Website: https://memories.gallery/
GitHub: https://github.com/pulsejet/memories
Demo Server: https://demo.memories.gallery/apps/memories/ (demo runs in San Francisco on a free-tier cloud vm)
Memories has been built ground-up for high performance and is extremely fast when configured correctly. In our testing environment, it can load a timeline view with 100k photos in under 500ms, including query and rendering time!
Some features to highlight:
* A timeline similar to Google Photos where you can skip to any time in history instantly.
* AI-based tagging that runs locally on your server, identifying and tagging people and objects.
* Albums and external sharing.
* Metadata editing support
* A world map of your photos, supported both on mobile and the web
* Did I mention it's extremely fast?
Would love to hear feedback from the HN community! :)
> No Lock-In
> Memories stores most of the metadata in the EXIF headers of your photos, which means that you can easily migrate to other solutions without losing your data. It also utilizes your existing filesystem structure for organization without converting it to any specialized format
Given that, would a standalone version be feasible, i.e. one that doesn't rely on Nextcloud and only operates on a folder on disk? I mean, while Memories might not lock you in, Nextcloud can still do so. (No two-way sync etc. etc.)
Currently, I just use Syncthing to synchronize all my files across devices (laptop, phone, home server, …) and it works splendidly! Ideally I'd just want to run Memories either locally (on the local copy of my photos folder) or on my home server (on the home server's copy of my photos folder).
I wrote a bit on why Nextcloud a while back, I'll link it here (see point 5 in FAQ): https://memories.gallery/faq/#faq
As such, Nextcloud doesn't really lock you in; it just provides a framework for the app. You can, theoretically, continue to use Syncthing to sync files while running Nextcloud on top of it (probably not ideal though)
I want to note though, the "no lock-in" philosophy refers more to being able to move out of Nextcloud/Memories at any point if you want. Nextcloud still just stores everything on your disk as folders and files, so you can just decide to nuke it one day and still have everything (not fully true yet, you'll still lose some things like tags and albums; exporting these out too is WIP)
I think for an open-source and/or self-hosted solution to come close to an approximation of google cloud/iCloud/whatever we need projects like this to be able to pick their niche and hyper-focus on it, which leaning on Nextcloud does in this case I feel.
For what it's worth, I think for people like me (who already use Syncthing and Tailscale), all the reasons the FAQ mention for why Nextcloud is really necessary (auth, file upload, etc.) are already covered, which is why I'd be so interested in something a little bit more lightweight.
(As an aside, I am not sure I agree on the "Nextcloud upgrades are seamless" part – every time I've had to upgrade a Nextcloud instance so far I was in for a world of pain.)
Anyway, I wish you tons of success with your project! :) It might be what will push some of my family members to leave Google Photos and/or Dropbox, and that would be a huge win already!
Is my data encrypted?
Thank you!
"The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!"
[1]: https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/
Combining it with "The Search Page" app makes it a quite comfortable experience as is.
- Does the metadata editing allow it to write back to the file, storing the edited metadata in a sidecar or in the EXIF data? - Does it support some kind of auto-stacking? E.g. having raw files alongside exported tiff/jpg and recognizing that they are the same file? Especially for a nextcloud based solution, that'd be awesome
I see "external sharing" is mentioned but haven't found more information on that. Ideally I'd want the option to share an album with password protection, doesn't require an account to view, and allows comments on photos. Bonus would be to have a running album feed with view receipts per account.
I know that's a lot but wanted to be specific. I'm ready to migrate but haven't found a platform that has feature parity on this front.
The reason I pay for tons of extra Google photos storage is it tags and uploads and pics of my kiddos to an album shared with all the grandparents. It's their favourite app in the world and I'm never allowed to cancel.
Could I replicate that here?
Edit: It doesn't change the fact that the behavior is creepy though. Maybe that's the criticism.
I installed this, indexed the photos, etc, but I still get lots of grey boxes (photos not loading) when I browse. Am I missing something, or is my server just too slow for this?
EDIT: I think my server is just too slow. The entire machine freezes when loading one of the photos.
Also note there are some extra config steps for the preview app (initial run, cron job). See https://github.com/nextcloud/previewgenerator
Also, is there a mobile app? Most of the time when I look at pictures I am on the phone
If you need the AI features those require separate apps and depending on your deployment it might need some effort. I'm running a docker image and had to ensure I have some of the required libraries for the AI things to work. It isn't too hard to misconfigure though and I believe there's a decent amount of resources for this.
As for mobile app, there isn't an explicit one but the webapp interface is mobile friendly and works pretty well. I also use NC photos and it still works with the tags and face recognition things. That app doesn't require "Memories" as far as I know.