Does anyone know if any of these systems will interpret a Google takeout export from Photos? The data separation is brutal, I haven’t found something to pull it together yet.
Why is this even a point of discussion? Immich, period. It’s like people NEED to make it more difficult and laborious than it has to be.
I would have said exactly the same, but about PhotoPrism. Funny how perspectives differ.
It wasn’t mentioned in the list, but I like Photoview; it uses your existing file structure (rather than its own structure or a database), works with read-only access, accepts external syncing like Syncthing, and can handle multiple users. Not sure how it compares on features, but I just wanted something basic anyways, so I’m happy with it.
One more vote for Immich. While I don’t like how it’s not easy to create albums from existing folder structures out of the box, the search and face recognition is amazing for a free self hosted app.
iCloud /s
For those who want a minimal no bullshit alternative: lychee is your best bet !
The short description seems to be written by a LLM, why?
Tl;dr:
- PhotoPrism: Local AI with strong privacy but heavier setup.
- LibrePhotos: Same, but less polished, more community-built.
- Immich: Best self-hosted Google Photos alternative.
- Ente Photos: E2E encrypted, low-maintenance, most “plug and play”
Immich’s AI search is so much better than PhotoPrism
It’s true. I uploaded a nude out of curiosity. I then searched “Penis”. It found my penis. Now if only my wife could too. 10/10 Immich best self hosted google photos replacement.
I’m sold!
I have experience with both Ente and Immich and I can say they are both excellent. I like Ente a little bit more, but Immich is imho better for selfhosting (both are easy to self host). What I like about Immich in that regard is that it keeps photos organized as files too, they can be categorized in folders (like year > month > day and its customizable). I just want to have an option to have access to the files directly on the filesystem and if (big if) Immich dies, I still have my photos accessible and organized in directories without me needing to do anything. Ente uses s3 storage system.
I haven’t used immich in a while, but ente felt like the more mature product when I was evaluating the two.
It feels quite equal now that immich is stable. I was actually waiting for that, because I knew the updates before the stable release were sometimes painful and I didn’t want to do that on my production env. 😀
Apart from me maybe thinking immich should have built in backup tools, I’ve very much found it met my needs.
Personally I host all this kind of stuff using containers, only mounting the folders that need backing up. Then I just back up all my podman volumes. It’s pretty nice not depending on any tools that have to be maintained or anything like that.
I have a docker compose immich that I somehow managed to kill fourteen minutes after convincing my wife to switch to it.
Oh yeah, I’ve killed mine a couple times. Usually it’s because I didn’t keep it updated and jumped too far ahead too quickly. Rolling it back and walking it forward fixed it for me once, another time there was something I was supposed to run first and I didn’t read the release notes (that one was a really long time ago though).
Every part of what you just said can be encapsulated in proper packaging so you don’t even need to care – about pre/post upgrades, or even dependencies and checks before it starts.
The lack of a proper release is the absolute only thing keeping me from using it.
Welcom to the world of self-hosting :-D
I tried Photoprism, Ente and Immich.
Immich is by far the best. It has got an app that really does what it should do, has an AI that actually works and is easy to host and to update.
Last I tried Immich its background upload was horrible.
Some of that is definitely iOS being bad, but other apps at least semi-worked when Immich didn’t at all.
I might try it again, though. See if it’s improved.
When I used iOS, background upload seemed to work okay. On both iOS and Android, though, I occasionally go into the app to manually backup since both like to kill background processes to save on battery life.
They mentioned “better background backups” as a enhancement as since version 1.141.1 which was released on 9/8/2025. Personally I just started testing it after v2.0 so I’m not sure how bad it was previously but have not seen any significant issues with backup.
Do you conbect to your immich instance remotely when not home or just dump the photos once home?
Tailscale with a subnet router running for my home network makes it so that I can just connect to 192.168.50.57 from wherever I like.
Immich + a backup solution of your choice. If it’s worth saving, it’s worth backing up. Try to follow 321 as much as possible, but having at least a second copy is a good start.
Comparison of self hosted photo library https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries
Anyone with Nextcloud Memories setup? I’ve read it’s the only one that still respects a sane files and folders setup, whereas the other options basically force you to forever use their database-based system and files are terribly organized, so you are forced to use their interface.
I switched from Nextcloud Memories to Immich when Immich added support for external libraries. From what I remember, Memories was pretty good but a bit slower, not as polished, and had significantly worse AI tools. I recommend Immich.
Since I would recommend everyone 3-2-1. I have both a good structured photobackup AND immich.
whereas the other options basically force you to forever use their database-based system and files are terribly organized, so you are forced to use their interface.
Immich has a “storage templates” section which allows you to choose a folder structure that it will use to store the files in.
Or go the other way and include your folders as external libraries.
I started using photoprism. But their viewer doesn’t show my 3D side by side stereo photos. Immich brings a better viewer that gets out of the way and it also has multiple users. The immich multiple user accounts function a bit weird. My family photos need to be shared as external libraries while our phone photos cannot be shared unless you share accounts. They did some decisions around handling multiple users that is not fabulous. I used photoprism for awhile but just a few months on immich I can tell its going to be a better experience.
How do you take stereo photos?
I 3D printed a special lens to do that. It basically holds 4 mirrors to catch two images on the same sensor slightly apart ~2.75" apart or so.
Sounds cool! I love 3D. Is there a guide online at all?
There isn’t an online specific place for 3D printing optic assemblies but there are plenty of places to read about stereo photos. There’s even a software called stereophotomaker that helps you crop and adjust the photos you take.
I’m super happy with self hosted Ente. It was really simple to setup, mobile app is perfect and local ML works great. I can recommend!
Plus thanks to built in replication, my photos are securely stored in three diferent places
How does the replication work when you self-host? I know their hosted version has backups, but I’m assuming you’d have to set your own up.
Also, have you seen any easy way to move to and/or from their self-hosted version?
Prinary storage is VPS hard disk, secondary hot is Backblaze B2 and cold storage is Scaleway glacier
I’m not sure, I’m assuming that you would need to export all data from their version and import it to self hosted
