IMHO your marketing (incl. the title of this HN post) should more heavily emphasize that this has a native mobile app available in App Stores, that talks to this self-hosted server. There are many other private photo-hosting systems, but most of them are web-only — very few have a good, comfortable native mobile UI that you'd actually want to use!
See also: the directory https://github.com/relink2013/Awesome-Self-hosting-for-the-w..., that collects "self-hostable services with native mobile app clients." This project should be on there! (Right now, the only entries in the Photos category are two [closed-source!] Synology offerings, and one other app that's not E2E-encrypted. You're better than these — go claim your crown.)
This is exciting, I've been looking/hoping for something like this for a while but all the options I've come across so far were lackluster.
I have just tried setting it up with the iOS and Windows apps, I do not see an option to point it to a self-hosted server at all, am I missing something?
I am not sure they want to heavily stress that in their marketing materials: they still want people to subscribe to their service, right?
If all the applications are free software, it's obvious you can do that even if it means recompiling it (minus for iOS, sorry) — I believe it's ok if they have the option described somewhere deep in a FAQ or on-prem setup instructions.
So, I am traditionally somebody who self hosts a lot of stuff. I am not allergic to paying a fee to have something hosted by someone else - but one of my conditions to doing this is that there is an easy way to migrate away from the cloud offering should I choose to in the future.
To give an example, I use Tailscale HEAVILY right across all my self hosted stuff. It is absolutely central to everything I do - and I'd find it very hard to live without it. I am totally comfortable with this because Headscale exists, which is an open source implementation of Tailscale. If for some reason Tailscale starts making decisions I don't like, or perhaps the pricing changes in a way I am not a fan of, I have the option of trading some convenience.
I am really happy to see your server is open source. That is amazing news, and makes me feel a lot more interested in your product. I wanted to ask a few questions though:
* Let's say I've signed up with your service, and am hosting a bunch of stuff with you. I decide after 6 months I don't like some changes to the pricing model or something. How does one get their data out of the `cloud` ente.io - and into a self hosted instance of the server? Is there any data loss during this process?
* Your clients are not open source. I totally understand this. Do they however support talking to a different backend (like for example a self hosted Ente instance)?
* And finally - how would you say your tool compares to the two main open source Google Photos replacements, Immich and Photoprism?
You can use our Desktop app[1] or CLI[2] to export your data, incrementally. There's a toggle within our Desktop app that will perform this operation continuously into a directory of your choosing. You can of course script the CLI however you'd like.
There is no data-loss, you export what you import.
> clients are not open source
Our clients have always been open source. You can find them within our monorepo here[3].
Currently you have to pass a flag at build time to configure the endpoint, but there's a discussion[4] to add an option in-app instead.
> Immich and Photoprism
Ente comes with e2ee[5] and replication strategies[6]. The former means that we've to run ML on the Edge, while Immich and Photoprism can run ML on their servers. If your primary use case is self-hosting, Immich is the more "intelligent" option. If you value convenience, Ente is the one.
Tangential, is this intended to be pronounced like "എന്റെ", judging by your HN handle? Stoked to run into a fellow mallu founder of a consumer product. A huge fan of how the product/business is being run.
That name seemed familiar, but had to really dig into my memories; alas, I still love your cover of Monte Re on the Baglamas [1]!. Wishing you all the best with ente!
Did not expect to see this! This was recording during Ente's early days, and that was a very special time. Thank you for jogging my memories, and thank you for the wishes. You're very kind :)
Do you provide an easy migration from google photos with full quality?
The instructions in the FAQ are a bit vague.
Last time I heard about this, Google takeout won’t let you download the full quality images.
no, takeout gives you the full quality. All other ways of accessing your photos from the api (there is some github projects) don't give you the full quality images though.
But with takeout the problem is that all dates and metadata gets messed up. I had to learn this the hard way. There is some tools that somehow correct the dates. But it's not perfect and I wouldn't really want my photos to be locked up like that. What if google decides to discontinue Google Takeout? Or just give you lower quality pictures after some point? You really are not safe.
Since that experience I moved to onedrive temporarily because it's a bit safer solution for now until all of these new services get stable (immich, ente, etc). Onedrive let's you access you photos like normal Onedrive files so that's really good. I know microsoft will have my data now and sync is also not perfect. So it's definitely not perfect. But I had to move to something else before the better solutions emerge.
Hey, a fellow mallu, just wanted to send my appreciation on the product. It literally looks great, my kudos to your illustrator and FE developers. Best wishes!
Not yet, but you should be able to drag-and-drop the data on your disk into Ente's desktop app[1].
Please note that if you're primarily using SmugMug to store RAW files, their support (in terms of previewing capabilities) is limited right now. It's on our roadmap, and we will prioritize it, but just wanted to give you a heads up.
I suspect that every pronounceable combination of four Latin letters, and a number of unpronounceable ones, has been used as a moniker in the past, often multiple times.
It's not clear from downloading the mobile app how one would point it to the self-hosted server.
I would gladly pay $10-20/mo for Ente apps to use my own backend. Unfortunately I have around 8TB of photos so paying for a storage plan is out of the question.
I'm really happy with immich. It's amazing how well everything works and how feature-complete it is given how relatively young the project is and fast-moving development is going. I self-host an instance and do a nightly backup with duplicati to cloud storage.
The only downside for me is that there's a new release almost every couple of days, with a message that the backend is out of date. Which is both a pro and a con, but for me it's anxiety inducing because there's breaking changes sometimes and you can't just auto-update. A pace like Home Assistant feels more comfortable.
Been running immich for a while but haven't dropped my Google photos just to make sure I can manage immich and not lose everything. Updated from 1.8.something to 1.9something which includes a big db rework and lost all my user accounts. I imagine the photos are still in there somewhere but i haven't dug in yet so they're effectively gone. Lost a lot of trust for me with that even though it was probably my fault.
Me too. It is frustrating to see an update to the app and then have the app indicate it is out of date. But generally it still works, and upgrading the server has always been nothing more than changing the docker image tag and restarting. It's an incredible project.
I've been looking at immich and seen similar concerns about the update regularity, but that is due to it being a relatively young project. That it has come so far quickly is a good sign, as long as the release cycle becomes slower and more regimented as it approaches a certain level of maturity.
Ente Auth https://auth.ente.io/ was my go to choice for migrating from Authy. It supports importing and exporting (so no dead end unlike Authy) and I can see the second factor on my desktop without reaching my phone (through Ente Auth website).
I've exported from a rooted phone from Authy->Aegis->Ente Auth.
I have no need for their main product but they are building amazing software!
Thanks, this looks fantastic. I just installed the mobile app and will be migrating off Authy as well. Don’t have a lot of faith in Authy’s longevity after they discontinued the desktop apps, and the dead end is an issue too.
Any reason to go with this over Aegis? It's not clear why I'd even want an account for a 2FA app, it feels like Aegis would be the better choice on that fact alone.
Nothing against Aegis but I want my second factor also visible on the desktop (the second factor is meant to validate you are really you for an online service and is not meant to secure you against a compromised desktop computer)
9 USD per month gives you 2TB storage (vs. 500GB here)
I don't really get what justifies the 4x price (some of the features look like what you can get from a Gallery app like Aves) So it's looking kinda DOA to me.
The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule. If Dropbox goes rogue and you need to switch providers.. that doesn't seem like a big deal? It's nice here that you can in theory selfhost and keep using it.. but that doesn't seem like "a big win" either. Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host
It seems like the added feature boils down to automatically encrypting files. With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price
> I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers.
> Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host
Which is why they are offering a managed service as well. Even people with the technical skills are not always inclined to selfhost.
> With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price
Privacy is for criminals and storing CSAM, right? Why would you even want Dropbox at this point, Google Drive is all you need. Unless you wanted to help diagnose your child[1] and unfortunately the photo was synchronized to Drive and flagged.
You have every right to expect your photos to stay private. Even if those are just a landscape. Why should you be obligated to have an AI scan them for offending content or scan them to detect who you met and when (surely so they can build a yearly recap for you, how kind!)? Did you ever get consent from everyone on your photos for this sharing and processing?
You may not be interested in E2EE or open source, and that's absolutely fine. But you shouldn't actively undermine it by associating encryption and privacy with crimes.
The GP isn't undermining it, they're talking about the strength of the need. Clearly someone facing threat of punishment has a greater need for encryption than those who aren't.
Obviously there's a question of whether people in the latter group may end up in the former, perhaps by mistake, but would that risk be sufficient to make them pay 4x?
You're getting butthurt about stuff that's not relevant. The point is the encryption is: 1 - trivial to layer yourself 2 - not a viable business model
You just need to look at Signal. It's at the same price ($0) as its competition (not 4x). And messages you can't really encryption yourself. It's still struggling to get a market foothold.
Yeah, it'd be great to have Google/Dropbox/etc with privacy. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. But you also have to pay the bills and feed your babies. This isn't a charity. Maybe I'm missing something, but this product make no sense in the market. They can't even match the market prices. They're toast
> The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule.
This seems like a lack of imagination, which is not to be confused with any deficiency of the software or its business model. As for me, I think this completely rules.
Does it do background sync on iOS?. There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. “Leave the app open for it to sync”
Photos are the only reason I pay for the 2 TB plan on iCloud. I don’t need all the photos on device all the time. If I can _reliably_ stash them in remote servers and have a way to access them on-demand on the phone, I can take the money I give Apple and pay for the app that enables me. But only if I don’t have to remember to open the app every now and then and watch it sync my photos. It needs to be as easy to use as Apple Photos..
Yes, the app does iOS background sync. Many of us (I'm part of the Ente team) are avid users and have a huge photo libraries, and day-to-day, it works seamlessly. We don't need to reopen for it to sync etc. The only time one needs special care is when doing the initial import - at that time, we sometimes need to keep the app running in the foreground for the initial sync to complete.
As the other commenters are mentioning though, this is all black magic at the mercy of Apple. The way we've evolved with our code works now, but who knows what future updates to iOS bring. One thing we've observed that it takes sometimes like say seven days for Apple's on device ML to pick up that the user really wants to use the app, and convince the OS to allow the app to run in the background to sync. But again, this is not something we've needed to worry about as _users_ - we just use it normally as we'd use Apple Photos, and it just works after the initial sync completes.
I don't understand how this can possibly work within the constraints of iOS, and I've done some digging in the code.
Anyone else find where they are doing anything iOS specific to enable background uploads when you don't ever open the app? Apple go to great lengths to make sure the user has to use the app before it allows "budget" for background processes to execute within.
My guess is that as part of the Ente team, you open the app semi regularly, which is enough for the device to give some budget for your cloud sync process to kick off in the background every now and then.
For me, I would set Ente up and forget it. But I'm 99% sure in that case it would simply stop syncing after a few days.
They don't "allow" it, but most apps that need background execution just ask permission for geolocation tracking and pretend to use it, for example iSH[1]. There are a few activities that the app can do to prevent itself from being suspended when it goes out of focus, like playing sound, geolocation etc.
New to me, looks nice. But I'm a bit perplexed by the lack of functionality regarding group access.
You typically want to have a place for your family to manage your photos. A completely separate one for friends etc. Yet I don't see that usecase represented in software such like this (thinking of apps such as Immich, Ente seems quite similar). Managing your own photos is rather trivial in comparison, just need to sync your folder and 90% of the functionality is done.
And that is before the usecase of collaborating between participants on a trip. Or letting guests upload pictures for an event (such as a wedding). Such a hassle.
From the site: "Sync your library with your partner, and even designate them as an heir to your account." Nice, but not exactly it.
> "Can I share my subscription with family and friends?
You can add up to 5 family members and share your available storage space with
them at no extra cost. Each member will get their own private space, and can only
access their own photos."
Almost like it goes out of their way to not support this. Seems like such low-hanging fruit. I get that storage costs could become an issue, but in a self-hosting scenario that is not a problem.
Their local approach to ML is to be praised, I just wish we had different terms for Edge (cloud servers running close to users) vs Edge (end user devices).
The best decision for me is still to buy synology and store everything locally on Synology photos. No subscription, expandable storage, and full privacy. It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway
> It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway
I think many people forget about this. They pay for a monthly or yearly cloud storage subscription, but forget they have to pay this amount every year for the rest of their lifes if they want to keep their data. That's why I also use a Synology disk. I also have an additional lifetime subscription at a cloud storage provider (which pays back within 3.5 years). Sure they can disappear after say 10 years, but at least I have the Synology and I got a much better deal during those 10 years and can look for something else.
Another thing, don't upload all pics you take immediately, only sync after you have cleaned out all the bad photos and near duplicates.
To be fair, the underlying storage of the synology won't last forever. A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. You also need to pay for the electricity necessary to keep your server running 24/7, if you want a service level equivalent to a cloud storage service. All this adds up. The scales will probably stay in favor of the self-hosting options, but you have to take all this into account for a fair comparison.
This doesn't sound like a fair comparison for this product. It's true about most subscription services, but if you are ok with 50 GB, then 50 years of storage will cost you $1500, which is pretty much a cost of single Synology station with some drives, WITHOUT amortization cost, if you consider that your drives are not forever and probably need backups anyway. Of course, you'll store much more on a NAS, but if your onlt problem is subscription cost, you don't gain anything by switching to Synology.
I personally am considering Ente right now, since having E2EE Google Photos sounds actually pretty cool, despite the fact I have a NAS (a Synology NAS, for that matter). However, my reasons to not using the NAS as you could are different: this is really the place where I store everything, so I prefer having it accessible from local network only. Not sure how you guys feel safe putting something like Synology on the open internet. (Also, I currently don't run it 24/7 anyway, but that's for different reasons, which I hope will become obsolete when I find a better place for the NAS at home.)
One advantage Ente provides to a local NAS is geo redundancy. If your nas gets destroyed eg by fire or water or stolen eg by burglar or even the police your data is gone. Synology offers their convenient C2 service, but IIRC has or had some cryptographic weakness. So I hacked my own solution with rclone and some cheap cloud storage. Well, something like Ente would have been much more convenient.
> If your nas gets destroyed eg by fire or water or stolen eg by burglar or even the police your data is gone.
Isn't this why offsite backups are important?
Synology has Hyper Backup, and as you mentioned, there's also rclone.
I personally think the biggest benefit to keeping photos as simple files (and maintaining my own offsite backups) is that I'm never at the mercy of one of the SaaS's microservices being down, features being nerfed, or a company being restructured or acquired.
I do see the "peace of mind" that an automatic photo hosting/backup service gives. :) Well, one could always use them all (maintaining file backups and paying for a service like Ente) for real user-side redundancy and convenience.
Yeah I tried all sorts of photo services and ended up going for a Synology. You can pick them up very cheap in sales and don’t need the fastest drives or the latest CPUs if you’re only doing photo stuff and not transcoding HTPC media. With RAID and offsite backups it’s a solid and cheap (over time) system, and I don’t have to worry about some service getting bought out or shutting down.
It’s what I have, the only drawback I have is that if you want to free space on your device (at least on iOS) you have to delete photos and those are not available through the image picker in iOS anymore. It’s really a fault from iOS not having the option to select a image manager different from iOS photo app.
I actually have 2 backups, google photos low quality backup, and the synology one.
Sure, when you don't backups and the maintenance that's comes with them into account.
Also accessing a home NAS outside its network is annoying as hell if you don't want to broadcast your home IP to the world or open yourself to attacks in your home network.
> It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway
Have you taken depreciation into account in that calculation? Compute, memory, and storage are still getting cheaper each year due to manufacturing improvements.
Readit News
We had opensourced our server[1] yesterday, which is perhaps why we are on the front page. Stoked to be here
Ente had launched on HN[2] a while ago and has been sustainably growing since.
We took the feedback from our Show HN seriously and have since
- undergone a cryptography audit [3]
- published our replication strategy [4]
- added requested features (family plans, collaborative albums and links, ...) [5][6][7]
- made progress with Edge ML [8][9]
- built a CLI for incremental data exports (our desktop app supports this as well) [10]
- and in general matured as a company [11]
Also, apart from our source code, our Figma[12] is public as well.
If you've feedback on what we could do better, please do share, it'd be very helpful.
And if you've any questions, do ask, I'd love to make myself useful.
[1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439
[3]: https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/
[4]: https://ente.io/reliability
[5]: https://ente.io/blog/family-plans
[6]: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/
[7]: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/
[8]: https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/
[9]: https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/
[10]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli
[11]: https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/
[12]: https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visua...
See also: the directory https://github.com/relink2013/Awesome-Self-hosting-for-the-w..., that collects "self-hostable services with native mobile app clients." This project should be on there! (Right now, the only entries in the Photos category are two [closed-source!] Synology offerings, and one other app that's not E2E-encrypted. You're better than these — go claim your crown.)
If all the applications are free software, it's obvious you can do that even if it means recompiling it (minus for iOS, sorry) — I believe it's ok if they have the option described somewhere deep in a FAQ or on-prem setup instructions.
> Our open source code has been audited by reputed cryptographers.
I think you probably mean "reputable", as "reputed" inspires a lot less confidence.
Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · reputed /rɪˈpjuːtɪd/ adjective past participle: reputed
2. widely known and well thought of. "a highly reputed company"
Similar:well thought of, well respected, respected, highly regarded
So, I am traditionally somebody who self hosts a lot of stuff. I am not allergic to paying a fee to have something hosted by someone else - but one of my conditions to doing this is that there is an easy way to migrate away from the cloud offering should I choose to in the future.
To give an example, I use Tailscale HEAVILY right across all my self hosted stuff. It is absolutely central to everything I do - and I'd find it very hard to live without it. I am totally comfortable with this because Headscale exists, which is an open source implementation of Tailscale. If for some reason Tailscale starts making decisions I don't like, or perhaps the pricing changes in a way I am not a fan of, I have the option of trading some convenience.
I am really happy to see your server is open source. That is amazing news, and makes me feel a lot more interested in your product. I wanted to ask a few questions though:
* Let's say I've signed up with your service, and am hosting a bunch of stuff with you. I decide after 6 months I don't like some changes to the pricing model or something. How does one get their data out of the `cloud` ente.io - and into a self hosted instance of the server? Is there any data loss during this process?
* Your clients are not open source. I totally understand this. Do they however support talking to a different backend (like for example a self hosted Ente instance)?
* And finally - how would you say your tool compares to the two main open source Google Photos replacements, Immich and Photoprism?
> data out
You can use our Desktop app[1] or CLI[2] to export your data, incrementally. There's a toggle within our Desktop app that will perform this operation continuously into a directory of your choosing. You can of course script the CLI however you'd like.
There is no data-loss, you export what you import.
> clients are not open source
Our clients have always been open source. You can find them within our monorepo here[3].
Currently you have to pass a flag at build time to configure the endpoint, but there's a discussion[4] to add an option in-app instead.
> Immich and Photoprism
Ente comes with e2ee[5] and replication strategies[6]. The former means that we've to run ML on the Edge, while Immich and Photoprism can run ML on their servers. If your primary use case is self-hosting, Immich is the more "intelligent" option. If you value convenience, Ente is the one.
[1]: https://ente.io/downloads/desktop
[2]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli
[3]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente
[4]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504
[5]: https://ente.io/architecture
[6]: https://ente.io/reliability
Just to jump in cause I was curious myself. I think your question is answered here:
"Command Line Utility for exporting data from Ente"
https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/cli
Maybe we can give temporary access to processing steps in the pipeline, then have Immich forget the keys after it does the processing?
I've scribbled a bit about the story behind the name and the mascot here: https://ente.io/blog/ducky/
About auth, I'm not sure the claim in the readme is entirely correct:
> Two years ago, while building Ente Photos, we realized that there was no open source end-to-end encrypted authenticator app.
Surely bitwarden existed and had 2fa support two years ago? Granted it's not only an authenticator app...
Ed:[I guess 2fa is/was a pay-only feature, so only source-available? ]
Looks like auth is a great dedicated 2fa app by the way, surprised I've not come across it before.
Also, the feature to store 2FA tokens is only available on Bitwarden's paid plan, while with Ente it's free.
[1]. https://twitter.com/VishnuKVMD/status/1253324405813284868?t=...
Cool app, even better now that the server code is open source !
Always good to see some one from this side making to the front page of HN!!
But it splits your metadata (like capture time, geo coordinates) and places them in a separate sidecar file.
This isn't an issue if you're migrating to Ente because during import the desktop app[1] will merge the metadata with their respective files.
If it's for you to keep a local copy, you will unfortunately need to write some scripts. There's in fact a paid product[2] that does just this.
[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop
[2]: https://metadatafixer.com/
But with takeout the problem is that all dates and metadata gets messed up. I had to learn this the hard way. There is some tools that somehow correct the dates. But it's not perfect and I wouldn't really want my photos to be locked up like that. What if google decides to discontinue Google Takeout? Or just give you lower quality pictures after some point? You really are not safe.
Since that experience I moved to onedrive temporarily because it's a bit safer solution for now until all of these new services get stable (immich, ente, etc). Onedrive let's you access you photos like normal Onedrive files so that's really good. I know microsoft will have my data now and sync is also not perfect. So it's definitely not perfect. But I had to move to something else before the better solutions emerge.
Please note that if you're primarily using SmugMug to store RAW files, their support (in terms of previewing capabilities) is limited right now. It's on our roadmap, and we will prioritize it, but just wanted to give you a heads up.
[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop
https://liquipedia.net/warcraft/EnTe
I guess I'll stick with Immich [2] for now.
Edit: Found a Reddit AMA [3] from the CEO and I'm happy to know that self hosting is a goal in the long run.
[1] https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/141 [2] https://immich.app/ [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/116fx9v/ama_im_vi...
I would gladly pay $10-20/mo for Ente apps to use my own backend. Unfortunately I have around 8TB of photos so paying for a storage plan is out of the question.
The only downside for me is that there's a new release almost every couple of days, with a message that the backend is out of date. Which is both a pro and a con, but for me it's anxiety inducing because there's breaking changes sometimes and you can't just auto-update. A pace like Home Assistant feels more comfortable.
It's a great software but I would not recommend it at all because of this and the answer from the authors about the issue
I've exported from a rooted phone from Authy->Aegis->Ente Auth.
I have no need for their main product but they are building amazing software!
There's a discussion here on PrivacyGuides, that might offer more details: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/add-2fas-authenticator-a...
Out of curiosity I checked Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage
9 USD per month gives you 2TB storage (vs. 500GB here)
I don't really get what justifies the 4x price (some of the features look like what you can get from a Gallery app like Aves) So it's looking kinda DOA to me.
The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule. If Dropbox goes rogue and you need to switch providers.. that doesn't seem like a big deal? It's nice here that you can in theory selfhost and keep using it.. but that doesn't seem like "a big win" either. Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host
EDIT: There is a comparison: https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/
It seems like the added feature boils down to automatically encrypting files. With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price
> Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host
Which is why they are offering a managed service as well. Even people with the technical skills are not always inclined to selfhost.
> With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price
Privacy is for criminals and storing CSAM, right? Why would you even want Dropbox at this point, Google Drive is all you need. Unless you wanted to help diagnose your child[1] and unfortunately the photo was synchronized to Drive and flagged.
You have every right to expect your photos to stay private. Even if those are just a landscape. Why should you be obligated to have an AI scan them for offending content or scan them to detect who you met and when (surely so they can build a yearly recap for you, how kind!)? Did you ever get consent from everyone on your photos for this sharing and processing?
You may not be interested in E2EE or open source, and that's absolutely fine. But you shouldn't actively undermine it by associating encryption and privacy with crimes.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-cs...
Obviously there's a question of whether people in the latter group may end up in the former, perhaps by mistake, but would that risk be sufficient to make them pay 4x?
You just need to look at Signal. It's at the same price ($0) as its competition (not 4x). And messages you can't really encryption yourself. It's still struggling to get a market foothold.
Yeah, it'd be great to have Google/Dropbox/etc with privacy. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. But you also have to pay the bills and feed your babies. This isn't a charity. Maybe I'm missing something, but this product make no sense in the market. They can't even match the market prices. They're toast
And that's probably better for them, because it's much easier to lose data from your own NAS than it is for a cloud storage provider to do so.
This seems like a lack of imagination, which is not to be confused with any deficiency of the software or its business model. As for me, I think this completely rules.
Photos are the only reason I pay for the 2 TB plan on iCloud. I don’t need all the photos on device all the time. If I can _reliably_ stash them in remote servers and have a way to access them on-demand on the phone, I can take the money I give Apple and pay for the app that enables me. But only if I don’t have to remember to open the app every now and then and watch it sync my photos. It needs to be as easy to use as Apple Photos..
As the other commenters are mentioning though, this is all black magic at the mercy of Apple. The way we've evolved with our code works now, but who knows what future updates to iOS bring. One thing we've observed that it takes sometimes like say seven days for Apple's on device ML to pick up that the user really wants to use the app, and convince the OS to allow the app to run in the background to sync. But again, this is not something we've needed to worry about as _users_ - we just use it normally as we'd use Apple Photos, and it just works after the initial sync completes.
Anyone else find where they are doing anything iOS specific to enable background uploads when you don't ever open the app? Apple go to great lengths to make sure the user has to use the app before it allows "budget" for background processes to execute within.
My guess is that as part of the Ente team, you open the app semi regularly, which is enough for the device to give some budget for your cloud sync process to kick off in the background every now and then.
For me, I would set Ente up and forget it. But I'm 99% sure in that case it would simply stop syncing after a few days.
They make it impossible to compete, their apps have permissions no one else can have.
Apple doesn't allow background execution for third party apps. Can't increase service revenue if you allow competition.
[1] https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-54433...
You typically want to have a place for your family to manage your photos. A completely separate one for friends etc. Yet I don't see that usecase represented in software such like this (thinking of apps such as Immich, Ente seems quite similar). Managing your own photos is rather trivial in comparison, just need to sync your folder and 90% of the functionality is done.
And that is before the usecase of collaborating between participants on a trip. Or letting guests upload pictures for an event (such as a wedding). Such a hassle.
From the site: "Sync your library with your partner, and even designate them as an heir to your account." Nice, but not exactly it.
> "Can I share my subscription with family and friends? You can add up to 5 family members and share your available storage space with them at no extra cost. Each member will get their own private space, and can only access their own photos."
Almost like it goes out of their way to not support this. Seems like such low-hanging fruit. I get that storage costs could become an issue, but in a self-hosting scenario that is not a problem.
1. Album collaboration: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/
2. Photo collection: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/
Please let me know if I missed something. Sharing is an important feature for all of us, and we would love to get it right.
For a group of friends / family you'd probably want many tens of albums tracking different trips/events etc.
I think many people forget about this. They pay for a monthly or yearly cloud storage subscription, but forget they have to pay this amount every year for the rest of their lifes if they want to keep their data. That's why I also use a Synology disk. I also have an additional lifetime subscription at a cloud storage provider (which pays back within 3.5 years). Sure they can disappear after say 10 years, but at least I have the Synology and I got a much better deal during those 10 years and can look for something else.
Another thing, don't upload all pics you take immediately, only sync after you have cleaned out all the bad photos and near duplicates.
I personally am considering Ente right now, since having E2EE Google Photos sounds actually pretty cool, despite the fact I have a NAS (a Synology NAS, for that matter). However, my reasons to not using the NAS as you could are different: this is really the place where I store everything, so I prefer having it accessible from local network only. Not sure how you guys feel safe putting something like Synology on the open internet. (Also, I currently don't run it 24/7 anyway, but that's for different reasons, which I hope will become obsolete when I find a better place for the NAS at home.)
Isn't this why offsite backups are important?
Synology has Hyper Backup, and as you mentioned, there's also rclone.
I personally think the biggest benefit to keeping photos as simple files (and maintaining my own offsite backups) is that I'm never at the mercy of one of the SaaS's microservices being down, features being nerfed, or a company being restructured or acquired.
I do see the "peace of mind" that an automatic photo hosting/backup service gives. :) Well, one could always use them all (maintaining file backups and paying for a service like Ente) for real user-side redundancy and convenience.
I actually have 2 backups, google photos low quality backup, and the synology one.
Have you taken depreciation into account in that calculation? Compute, memory, and storage are still getting cheaper each year due to manufacturing improvements.