Automating my photo backup with a simple Python script

October 14, 2026

I take a lot of photos on my phone, and up until recently, my backup strategy was just "copying the DCIM folder to an external drive once a month." As you can imagine, this led to duplicate files, missing photos, and a general mess.

I wanted a simple solution that didn't involve paying for cloud storage or setting up complex software like Nextcloud. So, I wrote a quick Python script to handle the organization for me.

The Logic

The script does three things:

Scans a source folder for images (like .jpg, .png, .heic).
Reads the EXIF data (the date the photo was actually taken).
Moves the file into a folder structure like Year/Month/.

The Code

I used Python with the Pillow library to read the EXIF data. Here is the core function:

from PIL import Image
import os

def get_date_taken(path):
    try:
        img = Image.open(path)
        exif = img._getexif()
        if exif:
            # Tag 36867 is DateTimeOriginal
            return exif.get(36867)
    except Exception:
        pass
    return None

It's not the most robust piece of software I've ever written, but it works. If a photo doesn't have EXIF data, the script just uses the file's creation date as a fallback.

The Result

Now I just plug my phone into the server, run the script, and all my photos are neatly organized. It took about an hour to write, but it's saved me a lot of headaches.

(The rest of the article would contain the full script and instructions on how to schedule it with a cron job).

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