The way google will nag you when your storage is nearly full is ultra annoying, borderline dark pattern. It will warn you that you might be running out of storage when attaching small PDFs to an email and the like, when you still have hundreds of megabytes available.
I started using Immich just this week and am very impressed by the amount of features built-in and everything just works. It really is a full-on replacement for google photos which is amazing. Even advanced features like face-detection using AI and partner sharing are there.
Shout-out also to immich-go [1] which is a cli tool that allowed me to migrate hundred of gigabytes of photos from a google takeout backup flawlessly.
Hundreds of megabytes is not that much, people can fill that up easily without sending large emails. Gmail can't predict the sizes of the emails you'll receive in the future. Maybe all your attachments are small but you'll receive large emails. Warning you when you only have a dozen MB left could well be too late.
The main argument is privacy, both with Google as a whole as well as facial recognition and private moments being logged in Google photos.
One could argue that they are telling the truth about whether or not they ever look at your data and keep it encrypted and this and that and the other, but the simple fact is that unless it is open source or audited multiple times by independent third parties, there is no way to confirm that all of your data actually is private.
However, most people are beginning to realize that because of the overreach that all of these different tech mega corporations have, it is almost impossible to stay private, even if you do sacrifice your products for more private, generally less feature rich ones. A good example is proton mail: it is a great email service, it is truly private, but you also don't get a lot of the really nice features that Google has, like an actually good suite of integration with meetings, calendar appointments, shipping tracking, reminders, file sharing, the works.
There is a trade-off, and a lot of the tech focused people believe that the lack of features warrants the more privacy, so it is really a difference of ideology more than anything.
Imo, the main concern is that it's tied into your google account. That's a lot of eggs for one basket. What if some ML model has a bad day and bans your account? It's not terrifically likely to happen, but if it did, how much would you lose?
On the other hand, I trust google's ability to store my data more than some homebrewed app.
As usual, the best solution will vary, but will always include secure offsite backups.
This is one of my main concerns. I hope I’m somewhat more protected as I’ve been paying for google one for quite some years (so at least has some financial link to me also, and supposedly better support to go with it).
Recently the editing tools have gotten much better too. I have sometimes made photos look better(to my liking) on google photos android app than using a dedicated desktop software.
This part is actually pretty OK. Google takeout takes time but if you have the app set to upload originals that's what you get and you can download it any time you want, so if they make a drastic change you'd still have all the old photos.
Yeah, a big fear of mine is having ten years worth of photos deleted in one fell swoop (or, at least, access to them removed without recourse, which comes to the same thing) because an AI thinks that a half-nude photo of my three-year-old is CSAM.
Of course, what that actually means in practice is that I should just regularly archive.
I'll share my Immich setup in case it helps someone.
I looked a while for a server that had a lot of storage space. I ended up finding: https://contabo.com/en/storage-vps/, $5.5 for 400GB.
To take care of all setup and maintenance complexity I installed cloudron.io
and then installed the Immich app.
Only issue is sometimes running out of ram.
Sounds tempting, but every time I try something like this, the momentum runs out after a few months to a year, and I'm left with a decaying side-project consuming more of my time and energy.
Is there a reasonably priced alternative to Google Photos that comes with fault tolerance, privacy, and a functional, cross-platform interface?
The problem with a lot of these applications is deployment and backup.
A list of components users should care about.
1. Deployment with egress or lan only
2. Simple back up and restore of applications version/app data.
3. Fault tolerant system like ZFS
4. Making sure the app data is viewable/accessible independent of the app itself.
There's not a single open source system that abstracts the complexity to achieve those 4 points. In fact there are not many paid products that achieve those goals. Most I've seen are subscription based.
Many might say go native docker/kubernetes. I would argue those technologies are fine but too high of a learning curve and fundamentally don't have a solution for a simple GUI driven backup / restore.
Synology is .. ok. They have working photo app and meh albums. But they keep pushing to make an account and log in into the cloud (since about 2 years I think), so their trajectory is not great.
I think points you rise are not that hard to solve with OS stack, to me the difficult part is the ease of sharing photos with others. People like familiar interfaces, adding photos to their own albums etc. Their experience of viewing your photos will never be that great, even when you have a decent uplink.
Immich is just awesome...
Works on iOS, Android in with some tweaks for external non smartphone photo libraries. All the features I needed, even multiple user accounts with sharing everything with your husband/wife or creating shared albums for sharing with other people. And its FOSS!
I like the "Archive" feature to hide photos very much. The only thing that I am missing is a specific implementation of tags. If you would like to read about it, see my comment[1] on the discussion about tags feature.
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I started using Immich just this week and am very impressed by the amount of features built-in and everything just works. It really is a full-on replacement for google photos which is amazing. Even advanced features like face-detection using AI and partner sharing are there.
Shout-out also to immich-go [1] which is a cli tool that allowed me to migrate hundred of gigabytes of photos from a google takeout backup flawlessly.
1: https://github.com/simulot/immich-go
I'm not confident that warning you about a catastrophe that's a handful of large emails away is a "dark pattern".
It's annoying that they've tied those two things together, but I wouldn't call it dark.
But I have 10 GB free, and I still get nagged. Annoying.
One could argue that they are telling the truth about whether or not they ever look at your data and keep it encrypted and this and that and the other, but the simple fact is that unless it is open source or audited multiple times by independent third parties, there is no way to confirm that all of your data actually is private.
However, most people are beginning to realize that because of the overreach that all of these different tech mega corporations have, it is almost impossible to stay private, even if you do sacrifice your products for more private, generally less feature rich ones. A good example is proton mail: it is a great email service, it is truly private, but you also don't get a lot of the really nice features that Google has, like an actually good suite of integration with meetings, calendar appointments, shipping tracking, reminders, file sharing, the works.
There is a trade-off, and a lot of the tech focused people believe that the lack of features warrants the more privacy, so it is really a difference of ideology more than anything.
On the other hand, I trust google's ability to store my data more than some homebrewed app.
As usual, the best solution will vary, but will always include secure offsite backups.
If the answers are okay today, will they stay good next year?
Of course, what that actually means in practice is that I should just regularly archive.
Is there a reasonably priced alternative to Google Photos that comes with fault tolerance, privacy, and a functional, cross-platform interface?
A list of components users should care about. 1. Deployment with egress or lan only 2. Simple back up and restore of applications version/app data. 3. Fault tolerant system like ZFS 4. Making sure the app data is viewable/accessible independent of the app itself.
There's not a single open source system that abstracts the complexity to achieve those 4 points. In fact there are not many paid products that achieve those goals. Most I've seen are subscription based.
Many might say go native docker/kubernetes. I would argue those technologies are fine but too high of a learning curve and fundamentally don't have a solution for a simple GUI driven backup / restore.
I think points you rise are not that hard to solve with OS stack, to me the difficult part is the ease of sharing photos with others. People like familiar interfaces, adding photos to their own albums etc. Their experience of viewing your photos will never be that great, even when you have a decent uplink.
Deleted Comment
I like the "Archive" feature to hide photos very much. The only thing that I am missing is a specific implementation of tags. If you would like to read about it, see my comment[1] on the discussion about tags feature.
[1]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/1651#discus...