Does Azalea upload my photos to your servers?
No. There is no Azalea-side bucket. Files go to the COS / OSS / S3 credentials you entered, a USB folder you picked, or a Samba share on your LAN. We never hold originals.
FAQ
How is this different from iCloud Photos?
iCloud Photos is tied to an Apple ID, and Optimize iPhone Storage replaces originals with placeholders. Azalea writes the real files onto media you control, which an Android phone can claim. See Azalea vs iCloud Photos.
Can it replace Google Photos?
If you want originals, keys you hold, and USB as a target — the google photos original quality backup job — yes. There is no Google-style search or shared albums. See Azalea vs Google Photos.
How does iPhone backup to a USB drive work?
iOS will not list mounted disks. You pick a folder once in Files; the app stores a security-scoped bookmark. Plug the same disk in later and grant access again. The volume has to be writable; exFAT is the usual choice.
What permission does Android USB backup need?
The system document tree (SAF), not a full-disk crawl. After you pick a tree you must persist the URI permission or it dies on reboot. OTG uses a bridge, not a POSIX path.
Do filenames with colons fail on exFAT?
exFAT rejects :, *, ? and similar. The engine escapes them reversibly: the logical key stays the name the app knows, the on-disk path is different. In the March 2026 run, 23 of 18,432 items were escaped; the job did not abort.
How does another phone open the same backup?
Object keys and the index schema match. USB stores .album/manifest.jsonl; object storage stores index/{deviceId}/manifest.json. Point the second device at the same bucket or the same on-disk library. Android cannot reuse iOS local identifiers; it matches resources again.
Does it backup originals or compressed files?
It exports the library assets. HEIC, DNG, 4K video are copied as files. There is no “storage saver” recompress. Size should land close to the Photos line in About, not half of it.
After backup, can I delete photos on the phone to free space?
Yes, after you check the backup index and spot-open originals. Azalea will not flip iCloud Optimize Storage for you. Deleting local files is not the same as “it is on the disk” until you have verified size and dates for those keys.
Does backup continue when the phone is locked?
iOS uses background work plus a Live Activity; Android uses WorkManager and a foreground service notification. The OS can still kill a long job. In March 2026 the iPhone paused around the two-hour mark on lock; opening the app resumed from the index.
Can I use a home NAS?
Yes. Set provider to Samba with host, share, and credentials. iOS needs Local Network permission. The engine does not probe free space. The SMB session is created on the first list/write, not at config time.
Is there a shipping Windows app?
The storage engine has a Windows SDK. The product app ships on iOS, Android, and macOS. There is not a matching Windows shell yet.
What does ~200 GB cost per year?
On 2026-03-08 list prices, 214.7 GB on S3 Standard is about $59 / year; a 1 TB USB disk was $54.99 once. Request charges exist; lots of small photos add up, but still usually below storage.
How do I know a file was not corrupted in transit?
Uploads can hash MD5 locally and store it in user metadata. USB has no xattr, so the value lives in the on-disk manifest. stat fills it back from that ledger.
What about Live Photos?
They export as the system asset: still plus the paired motion clip. That is why byte counts run higher than a naive “number of thumbnails” estimate.
Does limited-library access on iOS work?
Yes, and the backup set is only what you granted. A later claim will not invent the rest. Full access is the backup path we actually test.
Do I need an Azalea account?
No. The in-app declarations page states there is no login. Cloud accounts are Tencent / Aliyun / AWS, not ours.
What if I unplug the disk mid-backup?
Writes go to a same-volume temp then rename, so a yank leaves a disposable temp, not a half object under the real key. The next probe reports the device gone; plug it back in and the index resumes. The February 2026 Huawei OTG run yanked at 61%; 12 files retried and finished.
Should 4K video be first or last?
When the phone is full, video first: one delete frees gigabytes. Still photos are tiny files; USB 2.0 average rate collapses on metadata. Our 4K clips sat around 56–90 MB; HEIC stills around 3 MB.
Who operates this site?
The same operator as the app: Azalea, root@duguying.net. The site hosts product copy and guides, not an online library viewer.