I have switched most of my daily apps to FOSS alternatives or privacy adhering closed apps, however I cannot find a suitable replacement to Google Photos, at least not without significant compromises.
My key factor to choosing an appropriate alternative to app is its UI, which you may think has nothing to do with privacy. But as it turns out, there are plenty of alternative apps that I could switch to, which makes it difficult for me as a layman FOSS user to choose from. So naturally I would to resort to the option that looks and behaves similar to the original app the most. As said before, I haven’t faced a problem in switching in the case of other apps, but for some unknown reason I cannot find a good Photos alternative for myself anywhere.
Does anyone know the app I am looking for? I am still open to using apps that provide greater functionalities if it comes at the cost of appearance. it is just that I don’t wish to use a 10-year old looking software for a core purpose of my new phone. Apart from the UI, I just need the app to have local functionality since I don’t really back my photos in the cloud.
Edit: I don’t have the facility to self host, thus I would be avoiding apps that only rely on self hosting images
Have you tried Immich? It has a very similar feel to Google Photos but with the advantage of owning your storage.
This looks promising! Would you know if it supports searching by map? Ie could I load up a map of an area and access the way photos taken there? Or alternatively, could I search by the name of a location?
It does both.
I like the direction it’s headed in… but the name and logo 🫠 (not to it’s detriment at all… just not it.)
What’s wrong with the name and logo?
I can’t see myself saying “I use Immich”. It feels like something that’s a local cultural name instead of a brand name… you know?
This is just a nitpick tho…
I don’t see any connection with cultures. It’s just “image” slightly mispronounced, I think.
Same here, the app is brilliant and I use it to backup and host all my personal photos - but the name & logo leave something to be desired.
“Immich”? It’s a nonsense word in English… what does it mean, and in what language?
It’s a weird way to write “image” …
Oh, is it mocking an accent? It’s not, like, Norwegian for “asshole?”
It’s just an alternate spelling that matches the way some Americans might say the word image, but also I hope what you said is true too.
Maybe it’s meant like sammich, as in, “make me a sammich.”
Genuinely curious as to what is wrong with the logo? It’s similar to gphotos. The name is similar to image.
The logo is not simple enough to clearly see on small mobile screens and the name sounds (to my ears) neither ‚professional‘ (Photoprism or LibrePhotos) nor ‚playful‘ (Tiddlywiki, Lychee). This is both quite subjective, so your mileage may differ wildly.
Subjective it is, it takes nothing away from the app at all I must say. If you can self host Immich I’m sure you can change the icon and rename it yourself.
Of course, it takes nothing away from the app – I use it very happily on a daily basis. I just wish these things will be changed one day, then I will be even happier. 😁
100%
Why not something like Nextcloud, a self-hosted almost google-suite that has docs editing, photos backup, etc? Setup a simple domain name, point a dynamic dns to it, host it on your computer at home, with a family member that maybe hosts a backup for you, and voila. Control of your data.
If you don’t want to host it yourself, I think there are providers out there too.
I ran Nextcloud for image hosting and loading images, even from the same network, performance is atrocious. It takes several minutes to play back an HD shot video clip. I’ve hosted it via snap, a docker image, and directly on the OS with similar results. Even worse, the server can easily go down if a plugin acts up or a Nextcloud update can take down the database. This was my experience at least which spurred me to look for alternatives like OP.
Agreed, NextCloud performance is atrocious. You need decently powerful hardware to run it, so at that price point just buy a nice NAS.
Nextcloud webapp is kinda slow, but when I play a video from nextcloud app on my phone it works just fine. I still dont recommend it as gphotos alternative tho, stock photos module is meh… For gallery you need plugin called memories which is awesome, but doesnt have any desktop or mobile app. I didnt try immich yet, but that seems like better option
Not open source but Synology photos is probably as close as you can get to a Google photos experience. Of course you need a Synology nas.
I did not know about this… And I happen to have a Synology nas.
If it is a good and new enough Nas, synology photos can do people and object recognition. Mine can only recognize people :(
This is what I’m using, it’s a little slow, but works fine enough
I’ve not used it yet, but I plan to try photoprism at some point.
E: ah, just saw your edit about self host, sorry.
You can cloud host or self host this anyway.
immich is a complete replacement for google photos.
Recently found UhuruPhotos, which uses LibrePhotos for self-hosted syncing.
Aves may fit your needs.
I know of Immich, havent used it yet.
Filen
I use filen too but it doesn’t sync/upload my photos until I open the app, does it work in the background on your phone ?
No, not really. I thought that it was because the app was locked behind its own app lock. Guess its a app problem. It might be on their roadmap, who knows. I’ll search around for a bit.
