Is it worth the money? Photosync
Photosync promises to take the pain out of moving photos from a tablet or phone to another device. Mike Plant finds out if it’s too good to be true
I’m a hoarder of digital photos, there’s no other way to put it. Stunning sunset? I’ll snap a picture. Spectacular scenery? Must capture it. And if it snows, I go into something of a phototaking frenzy. The trouble is, I don’t do anything with the photos I’ve taken. They just sit on my phone, ignored and neglected.
Laziness is the main reason. It means having to dig out the cable that connects my Android phone to my PC, and then negotiate my phone’s multi-layered (and far from logical) folder set-up. I could move them to my ipad, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to overcome the obstacles this presents.
Step forward Photosync, an app that takes the strain out of moving files from Android/ios phones and tablets to your PC and – wait for it! – directly from Android to IOS devices (and vice versa).
When Android met Apple
Photosync basically acts as the go-between in these transactions. All I had to do was make sure my devices were connected to the same home network with the Photosync app open and install the free version of Photosync for PC ( www.snipca.com/ 22149) to move photos across all my devices. I found the Autotransfer feature particularly useful. It let me set up a rule that sends any new photo I take using my phone directly to my computer (see screenshot above). Disappointingly, the app doesn’t let you set up autotransfer of photos and videos between phones and tablets – these must be manually sent.
Those who prefer a degree more control over which photos are moved won’t mind Autotransfer’s limitations, but should find the Quick Transfer tool useful. This let me set the app so that it moves any selected photos from my phone to my ipad whenever I long-press the Transfer button.
Get your settings right
The app has a few other tricks up its sleeve. For example, it can transfer your photos to an online storage account of your choice, be that Onedrive,
Dropbox or Google Drive.
Before you transfer anything to cloud storage, I’d suggest spending a few moments specifying exactly where you want your transferred photos to go. Photosync’s default is to create sub-directories on the destination device or storage service that include the name of the source. For example, ‘ipad name/ album/file.jpg’ or ‘Android phone name/ all/file.jpg’.
This level of folder segregation meant I was spending too much time navigating various sub-folders, so I turned off sub-directory creation. To do this, tap Settings (cog icon on IOS; three dots on Android), then Configure. Next, tap the particular storage option you want to change (for example, Onedrive or Google Drive), then tap Create Subdirectories. Select None to stop subdirectories being created at all, or customise it exactly how you want by tapping one of the options in the Device Based Formats menu. For example, use Album Name to preserve any photo albums you may have already created (see screenshot left).