Ha, we’ve been doing the same thing for the past few months! I just made a generic Immich account that we all log into and upload to that. I auto backup the library to other places as we go, just in case. Once we’re done, we’ll all get copies of the directory to do with as we please.

I have Immich set up to keep the name of the files instead of giving them a random name. As we scan we name the files with the peoples names and generic tags like Tom.Mary.Birthday.1992 and putting Mary before birthday indicates that it was Mary’s birthday. So that if I decide to try and add meta data to the files it will be easier.

I haven’t figured out a plan for adding meta info to the files so they at least have the year/month they were taken and I don’t know if I even want to since we’re 1000’s of photos in now

You probably need to set up split tunneling in your VPN app on your phone. Either enable split tunneling for the apps on your phone that you use to connect to your home server or enable split tunneling in the VPN app for the local IP address of your home server so that you can use any apps to connect to your home server while still having the VPN enabled for any other websites you visit in those apps. I know ProtonVPN and Mullvad both automatically have split tunneling set up for local IPs on PC but not for Android, this would explain the differences between your laptop and phone