Hello everyone!
I’m currently looking to self host some photos to get my girlfriend off of Google Photos. I’m wondering what has been good in your experience.
I never thought about self-hosting the before but a LTT video (I’m sorry) popped up in my feed and I got curious.
I looked into Ente.io and PhotoSync so far but unsure if there are any better options. Also saw that LibrePhotos exist but I haven’t looked into it yet.
What are you using? Have you had any issues? Missing features etc.?
+1 to immich
However, because of the fast dev cycle, it has a lot of breaking changes, and needs regular maintenance (most notably for me, postgres docker changes. Especially if you are not giving it it’s own postgres instance and using their provided docker compose.)
You could stay pegged to a single version, but the mobile app also doesn’t have full backwards compatibility with server versions, which results in a slew of other problems (how do I do a fresh install of an older app version on a new device?)
But if you are willing to keep up and perform semi-regular maintenance, immich is great, and the rapid dev cycle means more new features faster!
Luckily all of the changes so far have been super easy and quick, they’re very good about posting detailed info on what to change.
Thank you! I will try Immich our and see how it feels, if it’s just quick fixes it shouldn’t be an issue. But if it’s too much I might just try out Ente 🙏
Can you make immich so that when you click on the map, you get a grid of relevant photos rather than full size swipe?
Can you make immich not show the stupid white lines around every country?
This is a fair description.
My parents like it, once every so often I update their docker and apps (on the same day). Its not always straight forward (I just mean you have to visit their github), but ez enough.
Unfortunately my next choice (afaik) would be NextCloud … aaaand let’s leave it at that.
I’m scared to these ‘breaking changes’ even though I’m not exactly a self hosting newbie. That’s because I don’t have a proper 3-2-1 backup and I’m afraid I might lose my photos or settings. I’ve been exploring of setting up immich through a homeserver management tool like runtipi that allows taking backups separately that can be reverted to, in case something goes wrong. Anyone aware of any negatives about that?
I love this app.
Immich
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Everyone seems to love immich, but I found the rapid development cycle combined with the version incompatibilities annoying.
Ente is seeming like a nice alternative so far and will hopefully be lower maintenance.
I think Immich has grown out of the most difficult upgrades now. Most changes now are just removing lines from the stack.
It wasn’t that the upgrades were hard so much as it felt like everytime I tried to open the app on my phone, it errored out because either it or the server needed to be upgraded and the versions weren’t compatible.
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Definitely check this summary out: https://meichthys.github.io/foss_photo_libraries/. Everyone’s use case and priorities will be a little different, but I’d vote for Immich as a Google Photos replacement that looks nice and is very easy to use. I was awestruck by the facial and object recognition, which wasn’t even a feature I particularly cared about.
Immich all the way my dude.
Thank you all for the responses! I will take look into Immich and if maintenance is too much of a hassle I might try out Ente!
Piwigo.
I’m a noob, I started 2 months ago with immich and tailscale. Now I have an unraid server, it’s a slippery slope.
The tech-slope is a slippery slide into your wallet 😅
Lol yeh but it’s partially funded by money saved from canceled subscriptions.
That’s what they all say.
I-fucking-mmich!
Another question: I set up the Immich docker image and I’m using Mullvad VPN, however Mullvad VPN removed in-app port forwarding last year. I’m curious whether there is a solution to use Split Tunneling for Immich via another VPN to setup secure remote access outside of the home network?
https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/8299
I just got this working today and can say it’s quite an elegant solution. It means anyone with a Google account (that I allow through Cloudflare settings) can take advantage of immich. I plan to be the storage server for my family so they can have automatic photo backups.
If you decide to go that route and have questions, hit me up. I spent a while troubleshooting issues caused by not creating a SaaS application in Cloudflare, so read the directions exactly.
Thank you for the comment, a very interesting solution! I’m thinking of using Google as little as possible however. I would like to look into how to setup some access from outside the network via some VPN shenanigans.
I was also looking at automating backups with Cron - both DB and images to other disks and devices.
I got Immich up and running but have had some stuff come in the way to spend more time with it.
Yeah, I would prefer not to use Google, so I’m going to figure out how to use another authenticator. I wish Proton had the ability to be an authenticator, but I haven’t seen a way to do that yet.
But all my family has a Google account, so it just makes things easier.
PIA allows split tunneling in their app
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I don’t know why people recommend Immich. I found it to be the most bare-bone photo app I’ve ever used. It feels ten+ years old. I tried really hard to make it work but Plex photos is about 20% better and it still sucks.
I don’t remember much about plex photos, but facial (and object) recognition, photo map, easy sharing through albums (without the other person needing an account), and being open source are some features I imagine plex photos does not have.
it seems barebones still, because it is a very young app, and the UI is not great, especially on mobile.
It is the best replacement for Google photos that I have seen though.
Fair enough. Plex may not have the bells and whistles but it’s simple and intuitive to use. I’ve also tried the QuMagie app on my QNAP which does have all those features but found it to be a bit more cumbersome than it was worth.
I tried Google Photos briefly as well and was very shocked at how bad it is, compared to Apple Photos. It took me several days just to figure out how to delete more than one picture at a time. I have to assume it’s much more robust on an Android than on an iPhone but even their web interface was horrible.
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