My partner and I just returned from vacation and there are about 2600 photos on my partners iPhone we would like to move to Proton Drive.
I originally tried just using the Proton Drive app on their device but the app does not seem to work if you give it limited access to the photos and even with full access it seems to freeze up.
My partner does not want to upload their photos using iCloud. I don’t think its a privacy related issue but I want to respect their decision.
I have tried connecting the device to a Windows machine (we do not have a Mac, I could try an Ubuntu machine) to copy over the photos but the connection seems to be unstable. Even when the computer recognizes the device it will not stay connected to copy all the photos and is unreliable on what it will copy.
I have tried using Photos app in Windows to try and extract the photos as that is a method Apple suggests but, I am getting an error when trying to do that. I do hope to try it again.
I tried creating a shared album but this also seems to freeze up / error out and results in empty shared album.
This may be the wrong forum for this type of request but was wondering what other suggestions users might have.
Disabling the conversion to JPEG via Settings > Apps > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC > Keep Originals fixes this issue in my experience, but then you end up with nasty .heif files.
I highly recommend a purpose built app for this if you have a large photos library - using Ente. Proton Drive should not ideally give you this issue so not sure why it’s happening.
The app works like a charm and has a generous 10 GB free.
We don’t really have that large of a photo library currently. I would imagine a significant amount of these photos will eventually be deleted.
I doubt I would be interested in paying for Ente as I am already locked into Proton but if you think using the free version to just transfer the photos might be more reliable, I will give it a try.
If 10GB is more than enough for you, then you can also keep using Ente for free. I prefer this to Proton Drive is because it’s more purpose built. Proton can eventually get there but is no where close to what and how Ente is for photos.
When I was uploading my large photo library to Proton Drive I had to use the settings clear local cache and clear logs cache in the app whenever it would freeze up like you described. I was eventually happen to upload everything. I suggest Ente Photos as well.
This ended up working the next time I tried it. It is definitely not an elegant solution as I had to import all of my partners photos instead of just the ones from our trip (as Windows is finicky at best about what photos it will show a preview of before you import) but, at least now we have them stored locally on the PC and are able to pick and choose what we upload.
Glad you resolved the issue. Next time, you can also use something like Immich to host photos locally. It’s more work than using the native Windows application for photo management, but it works as well. Apple has many peculiarities in how it allows file management, and you found the one that motivates many people to stay within the Apple ecosystem.