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Back up Android photos to Backblaze B2 — step-by-step

Updated May 2026 · ~10 minutes

What you need

• A Backblaze account. Free to create at backblaze.com; requires email and a credit card for accounts that use more than the free tier.
• The Breazzy app on Android 8.0 or later.
• About 10 minutes.

Step 1 — Create a private B2 bucket

1. Sign in at secure.backblaze.com. From the left sidebar, choose B2 Cloud Storage → Buckets.
2. Click Create a Bucket. Pick a globally unique name — names are shared across all Backblaze accounts, so try something like yourname-breazzy-photos.
3. Set Files in Bucket are to Private. Leave default encryption off (you can enable SSE-B2 later if you want server-side encryption; Breazzy works either way).
4. Click Create a Bucket.

Object Lock and lifecycle rules are optional and unrelated to Breazzy. Skip them for now.

Step 2 — Note your S3 endpoint

On the bucket details page (click the bucket name from the list), look at the line labeled Endpoint. It will look like one of:

s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com
s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com

Copy the full hostname. The number after the region (004, 003, etc.) is your bucket's realm — it is part of the endpoint and matters. Do not strip it.

Step 3 — Create a scoped Application Key

1. From the left sidebar, choose Account → Application Keys.
2. Click Add a New Application Key.
3. Give it a name like breazzy-phone.
4. Under Allow access to Bucket(s), choose the single bucket you just created. Do not grant access to all buckets — keys should be narrow.
5. Under Type of Access, choose Read and Write.
6. Leave file name prefix and duration empty.
7. Click Create New Key.

Backblaze will show the keyID and applicationKey exactly once. Copy them somewhere safe before leaving the page — Backblaze will not show the applicationKey again. If you lose it, you create a new key.

Step 4 — Plug it into Breazzy

1. Open Breazzy on your phone. On the sync screen, tap Add destination.
2. Choose Backblaze B2 from the provider list.
3. Fill in the four fields:
   • Endpoint — the hostname from step 2, e.g. s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com. No https:// prefix.
   • Access Key — paste your keyID.
   • Secret Key — paste your applicationKey.
   • Bucket — the bucket name from step 1.
4. Tap Test connection. Breazzy will PUT a 1-byte object and immediately delete it. If you see a green check, you are wired up.
5. Tap Save.

Step 5 — First backup

1. On the Photos tab, pick the albums you want to back up. Selecting "Camera" alone is what most people start with.
2. Plug the phone into a charger and connect to Wi-Fi. The initial sync of a 50 GB library takes 60–90 minutes on a 100 Mbps upload link.
3. Tap Back Up Now. A foreground notification will show progress. You can lock the phone; the upload continues.
4. Once finished, set the sync mode to Background / Wi-Fi only and forget about it. New photos will upload automatically.

Backblaze-specific gotchas

• Endpoint must include the realm — s3.backblazeb2.com by itself will not work. Always copy the full endpoint from the bucket page.
• Free tier is 10 GB storage + 1 GB/day downloads. Uploads themselves are free. Above that, storage is $6 per TB per month.
• Egress is free up to 3× stored amount. Backup workloads almost never hit this; the cap exists for people serving the bucket as a CDN.
• Application keys can be deleted any time. If your phone is stolen, log into Backblaze and delete the breazzy-phone key — uploads from that device stop immediately.
• Versioning is on by default. If you delete a photo on your phone, the bucket keeps the previous version unless you turn versioning off or add a lifecycle rule. This is usually what you want for backup.

Verifying your photos are there

Once the first batch is uploaded, open the bucket in the Backblaze web UI. You should see your photos listed as objects with their original filenames. To double-check from a desktop, install rclone, configure it with the same keyID and applicationKey, and run rclone ls remote:your-bucket | head — you should see the same files.

Frequently asked