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?
I like the direction it’s headed in… but the name and logo 🫠 (not to it’s detriment at all… just not it.)
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…
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.
Genuinely curious as to what is wrong with the logo? It’s similar to gphotos. The name is similar to image.
“Immich”? It’s a nonsense word in English… what does it mean, and in what language?
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.
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
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.
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.
immich is a complete replacement for google photos.
