javipas

Back in January 2025, I shared a massive post about how I set up my own Google Photos alternative using this exceptional Open Source project called Immich.

I’m still enjoying its virtues, but for the longest time, I suffered from its one major flaw: the lack of a (good) native TV client. Immich looks phenomenal on a computer or smartphone, but if you want to view family photos on the big screen, you hit a wall. My workaround involved a long HDMI cable or casting a Chrome tab from my MacBook Air — functional, but far from ideal.

The Problem. I wanted a native Android TV/Google TV experience to navigate my library seamlessly. There was a glimmer of hope in the form of the Immich Android TV project. The developer, giejay, is quite active, but the app lacked two features essential for my sanity: a Timeline and Favorites management.

Without a timeline, finding a photo from 2015 meant scrolling linearly through 140,000 images (that’s the size of my photo library) starting from today. That’s not browsing; that’s an endurance sport.

So what I did is a fork of the official Immich Android TV project and, with AI as a coding assistant, I added a few features that I wanted to add to that project. It would have been impossible for me otherwise, but AI allows (almost) anyone to transform his ideas for an app into a reality. And if there’s an Open Source project already created, like in this case, that concept is even more powerful.

In case you're interested, here's the rest of the story with lots of images and links to the GitHub Repository and the APK.

Please let me know what you think!

Ever wonder how your cheap HP printer became a subscription service? This story goes back to King Camp Gillette and his disposable razor. It’s part of a bigger story on how the 'razor-and-blades' business model (expensive consumables!) infected everything from ink and coffee pods (Keurig/Nespresso) to modern razor clubs. And from that we arrived to the curse of the subscription economy.

In fact they didn't make just services: they made good services. It happened with Netflix or Spotify. For the first time ever, piracy was a worse option. Netflix and Spotify were convenient and affordable.

Then came enshittification, of course.

I've been using it for a couple of years and I find absolutely stellar. I wrote the (quite long) of my process to find the perfect alternative (for me) to Google Photos, so in case anyone's interested

https://medium.com/@javipas/thats-how-i-ve-replaced-google-p...

I've been trying to find the best way to manage my photo library without using Google Photos.

This is a (long) story of how over the years I've tried several alternatives (the good old Picasa, Monument 2, Synology Photos) to end building an Unraid server and test there a lot of self-hosted alternatives, which I compare to finally select Immich, the one that I think is the best for me.

Thanks, sorry for that.

Indeed. The author is the brilliant Cory Doctorow. He usually overwhelms.

As the author says, that 150% is not that good for the quality of text fonts showed on screen. I've been using a Dell UP2715K (27", 5K) for a few years and I've always used it at 200% scaling as the piece suggests. The texts are crystal clear, it's almost like seeing not a screen, but a sticker: everything is so well defined and precise.

Maybe that's because my eyesight is not that good lately. Even considering that, I really can perceive a 150% scaling on a 4K monitor when I see it. It isn't that bad and sure you can work with that, but man, do try 5K at 200% and then tell me about it.

It's a real tragedy there are not more 5K displays. The Apple Studio Display is expensive and a little absurd with that webcam and the A13 chip, but at least you can enjoy that resolution. I wonder if display makers will consider this someday and stop selling so much gaming models and so little 'work' models.

It seems the hack has been denied by Argentina's government officials

https://www-lanacion-com-ar.translate.goog/sociedad/tras-un-... (via Google Translate)

It's freed and moving nicely. Sources:

https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/vessels/EVER-GIVEN/CURRE...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UNbvO5U700

Not at all. Diversity & choice are good.

Nice job ;)

I'm from Spain, one of the most exposed countries right now. At first you see this as something distant, something that was happening in China as Ebola was happening years ago on Africa.

It can't touch me.

A few days ago the state of alarm began over here. Remain at home, minimal movement (just to go for groceries, pharma, the rest of retail businesses are closed now). It felt closer, but still you feel safe. You're at home, theoretically isolated.

And then you start hearing that people near you got sick and even die. One friend's father died a couple days ago. Other relative has been confirmed with covid-19 yesterday. More cases coming everyday. They are no longer points in a chart. These are your people.

We are not overreacting. We reacted late.

Take care.

Thanks for the video, it is quite disturbing. I live in Madrid, Spain (here the subject of the day is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and rumors of cancelling the whole show) and over here there is some kind of uncertainty too, as you mentioned.

Let's hope this gets solved soon. Stay safe as well.

Maybe Duple could work for you

https://www.duple.io/en/

This makes me remember the movie 'The Rookie' (Disney, 2002) with Dennis Quaid.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt00265662/

Based on the story of Jim Morris

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Morris

I was planning on installing this on my RPi3B but I wonder due to its low compute power could result in a somewhat slower experience in my home network. Could anyone comment on what his experience has been in this case?

Not necessarily if you appreciate battery life, that resolution should help at that. It seems it arrives in early june with a starting price of $1,089 [1]. If that corresponds to the 768p screen it certainly is quite expensive.

[1] https://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-t495-t495s-and-x39...

OS/2 Warp Community Announces It's Merging With the Flat Earth Society https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/01/0358220/os2-warp-co...

I'm with you bro (on the 300 tabs open) ;) Yes, I guess the author also uses visual apps with their GUIs in certain situations

That makes perfect sense, of course. The way the author speaks about that setup could make someone guess that he does everything in text mode. It would help to add information about those other user cases in which the mouse and a visual app comes forward.

I'm always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they're not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one.

My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be: don't you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What about services and platforms that are designed from scratch with images and video as a prominent part of that UI? (Twitter, Facebook, Amazon store for example)?

I guess you simply switch to a visual browser and some visual tool to play video (vlc, mplayer), but I'm curious and I wonder if that text/keyboard mode can be satisfying or convincing for users that are used on the traditional visual UI with windows, icons and the mouse paradigm.

I see the advantages here (OP mentions some of them), but I wonder if the trade offs for the normal user are to big to work in this kind of setup. Who would you recommend this to?

Discourse (https://www.discourse.org/) would be my bet.

I remember testing it on my Ubuntu partition soon after I learned about the project. I recorded a little video showing some of its capabilities. It became my most viewed video ever on YouTube with over 500K

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ4Nza34ak

Some good quality images of it running with my blog in the old days:

https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg1.jpg

https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg2.jpg

https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg3.jpg

https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg4.jpg

Matomo, formerly Piwik

https://matomo.org/

That's great. Time to test Hugo, it seems. Thanks ;)

I'm surprised to see so much answers leading to use a Static Website Generator. WordPress certainly can be problematic, but I think that there are clear advantages in both cases. You've got to make tradeoffs in both too.

I've been hearing a lot about Hugo lately, but my main concern as a blog editor with static website generators is the fact that they are great for, well, static content. If you want to update your site with new content and features (posts, pages, sections, widgets, comments, web statistics) WordPress make that easier.

On static websites generators —at least the ones I tried a couple of years ago, octopress/pelican/jekyll— these systems are great if you want to just have a good/superfast landing page and a few other pages laying around. Once you want to add new pages and posts you had to recompile everything again, something that wasn't a good idea with sites that grow dinamically through time with hundreds or thousands of posts (like my blog, for example).

Please let me know if Hugo (and others) solves the "recompilation" issue to rebuild the site each time, I'm probably wrong or not updated here. In your case it seems that static website generator could be a good fit though.

Squarespace is really nice too, btw. Good attention to design and detail, not so versatile as WordPress.

I wonder if 17 years later statistic have triumphed or not.

I've been blogging for 11 years now and it's one of those little things I'm particularly proud about. I've found my personal voice there (http://www.javipas.com) (I write about tech for a living in other site that started out as a blog), some readers (around 40K/month) and a way to share things in a different and delightful way. Besides, I've got total control over my blog, something I really appreciate.

Social networks are great for many things, but I wouldn't say blogging fails. It's not as popular now, but I guess this is due to the fact that it's more laborious.

I mostly agree with you, and as I've said my post about this in The Unshut, I would compare the Touch Bar in the MacBook Pro with 3D Touch on the iPhones: it looks nice on a demo, but I don't think it is as practical as Apple want us to believe.

http://theunshut.com/2016/10/27/will-the-touch-bar-save-the-...

Enjoy that ZBook, by the way.