"Might" == "Have been for some time, just that we're now getting to the obvious point"
Water might be wet
They are, by they also might, but they are.
This has the same energy as "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too"
Ugh it's going to be a pain to stop using Google, but it's time. Long gone are the days of "don't be evil"
If you're interested in a self-hosted alternative, I can highly recommend immich. The UI is clean and fast (relative to Photoprism), has android and iOS apps, auto phone->server uploading, sharable albums, and more features. I don't know anyone that has been disappointed after switching, and I see why
The biggest pain if you want to set it up is starting your home server if you don't already have one. Otherwise I found setting up immich itself on a server pretty easy
The only problem with Immich is that it's a fascism-supporting FUTO project. It's excellent software, but don't give them your money, because they'll send it to fascists.
Do you have an alternative? critique without alternatives is not helpful.
Don't be lazy, enlightenment is more than half the battle, done for you.
Also, use Google takeout and the helper to keep meta and exif data intact, it will take hours and hours to run but it does a perfect job!
I feel immich-go might be a better choice: https://github.com/simulot/immich-go
2nd this. Have it on a NAS box and the biggest task was just download and re uploading to Immich. Once on I find the UI pleasant and the face tagging is a nice touch.
Long time PhotoPrism user here, really curious what you find slow or unclean about it? Maybe I should switch.
I primarily found that when importing photos, it would take Photoprism a long time to generate thumbnails. It was long enough that I would give up on trying to sort through the photos after uploading and come back a few hours later
Alternatively with Immich, I dumped ~100 Halloween photos taken with my phone and DSLR onto the server. They were already previewable by the time the files were done uploading
I've already uninstalled Photoprism so I couldn't tell you what my config was. Could have required more tuning; but I'm at a point in life where I'm leaning towards needing things to "just work", than to have to tune things
Re: Unclean: IIRC, Photoprism gives you a lot of tools and options. More options and features = more stuff on your screen = a more cluttered UI. While I did like the tools, it also made it difficult to share with normies
Hadn't heard of immich, I already run a plex server so shouldn't be too bad to set up. That just leaves the big problem of switching all my existing accounts off gmail.
Custom Android ROMs still have some viability, but it's been getting harder to find ones without gapps these days.
Ente worked for me. More pricey, yes. But you do not pay with your data... Also e2e encrypted, good family plans and sharing works good.
And one of their backup locations is an underground bunker
And that’s why we self host.
Remember to back up regularly!
In Kramer voice: Oh, I backup.
On a RAID.
Backed up nightly to Backblaze in US and OVH in Germany. Recovery exercise once every year.
Backed up every 6 months to offline storage, for worm protection.
It takes an asteroid killer before I’m at risk.
I hope.
FUTO is in the progress of offering built in backup in immich. Very neat idea.
One word: Immich
photoprism is another option.
Do it now while you can still buy a Pi and a hard drive for less than $500 each.
At this point ditch the PI and go straight to any used Mini-PC with 12th gen intel or 5000/7000 ryzen...
Who can afford hard drive space in this economy
“might”
Google won't scan my private photos. Neither do I have Android (nor iOS) on my phone, nor do I use Gmail and certainly not Google Photos.
What do you use for your phone, out of curiosity?
Sailfish OS on my Jolla Phone 2026, fully natively. It is as "Nokia" as you can go today, given it is the successor of Meego, the last in-house Nokia OS, which was fully gesture based before iOS and Android. Nowadays it feels IMHO refreshingly clean, certainly different from the duopoly but also from other Linux phones.
Water is wet.
i assumed they already did that as they listen to us and obvs track everything we click or pause n look at
Always assume Google will scan whatever you store or access through them for advertisement targeting.
I would have to be crazy enough to use google photos for them to scan mine.
corporate dystopian move #7368945 aside, I have to wonder what the ROI on this would actually be
I think they don’t care. At this point, it seems they’re injecting ads like AI, basically hand-in-hand.
I kinda assumed it already did, so I stopped using Google photos, now it's time to exit google drive as well. The only transition I think might be hard for me is Gmail and maybe Keep, but I'll figure something out
For your email switch to literally any other provider that supports using your own domain. You bring the domain, they host it for you. You can change at any time based on whatever is the least evil.
Self hosting email is horrid. Well self hosting email is not that hard now with Stalwart and other servers in a box exist. But getting your email accepted by any remote server require a fair amount of work.
The best alternative I have found to Gmail is Fastmail. They now offer EU hosting. Proton would have been an option too but they’re losing the plot.
Fastmail is genuinely the best web client I’ve come across. I have to use Gmail for work so I know it well and compared to Fastmail it’s basically Slowmail.
They aren't already?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
