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by abracadaniel 1080 days ago
Nothing in iOS seems to have true autobackup because background apps don’t seem to reliably wake. What I find is that it works until the app is closed, like after an os update, and then you have to manually open the app before it will start going again. I have mine set to try to run whenever I plug in to charge, and it works pretty consistently until reboot, and from there I’m not consistent about remembering to open the app again.
1 comments
climb_stealth 1080 days ago
Well, Google Photos works on iOS. And I presume they would be as much a third party app as anyone else. So it is possible. From what I remember reading in the past it is possible to get wakeup events for GPS location changes. I think that's one trick to get an app to run in the background.

I agree though. It's a shame how iOS is completely crippling background apps.

I'm hoping for an alternative for Google Photos and I'm paying for ente.io. It works fine on Android, but background sync doesn't work on iOS. So for me personally it is not ready to replace Google Photos. If it can't be set and forget for non-technical family members it's not going to cut it.

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vishnumohandas 1079 days ago
Hey, one of the devs building ente.io here.

Thanks for pointing out the workaround with GPS, will look into it!

Currently on iOS, our servers send silent pushes to your device every hour. This wakes up the app and gives us 30 seconds to execute a background sync (provided you've previously not killed the app). This is not sufficient to backup videos, but it works pretty well for incremental backup of photos (I personally use an iPhone).

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climb_stealth 1079 days ago
Oh, hey! ente.io is super promising! Have been following and paying for it for 2 years now :)

> This wakes up the app and gives us 30 seconds to execute a background sync (provided you've previously not killed the app).

I wonder if this is the crux of the matter. It doesn't work when the app hasn't been started in the first place, right? I don't know how Google Photos does it, but I'm pretty sure they have solved syncing without having to remember to open the app. I half wonder whether they achieve this by showing constant notifications about "look what happened x years ago" or "look at this new collage" that gets people to click on it and actually start the app.

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