We all use icloud. It's super easy, don't have to think about it. Our entire family and extended family use it so it's easy to make shared albums that everyone can contribute to for family trips.
I do have an unraid server as well as a synology so I could run my own cloud for it but I just don't see the need and it doesn't fit the needs of our larger family.

 

I would assume that you also have all of your "memories" stored locally.

 

Nextcloud.

 

If you truly don't want to be at the mercy of the "cloud" services, create your own personal cloud storage/host. Immich sounds good, but from what I understand, it runs on a PC??

 

If you truly don't want to be at the mercy of the "cloud" services, create your own personal cloud storage/host. Immich sounds good, but from what I understand, it runs on a PC??

You run on Docker, unraid, portainer, trunas, etc for server. And then access your server via an app or browser.

 

I currently am at the mercy of Google with Photos but have been keeping my eye on https://ente.io (probably similar to Immich?) as a self-hosted alternative if/when I can move.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you're not going to self host this is a great option based on reading only. Here is another with greater functionality, and way more space.

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www.librecloud.host

 

good day dear friends

many thanks for all the replies so far – super interesting to see the range of setups people are using.

@archer75 – that family/extended-family angle with iCloud is a good point. Shared albums that “just work” is something the self-hosted solutions don’t really replicate without extra effort. Do you think there’s any scenario where you’d want to move some of your library off Apple’s ecosystem (for portability or backup)?

@clarkss12 – yeah, the “mercy of the cloud” feeling is kind of what makes me think about Immich or similar. From what I’ve seen, Immich runs best on Docker, so you can host it on a NAS, VPS, or even a Raspberry Pi, not just a PC. Do you self-host other services already on your Synology?

@jjdesi4 – ente.io looks nice too, thanks for pointing that out. I’m curious if you see any clear difference between ente and Immich in terms of long-term viability?

@Def_forever – interesting, what’s the “greater functionality” you’ve found in that other option? Is it more focused on raw storage or does it also do the photo management / AI search side like Google Photos?

I guess the big tradeoff is: convenience & sharing (Google/iCloud/etc.) vs. control & privacy (Immich/Ente/self-hosted).

Would be really cool to hear what’s most important to you all personally — is it ease of use, long-term cost, storage size, or control over your own data?

i look forward to hear from you.

 

@archer75 – that family/extended-family angle with iCloud is a good point. Shared albums that “just work” is something the self-hosted solutions don’t really replicate without extra effort. Do you think there’s any scenario where you’d want to move some of your library off Apple’s ecosystem (for portability or backup)?

I can't think of a scenario. All our photos are in the cloud and on the iphone backup and locally come down to my mac which in turn does a backup of those to another drive and it's all automatic.
On occasion I also manually make additional backups of those photos to my unraid server and even some old drobos I have.
If I were to abandon this system I would need something that is also as seamless, has all the features of the photos app, and i'd have to get all my family and extended family to all switch over. I just don't see that happening. A lot of work for no gain.

 

I'm honestly not informed enough to give you a comparison between ente and Immich, I've only read about them as alternatives and just threw out ente as an option. I think Immich has a bigger following at the moment and saw that they released v2.0: v2.0.0 - Stable Release of Immich · immich-app immich · Discussion #22546

You might get some good insights from the comments on the release here: Immich v2.0.0 – First stable release | Hacker News

 

I have an android phone, so I keep all the raw shots in Google Photos. But I also use Plex Photos for the photos I want to prioritize; I make photos (and music) available remotely. And then for an extra backup I have an automatic copy from my Plex photos on my NAS to my Google drive (so I can access them remotely from Plex or from Google drive). How's that for overkill!