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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

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haunter·

What’s a good desktop app with the same-ish goal?

> High performance [desktop] photo and video management solution

Honestly all I want is

- Non destructive library management. No copying and moving files and the library is just “a file”

- Exif GPS map with search support (“Photos taken at NYC between 2 and 4pm”)

- Automated (AI?) photo tagging

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Sounds like you need digikam. I have been a happy digikam user for more than a decade now. It works really well.

The automated AI face detection can be improved compared to immich. But I guess this whole area is developing rapidly these days so I expect it to get better soon.

digiKam[1] might be for you. I only tried it briefly, but I think it covers most of the requirements out outlined.

I personally landed on Peakto[2], since it has the unique ability to create a unified catalog across multiple CaptureOne sessions, but it's probably overkill for what you need.

[1] https://www.digikam.org

[2] https://cyme.io/en/products/peakto/

Phil Gyford just posted about "Trying out eight macOS alternatives to Lightroom Classic to see if I could switch to one of them." which covers some of those points

https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2025/09/27/escaping-ligh...

Checkout https://bpatrik.github.io/pigallery2/. I've been using it for years and it checks all the boxes you're looking for

>self-hosted directory-first photo gallery website

That's not a desktop app, in fact it's pretty much like Immich

I've been using Mylio on my laptop which might suit you? My main requirement was that I organise photos using my file structure for maximum portability, and this works well with that.

CaptureOne is the go to thing you want here. It's the best.

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