Google Photos on your own server

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. Recent asks know Immich and PhotoPrism and want more polish.

1. Sep 2025Would pay for a polished, reliable, easy self-hosted photo manager, since Immich and Photoprism feel unpolished. Read it: a comment in “Immich – High performance self-hosted photo and video management”
2. Jun 2024Wants an on-device AI photo organizer that tags, sorts and searches by person, without uploading to the cloud. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: AI Image Organizing App”
3. May 2024Wants a self-hosted photo app with local face recognition and a native client, not Electron or browser. Read it: a comment in “De-googling, so far”
4. Oct 2022Wants photo import, backup and rule-based organizing on plain folders, with dry runs, duplicate detection and file locking. Read it: a comment in “Lychee – Self-hosted photo-management done right”
5. Oct 2022Wants a self-hosted Google Photos replacement with automatic event albums, modern mobile UX and watched-folder detection. Read it: a comment in “Lychee – Self-hosted photo-management done right”
6. Aug 2021Would pay, even upfront, for self-hosted photos or a service that works with their own backend. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”
7. Aug 2021Would pay for a Google Photos-like app hosted on their home network, since they distrust companies. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”
8. May 2021Wants photo software with robust, unrestricted search for an artist's reference archive, unlike Google Photos. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?”
9. Dec 2020Wants a photo app that works out of the box with face and object detection, such as dogs. Read it: a comment in “LibrePhotos: A Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative”
10. Nov 2020Wants a simple way for relatives to pool and share their photos, instead of Google Photos. Read it: a comment in “Google Photos will lock some new features behind a paywall”
11. Nov 2020Seeks a decent Google Photos replacement, calling it their last remaining Google dependency. Read it: a comment in “No More Google”
12. Jul 2020Wants photo management for families or small groups, hosted on one computer and shared on the local network. Read it: a comment in “Digikam 7.0: Open-source photo management”
13. Nov 2019Wants a pretrained, easy-to-install, self-hosted classifier for everyday snapshot objects on Linux. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Self Hosted Photo Classifier”
14. Jun 2018Seeks self-hosted software to replace Google Photos. Read it: a comment in “Alternatives to Google Products”
15. Apr 2015Wants shared photo tagging of names, places and rough dates, so searches like dad plus grandpa pre-1975 work. Read it: a comment in “The Best Way to Organize a Lifetime of Photos”