Store, or via the QR code:

Launch the app and configure photo backup

1. Enter the following information on the login page and then tap Login:
• Address or QuickConnect ID: Enter the IP address, QuickConnect ID, or DDNS hostname of your Synology NAS.
• Account and Password: Enter the login credentials of your DSM account.
2. On the welcome page, tap Enable Photo Backup to back up the photos on your mobile device. Configure the backup settings as needed, and tap Enable when done.
   
3. Allow access to all photos on your device, and make sure to do the following to maximize backup efficiency:
• Connect your device to the charger
• For iOS: Enable background notifications and background app refresh
• For Android: Allow background data usage and disable automatic power-saving
4. When you have a lot of photos to back up, you can enable Focused Backup to utilize your spare time for a quicker backups:
   1. Go to the More tab and tap Enable Focused Backup.
   2. The screen will turn dark after 10 seconds of idle time. Do not lock the screen or exit the app.
5. Once you've backed up your mobile photos, you can clear up space on your phone. Go to More and select the backup. Then, tap Free Up Space > Clear.
6. For detailed settings and instructions on photo backup, see Back Up Mobile Photos (iOS or Android).

Navigation tips

You can view and edit your photos and albums anytime, anywhere straight from the Synology Photos app. Most of the functions work similarly to that of the web portal.

For more information on how to navigate the app, see the iOS or Android help articles.

To get photo options, press down on a photo or video and the action bar will appear.

In the app, the Places album also allows you to view your photos by location in map view. You can also view by location by clicking the icon.

On the Sharing tab, use the tabs to see albums that are shared with you, albums that you've shared with others, and photo requests.

Add users to Photos

If you want your friends and family to have their own space to store their photos, while also being able to collaborate with others on albums, you can simply add them as a DSM user.

To add new users to Synology Photos, refer to Create a User for instructions. During setup, make sure to allow users access permissions to Synology Photos.

Share photos, videos, and albums directly

You can directly share photos, videos, and albums with others without having to download them to your device first.

In the web portal

1. Share individual items or entire albums:
   • To share individual items: Select photos or videos you want to share and click the Share icon. Then, tick Enable share link and configure the settings as needed.
   • To share entire albums: Click the More button on the album > Share, or go into the album and click the Share icon.
2. Edit the Invitee List to determine how others can interact with your albums. For example, to let another user add to your album, you can invite them as a Provider.
   • What to do if you can't find users when setting folder permissions
3. Copy the Share Link to share it with others.

You can find the items you shared under Sharing > Shared With Others.

If you shared with other Synology Photos users, they will also be able to find the items you shared under Shared With Me.

In the app

Select photos/videos, tap the Share icon, and choose your sharing method.

Create a Shared Space

Similar to the Personal Space, you can also enable the Shared Space, where all users can store and collaborate on photos in one place. This allows you to grant users permissions to entire folders, allowing them to efficiently access and modify their contents.

In Synology Photos, go to Settings > Shared Space and click Enable Shared Space. Shared Space photos and videos can also be found in the shared folder /photo.

Once you've set up the Shared Space, you may want to configure access permissions for users.

Apple TV/Android TV

Download the Synology Photos TV app on your Apple TV or Android TV. Sign in your DSM account and you can view all photos on a big screen.

Mobile devices (iOS/Android)

Cast through the Synology Photos mobile app via AirPlay or Chromecast. See the iOS or Android help for more details.

With Hyper Backup, you can back up Synology Photos to local or remote destinations and restore the settings and data of the package to a previous point in time.

The following data will be backed up once a task is created:

• All the photos, videos, created albums, and folders
• The recognition results in the People, Subjects, and Places albums
• Synology Photos package settings and share link settings

Check out the Hyper Backup Quick Start Guide for setup instructions and other details.

Software specs

• Full software specifications for Synology Photos

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• Tips — How to Smartly Organize Photos Using Conditional Albums | Synology
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