---
title: Photo Sync
description: "Giving random apps access to your Google Photos can be bad. To still use an album as screensaver etc. I wrote this script. It syncs all your photos to your drive while giving you maximum privacy."
descriptionShort: "A script that syncs a Google Photos album to your drive."
repository: https://git.c0ntroller.de/c0ntroller/google-photo-album-sync
published: 2022-08-08T12:19:20+02:00
---

# Google Photo Sync

Why give up privacy for a screensaver?

## Storytime

I recently got a new NVidia Shield with Android TV and after setting everything up I wanted to add a screen saver.
There are tons of them and some of them even can take a Google Photo album and make your TV a digital picture frame.

I thought it would be great because I already use Google Photos for sharing albums with other people.

So I tried to log in. 

And I didn't do it.

The screensaver app did not only need access to my photos.
It also wanted my personal details, email address, contact list, and other details.
This was unacceptable.

Then I thought about it: These apps normally can use images stored on the device or a connected drive.
My NAS is already connected to the Shield so...

## The Solution

I already had some experience with the Google API from projects like the [Infoscreen](/blog/infoscreen) and the [Simple Callback Server](/blog/simple-cb).

I decided to make it easier for users who are not familiar with the API, so I created a CLI to set everything up.

I think the `README` is pretty good so no need to explain the setup process.

## What's left

My detection for images with similar names is bad (but it works and I can only think of one edge case where it doesn't).
I could use MD5s to make it better.