A new phone: your photos come back

The old phone backed up to your storage. On the new one you do three things, and the library comes back on its own, with every person, tag, place and printed word already in place. Nothing is read or indexed again, so it costs nothing at Opensolr.

• Open the Photo backup screen and wait until Waiting to be backed up says 0 and the last run says Done.
• That is all. Your index is in your account; your files are in your storage; the way into your storage is in your account.

1. Install the app and sign in with the same Opensolr account.
2. When the app asks Re-use one of these indexes from your Opensolr account?, pick the index of the old phone. See old phones. Choose the folders you want synced on this phone; DCIM is proposed.
3. The first sync reads your index once into the phone's copy. The grid fills with your library as it was, every photo with its words, people, tags and places.
4. Right after that sync, the app finds the backend in your account, reads the lists in your storage, and brings back the whole library, whatever folders you chose on this phone: every photo as a 720p copy with a cloud mark, every video and PDF as its original file. The Photo backup screen counts N of M over everything to bring.

The photos already on the new phone, in the folders you chose, are matched to the index by their folder and name and left alone: no copy is brought for them.

• Every photo, searchable and viewable, taking a fraction of the space the originals took: the 720p copies live in the app's own storage, not in your photo folders.
• Your videos and PDFs, whole, in their folders.
• The full file of any photo on demand: Download in the viewer or in the details, one photo at a time, or every one at once with Download all originals.
• The new phone keeps backing up into the same storage, under the same index, as the old one did. New photos taken here go up; nothing is sent twice.

Two phones at once, both signed in, both on the same index: each brings the other's new photos at its next run, as 720 px copies, with the full copy a tap away. See one library on several phones.

• Nothing is lost on either side. The photos already on the new phone, in the folders you choose, are indexed into the same index and backed up into the same storage; the library from the backup comes back around them.
• A photo that is the same file on both phones, same folder, name and content, is recognised as one photo: it is not brought back and not sent twice.
• Two different files with the same name in the same folder, common with WhatsApp pictures and screenshots, stay two photos: the new phone's file gets an identity of its own, so neither replaces the other in the index or in the backup.
• A photo is never taken out of the index just because a phone does not have it: a sync removes only files that phone once had itself. Delete in the app is different: it removes the item from every phone, from the index and from the backup.
• The other phone sees what the new one added: in search at once, since it is the same index, and as 720p copies at its next backup run, which follows every sync, or at once with Re-read the backend.