Establish auto backup of photos for multiple AppleIDs to one device folder / NAS storage

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Establish auto backup of photos for multiple AppleIDs to one device folder / NAS storage

I am trying to establish NAS storage from my MAC or Windows 11 desktop from all my of our 4 iPhone. Each phone has a unique apple ID and we're setup as a family. I am having a truly difficult time trying to get anything to permit more than one apple ID to sync anywhere... Other than manually going in and dropping photos. iCloud for Windows doesn't permit NAS directory to even be selected lol -

I am hoping someone out there has solved this without ten different layers of automation. Thanks!

[Edited by Moderator]

Posted on Dec 29, 2025 6:51 AM

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Answer 1

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pacopete Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 29, 2025 12:22 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

I ended up using photosync on local network and using SMB connection to NAS directly from iPhone. It’s super frustrating I can’t have a user friendly method built in to IOS that can handle this. It’s crazy in 2025 I can’t use SMB connection from my iPhone directly and send files/ pictures without a third party app. But this way I can enable each person to automatically send their photos when charging to the NAS and to their individual directory.

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Answer 2

Dec 30, 2025 7:09 AM in response to pacopete

You may be thinking of Photos as a collection of files, which is not the way it works. Photos is a database, and treating it like just a bunch of files can be corrupting as well as frustrating. I don't know anything about Photosync-- I hope it works for you.

In 2025, the best way to handle pictures in Photo is through iCloud Photos.

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Answer 3

Dec 29, 2025 9:22 AM in response to pacopete

NAS shouldn't be used with a Photos Library. To use a Photos Library, the drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc.

You can set up a separate user on a Mac for each ID, and then set up each user with a System Library on a properly formatted external drive. It's not automatic-- you'd have to switch to each user at backup time, but since only new stuff is changed, the backups don't take very long.

There's this:

Backup iCloud Photos with an Optimized Mac

which uses the same idea for a somewhat different purpose.

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