How I Switched from iCloud Photos to Ksuite+ and Immich

Yesterday I turned off iCloud Photo synching, and then I wiped my photos from iCloud Photos but before that I took several precautions.

Triple Backup to Apple Devices with Enough Storage

The first precaution I took was to ensure that the Photos app on a mac was downloading all the original photos locally. While this task was taking place I also got an iPhone 8+ and an older iPad to backup my photos locally to their hard drives.

Backup to Immich and Kdrive

Months ago I synced all of the photos on my phone to Immich. I also got Kdrive to sync my library. In both of these cases I had to keep the apps on a special screen that ensures that backup is not interrupted. After doing this overnight, one app at a time, I had another backup.

Backup from Kdrive to a Local Hard Drive

I setup Kdrive to backup my files from the cloud to a local hard drive. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that for me, a cloud solution must make it as easy to get data out of the cloud, as in to it. iCloud and Google Photos do not. I will elaborate on this soon.

The second reason is that with kDrive photos are backed up with their exif data and filenames intact. This means that you’re transferring the files as is, rather than digested like both iCloud Photos and Google Photos do.

Photoprism, iCloud Photos, Google Photos and Flickr

Both iCloud Photos and Google Photos strip data from the photos and create a chaotic system of files that you need specialist tools to repair. Photoprism has a tool for Google Photos to resolve the issue created by Google Photos. It has another for Apple Photos and Flickr.

KDrive and Immich

In an ideal world you take photos, and they sync to Immich without issues, via the iPhone or Android app. One day you upgrade the docker container and the app breaks, and you need to reimport thousands of photos once again. That’s where the local Kdrive photo backup comes in.

Kdrive Phone Photo Backups

When you backup your photos with the Kdrive app you backup to a folder, and this folder has your photos organised by day or month, depending on how granular you choose for the folder struture to be. You can then import your photos from your local machine to your immich instance with all of the exif info intact. This includes, date, time, location and much more.

And Finally

For 67 CHF per year I have access to Ksuite+ and 6TB of storage. With iCloud it would cost 30 CHF per month or 360 CHF per year. Kdrive meets requirements that iCloud photos does not. It allows me to backup photos to my computer with ease, and it offers me plenty of headroom.

I never had a desire to spend 10 CHF per year. I was happy with Google One and their 2TB plan until I found Infomaniak and their 6TB plan for 67 CHF or so.

And Finally, I regularly see ads encouraging people to just delete their photos, and only keep a few. As a media asset manager/archivist I believe that people should keep and cherish their photos. iCloud Photos doesn’t meet my requirements, which is why I slid to open source solutions.