Regularly back up smartphone photos to your computer

TonfotosSync and import in Tonfotos — so your photos don’t get lost

Today most of our photos are taken with a smartphone. It is always close at hand when something happens that we will want to remember later. But phone storage is limited, phones break or get lost, and recovering lost pictures is often impossible.

In this article we will see how the Tonfotos desktop app and the TonfotosSync mobile app can work together to create a regular backup of photos from your phone into a family archive on your computer or NAS, and what the built‑in cable import can do as well.

Why it is important to move photos off your phone

Keeping the only copy of your family photos on the phone is risky and inconvenient. The device can be lost, stolen or damaged, and with it years of memories will disappear: meetings with friends, trips, children’s parties and other important moments of your life.

As more photos accumulate, the phone runs out of storage. You have to delete something at random or copy files manually. Over time it becomes hard to tell what has already been saved to the computer and what still exists only on the phone.

It is much more reliable and convenient when all photos automatically end up in a single archive on your computer or NAS, where you can easily view them on a big screen, sort them by date, place and people, create albums and share them with your family.

Tonfotos and TonfotosSync: two parts of one system

Tonfotos is a desktop application that stores and organises your photo archive. It works with photos on internal drives, external disks and network storage (NAS), helps you find pictures by people, dates and places, remove duplicates and preserve your family story.

TonfotosSync is a mobile app for iOS and Android. It is responsible for making sure that new photos from your phone are regularly delivered to your Tonfotos archive. The app can transfer pictures over your home Wi‑Fi or over the internet and, where the system allows, can periodically run backups in the background.

If for some reason you cannot or do not want to install the app on your phone, Tonfotos also has a built‑in automatic cable import. It lets you regularly pull new photos from the phone as well, but requires you to connect it to the computer with a cable.

Method #1. Back up via the TonfotosSync mobile app

This is the most convenient way to keep your phone backed up. It does not require cables, can work from anywhere in the world (if you have internet access) and supports several phones in the same family.

What you need

• A computer with Tonfotos installed (Windows or macOS).
• A folder or drive where your photo archive will be stored (hard drive, external drive or NAS).
• A mobile phone running iOS or Android where you will install TonfotosSync.

How to pair your phone with Tonfotos

1. Install Tonfotos on your computer if you haven’t done so yet.
2. In Tonfotos open the pairing dialog with the mobile app from the main menu and choose the folder where your photo archive will be stored. The program will show a QR code for the connection.
3. On your phone install the TonfotosSync app from the App Store or Google Play.
4. Launch TonfotosSync on your phone and scan the QR code from the computer screen. A secure connection between the phone and Tonfotos will then be established.

First backup and future operation

After pairing, TonfotosSync scans the media library on your phone and compares the list of files with what is already present in the Tonfotos archive. The app determines which photos still need to be transferred and which were uploaded earlier.

The first backup can take quite a while if a lot of photos have accumulated on the phone. During this time it is best to keep the phone on charge and not close the app. If the process is interrupted, TonfotosSync will continue from where it left off the next time you start it.

Later you can either start a backup manually from time to time in TonfotosSync — it will only send new photos — or enable the background mode (where supported by the system) so that new photos are uploaded automatically whenever the computer with Tonfotos is available.

When this method is especially useful

• You want a reliable backup without having to think about cables and manual copying.
• You take lots of photos while travelling and want them to be backed up even while you are on the road.
• There are several phones in the family and you want to collect photos from all family members into one archive.

You can read more about TonfotosSync features and configuration on the website tonfotossync.com.

Method #2. Automatic cable import in Tonfotos

If you cannot or do not want to install apps on your phone, or if you need to offload a large archive from your phone as quickly and reliably as possible, you can use the built‑in automatic cable import directly inside Tonfotos.

In this mode your phone is connected to the computer with a cable. Every time it is connected, Tonfotos finds new photos and moves them into the target archive folder without asking additional questions.

Preparing to work with your smartphone photo archive

Before setting up import of photos and videos from your phone:

• Download and install Tonfotos on your computer or laptop if you have not done this yet. It is free.
• Decide where you want to store your photos: on your computer’s internal drive, an external drive, a network server (NAS) or in the cloud.
• Add the selected location in the “Archive locations” menu dialog so that Tonfotos can start indexing it and using it in its work.

Setting up cable import from your phone

Once the archive is prepared you can configure automatic import. You only have to do this once; afterwards Tonfotos will take care of it every time the phone is connected.

1. Connect your smartphone to your computer or laptop using a USB cable.
2. Unlock your smartphone (with your passcode, fingerprint or Face ID).
3. If the smartphone asks whether this computer can be trusted, allow access to the photos.
4. A notification about the new device will appear in Tonfotos. Click the “Import” button.
5. Choose where to import the photos — typically the folder where your archive is stored.
6. If this is the first time you are downloading photos from this phone, do not enable the date limit (“no older than…”) so that the entire album can be imported. For subsequent imports you can use this option to skip very old pictures.
7. Tick the checkbox “Import automatically when this device is connected” so that during future connections Tonfotos will transfer new photos without additional prompts.
8. Click “Import” and wait until the process finishes. If you have many photos, this may take a while; do not close Tonfotos until import is complete.

If there are several thousand photos on your phone it may be a good idea to leave the first import running overnight. Tonfotos will automatically move all files into the right folder, arrange them by date and show them in the global archive timeline.

Changing import settings

If later you want to change the folder where phone photos are imported to, or restrict import by date, you can do this in the Tonfotos import settings.

1. Make sure the phone is connected to the computer and that any previous import (if there was one) has finished.
2. In the Tonfotos menu choose “Import…” and find your phone in the list of sources.
3. Open the settings dialog for that device and change the needed options: target folder, behaviour on connect, date filter and so on.
4. Save the settings and start import again if required.

If when you first connected the phone you chose “Not now” and did not configure import, you can always enable it later in the same way — through the Import menu and by selecting the device in the list of sources.

Import from several phones and cameras

The import feature in Tonfotos works not only with phones but also with digital cameras. Tonfotos remembers each device and stores separate settings for each one: last import date, target folder and launch mode.

This is handy, for example, if photos from the parents’ phones are automatically imported into a shared “Family archive” folder, while pictures from a separate work camera go into a “Work” folder. Tonfotos imports new photos from each connected device one after another even if you plug them in at the same time.

Tonfotos helps you preserve your memories

Losing or breaking a phone is not just a technical problem. Together with the device you can lose years of your personal history: smiles at get‑togethers with friends, the excitement of children at the seaside, major family celebrations and small everyday moments that mean a lot.

By setting up a regular backup you protect these memories. Some people will prefer the TonfotosSync mobile app so that photos are sent to the archive automatically without any cables. Others will find it more convenient to plug the phone in with a cable from time to time and use the automatic import. What matters is that your photos are not left as a single copy only in phone storage.

Use the capabilities of Tonfotos to keep your family photo archive tidy and safely stored, so that you can come back to it just as easily in a few years as you can today.