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Comment by ein0p | Hacker News Reader

The true alternative to Photos is Immich: https://github.com/immich-app/immich. Anything that someone else hosts is not in any way "private".

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You can self host ente if you want I'm pretty sure

https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/

You can, and you can use the Ente-published mobile apps with your self-hosted instance. The setup process is a bit rough, but it absolutely works.

I self-host Immich and its definitely my favorite web photo system. One thing with Ente that aligns more with Mozilla's approach to data however is end-to-end encryption, which Ente has, but Immich doesn't. So I can see why Mozilla funded this option instead.

I personally wish that self-hosting was a more reliable and simplified process for the average person such that simpler and more powerful software like Immich was the best choice for all.

Self hosted Immich doesn't need end-to-end encryption, and the lack of it enables a number of very useful server-side features. If your end-to-end encryption has not undergone a security audit, it's as good as if there was no encryption at all.

Ente's use of cryptography[1] has been externally audited[2].

[1]: https://ente.io/architecture

[2]: https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit

Yes, that was kind of my point. Self-hosted negates the need, but most can't self host.... so that leaves end-to-end encryption the best intermediate step.

They also have quite the disclaimer :/

- The project is under very active development.

- Expect bugs and breaking changes.

- Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos.

- Always follow 3-2-1 backup plan for your precious photos and videos!

edit: Though those last two are applicable to any data hosting solution.

I've been using Immich for over a year. "Maintenance" boils down to weekly docker compose pull and a restart. There's semantic search, deduplication, mapping, face recognition etc etc. I do not miss Google Photos at all, and can recommend Immich without any reservations to anyone with even basic understanding of docker compose.

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