These are the Best Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternatives

Google Photos is an astounding platform to store and back up your images and videos. In any case, you can have your own media server on Linux utilizing these apps.

Smartphone clients require hundreds, on the off chance that not a huge number of photos consistently, and many have relied on Google Photos to automatically upload and store their holiday snapshots free of charge. The service ceased to offer limitless storage in 2021, implying that clients needed to one or the other fork over money to Google or track down another solution— either by moving to another supplier or self-hosting.

Here are probably the best self-hosted Google Photos choices to make your own media server on Linux.

What Is Self-Hosting?

Self-hosting implies running a web server that is physically situated on your own premises. It tends to be pretty much as basic as a static website, or as complex as an oversaw array of streaming software, VPNs, office suites, and photo galleries. Self-hosting is a pleasant side interest and simple to get into. A decent starter project is hosting your own WordPress site at home.

What You Need to Self-Host a Photo Backup and Storage Solution

The requirements are genuinely fundamental, and for a large portion of these projects, all you want is a reliable internet connection, a domain name, and a computer that can run Linux. A minimal expense Raspberry Pi is ideally suited for this.

Another significant prerequisite is a reliable media server to have your media files on, like Google Photos.

1. PiGallery 2

As the name proposes, PiGallery 2 was designed in light of the Raspberry Pi — yet you won’t require a Raspberry Pi to run it. Any Linux machine will do, and installation is straightforward with Docker with docker-compose— in spite of the fact that on the off chance that you like to get your hands dirty and are comfortable with Node.js and building npm packages from source, you can do a direct install.

The principal selling points of PiGallery 2 are its simplicity and speed. You should simply point the software at the directory containing your images, and you’ll have the option to get to your photo library from a browser on any gadget.

Galleries are built automatically, with subdirectories going about as albums. All photos are searchable with full boolean logic and keywords including date, location, and subject. Execution is fantastic with photo collections of up to 100,000 images— inasmuch as every gallery contains less than 5,000 individual photos.

PiGallery 2 accompanies no sort of synchronization software or mobile app, so you will require an approach to getting photos from your phone onto the Pi (or anything that computer you are utilizing). One approach to doing this is to utilize SyncThing to sync your files across different gadgets.

2. Nextcloud Photos

Nextcloud is in many cases the principal thing that self-hosters will introduce on their server. It accompanies apps for nearly anything you can imagine including office suites, music players, video conferencing, and, obviously, a photo gallery.

With mobile clients accessible for both Android and iOS, photos are automatically uploaded to the server with no additional contribution from the client and can be handily seen either in the mobile app, through a browser, or, because of WebDAV, through the file manager on your desktop computer.

While getting to Nextcloud Photos through a browser, photos are displayed on an infinitely scrolling page, with thumbnails made on the fly. This can be painfully slow.

Nextcloud, along with Nextcloud Photos, will run joyfully on most Raspberry Pi models. In the event that you don’t as of now have it, read our aide on the most proficient method to build your own cloud server with Nextcloud.

3. PhotoPrism

PhotoPrism is an inconceivably competent image gallery, and you can install it utilizing Docker and docker-compose.

By utilizing Google’s TensorFlow library, PhotoPrism can tag and categorize images when they show up on your server, make instant albums, and even perceive the faces of individuals in your photographs. Image tagging and machine learning are completed on your server and no information is at any point sent to Google. On the off chance that that doesn’t fulfill your requirement for privacy, you can undoubtedly switch off the machine learning features by editing the docker-compose.

PhotoPrism’s search function is noteworthy, offering drop-down filters for dates, locations, individuals, camera models, and, surprisingly, the dominant color in an image.

Another extraordinary feature is the map. PhotoPrism extracts location information from the metadata of each image (when accessible) and will put thumbnails of each, at the spot it was taken — making a thumb-tack map of the world!

PhotoPrism is still being developed, with new features being added consistently. As of now, it upholds just a single client account, and there is no automatic synchronization or mobile app. The developers recommend utilizing the PhotoSync mobile app to upload and view images.

4. Piwigo

Piwigo exists as both a paid service— complete with help and storage, with plans beginning from $45 each month, and as a free, self-hosted version that you can run on your own hardware at home.

Installation is basically as straightforward as downloading a zipped file to your server’s DocumentRoot, unzipping it, and filling in database details in a browser.

You can upload photos utilizing a web browser and manage them by manually adding them to albums, tagging, and moving them. You can add keywords to assist with the search, and perform operations on multiple files in batches.

As a matter of course, Piwigo won’t display a photo at fullscreen resolution as it reserves an area of the display for data, for example, file name, size, album information, and tags.

You Can Now Host Your Own Google Photos Alternative at Home!
Photography is an extraordinary side interest for which nearly everybody has the equipment. Make yourself stand apart from other amateur photographers by mastering the composition, lighting, and processing of your images.