Just use Immich. It's easy and apes Google Photos.
Ente is the other main option, but I never evaluated it because Immich worked so well.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
41 points (100.0% liked)
Selfhosted
61737 readers
583 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Immich is the easiest self-hosted thing I've set up. It also might've been the first.
I have to warn you about Immich on one item: large file upload. Immich does not have chunk uploading, so if you are backing up a large video and you lose internet, the upload has to start all over. I found this out when my phone was trying to upload a 4k video that was about 10GB.
Can you upload by any other means, or does it always require it's own upload mechanism?
I eventually set syncthing to do phone image and video backups. That kinda solved this issue.
Just recently migrated from Ente to Immich. Immich is much nicer, more consistent, friendlier to self host, and less buggy in my experience so far.
Immich doesn't have shared album option does it ?
You can share albums with other users, or even with a public link.
Yes but can someone else upload photos into your albums?
Yes. When sharing the link you have the option to allow people to upload using that link.
Oh that's great! Immich here I come
It does, and they work well.
It does. My Immich installation is behind a reverse proxy, and I simply share the link to the albums with friends and family.
Can they upload photos onto your server too?
I didn't give them their own accounts but you can if you want to.
Immich is the correct choice
Immich
I got 5 users, over 1TB photos and videos, continuous syncing from Android, AI search, OCR search, you name it, all works great. The only thing at that size is that it needs SSD storage or SSD caching. I got ZFS pool with SSD cache and it's blazing fast. On disks alone, things are a bit more difficult.
If you're looking to learn how to set up a server and start selfhosting, Immich is great. You can get a docker image that includes the postgres database and everything, and it's not hard to pair it with a reverse proxy or tailscale/VPN if you want to expose it to the web. You also don't have to do that, just open the local port and use it on home WiFi.
HOWEVER, if you're daunted by self-hosting and just want a simple, secure experience, Ente is the way to go, IMHO. It's end-to-end encrypted so your photos are private, and the server is maintained and managed by people who know what they're doing. Headache-free for you. The cost is a bit more than Google Photos, so it's competitively priced but you're paying only with cash instead of personal data.
I do this with my family using Immich. Everyone has their own private library but we also have shared albums for vacations and such.
Immich is king here IMHO. Nothing better and its got a lot of backing so not going away anytime soon
There's Nexcloud and the "Memories" plugin. It's not as good as Immich though, especially if you don't need the rest of NextCloud.
I use ente.io, afaik you can selfhost it but I'm sticking with their subscription since I don't trust myself with my backup strategy ^^"
It also has an "event"-feature where you can share an album-link and people without an account/the app can upload images to the album
Ente
Photoprism is what I use.
If you install proxmox on the laptop there is a community script to install and setup photoprism. Lots of other neat services you could run too. Relatively beginner friendly.
There are android and ios apps for photoprism that will auto upload new images from your phone to the photoprism server.
Immich squad. I dont want to scare you off but the right way is to combine it with tailscale and immich public proxy. That way hackers cant easily access all ur fotos but you can still share em
Are you optimizing for a polished experience or for simplicity?
If for something polished that works very well, you've probably already found the best solution - immich. There's also Piwigo, Photoprism etc.
If you're looking for something simpler, can I suggest using syncthing (think: like a local version of Dropbox, sorta), with PiGallery2?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing
https://github.com/bpatrik/pigallery2
The idea here is that it creates a website that you can access on your Wi-Fi that is populated by the files that you push into the folder using your sync thing.
That's not as elegant as immich, but it's another option if you're looking for low-end hardware.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| LVM | (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| ZFS | Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity |
[Thread #59 for this comm, first seen 22nd Jul 2026, 06:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
As many have suggested immich is the answer I have tried a few others but immich is the answers.
if you buy a nas and some hardrives, the nas os usually has an app repository, so you fibd immich and click install. that will be the easy , non-technical way to do it
I've seen Immich mentioned around here before, but I've honestly never set up even a real homelab or sever before, so that's a bit daunting.
I haven't been in this space for too long either, but immich is what brought me here. I tried it out locally - no deecated server, just spun up immich on my desktop machine to try it out. And it was just so good it made me want to have a server and learn the ropes.
I'd recommend you try it out this way too. We'll see each other on the other side of that rabbit hole. ;)
Yet another vote for Immich, I've hit a couple bumps along the way but overall think it's amazingly simple to use after getting it setup.
Immich on Yunohost.