My family relies heavily on Google One to sync our Google Photos. We have 4 iOS and 5 Android devices. Originally the iOS folks would pay and sync through iCloud. But to simplify the billing process and easy sharing, we switched all to Google Photos. Lets just say there is almost 2TB of photos/videos.
We want to move away from this to a more controlled (self host) and non Google solution. We looked at Proton, their emails and vpns are great. However we dont want to move to a different cloud for photos and videos.
We are not very tech savy to set things up. Can we just buy a big hard drive and somehow hook it to our wifi? This is consider self hosted right? Does that mean medias will only get synced when we are within the house’s wifi?
Appreciate any inputs
immich and photoprism looks good to me
https://www.pikapods.com/apps#photos
Immich is very popular, but there are more options there to check out.
Immich is a Google Photos alternative to manage and share your photos and videos. Comes with its own mobile app, as well as AI and search features.
PikaPods is a managed hosting solution for open source server apps. Their homepage explains a lot, and if you do some web searches, you can see they’ve got a good reputation.
I juat moved to immich but i self host it which requires a (small) bit of tech skills. I believe they do offer optuons for them to host for you. Ente is another option. Google takeout is the way to get your photos exported. Once backed up to the service of your choice, cancel google one.
Be aware, youll need to manually delete all tge google photos day by day on the websote to keep using that google account. Took me abkut 2 hours with 1tb.the lock in and efforts tonorevent escape is crazy.
We are not very tech savy to set things up
I think, in such case, you should rather look for a service hosted for you
For example
https://elest.io/open-source/nextcloud
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/Can we just buy a big hard drive and somehow hook it to our wifi? This is consider self hosted right? Does that mean medias will only get synced when we are within the house’s wifi?
Yes, it’s called a NAS. Correct. Correct
The thread might get locked here under “no support” rule, self-hosting comms will be a better fit
https://piefed.social/f/selfhostEdit: and if you want to dive into self-hosting, I guess, check out yunohost and LibrePhotos. Immich is also popular one
I think the best idea would be to go with a Synology NAS.
This is an extremely simple solution. They’ll even handle the DNS and security for you.
Synology is kind of the Apple of NAS in all the good and bad ways, but they certainly are dead simple to set up, and also give you a lot of flexibility to expand into a more complex,self maintaini tech stack if you want to.
We are not very tech savy to set things up.
Find somebody near you who is. A family member who cannot ghost you would be best.
I migrated my Photos to a more expensive service called Ente. It’s been a mixed bag for me. The backup function works well but both their desktop and mobile apps are causing me trouble. Ask me about the details if you care, I won’t bore you with that chat. But in me this has brought me to plan a switch to something self-hosted when my plan expires. I still have lots of time but I’m definitely bookmarking your post.
Ente photos is a great choice if you don’t want to self host.
I remember you can also host ente yourself with just one script that they provide.
Also look at immich and photoprism to see if you can host them.
