With Google Photos killing off its Unlimited photo backup policy last November, the market for photo backup and sync applications opened up considerably. We reviewed one strong contender—Amazon Photos—in January, and freelancer Alex Kretzschmar walked us through several self-hosted alternatives in June.
Today, we're looking at a new contender—Stingle Photos—which splits the difference, offering a FOSS mobile application which syncs to a managed cloud.
Arguably, encryption is Stingle Photos' most important feature. Although the app uploads your photos to Stingle's cloud service, the service's operators can't look at your photos. That's because the app, which runs on your phone or tablet, encrypts them securely using Sodium cryptography.
Since the photos are encrypted before ever leaving your phone—using a key that isn't ever available to Stingle's operators—you're safe from attackers getting a photo dump from Stingle's cloud. You're also safe from Stingle's own operators pulling a LOVEINT on you or getting socially engineered by someone with a believable voice begging to get your photos back.