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Ente encrypted open source alternativ to Google Photos. Can be self hosted and supports S3 backend

Ente - Private cloud for your photos, videos and more

https://ente.io/

Protect your photos and videos with Ente - a secure, cross-platform, open source, encrypted photos app. Automatic backups, end-to-end encryption, collaborative albums, family plans, library-sync, 1-click import, human support, locked photos, live photos, descriptions, private sharing, search and more.

Ente - Private cloud for your photos, videos and more

Been trying it for a little while. It's exactly what I have been looking for.

Works great
is encrypted
can be self hosted
edge ML for photo search (not perfect yet)
S3 backend #ente @ente@mstdn.social

55 comments

Unskilled5117

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I downloaded the mobile app (ios) and i don’t see any way to connect it to your own selfhosted server. You can only create an account with them. Didn’t look further, but it would be pretty weird to first have to create an account with them and only afterwards being able to connect to your own server.

Edit: The access is just deeply hidden. You have to tap 7 times on the login in screen in the app to enter developer settings. There you can enter your own server.

https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/guides/custom-server/

So yeah thumbs up from me!

shield_gengar

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This is why I just used immich instead; couldn't find a way to self-host ente. Maybe I'll give it a go again.

trevor

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They only just added the option to use a self-hosted instance a few weeks ago, if I remember correctly. If it's not there now, it should be there soon.

fmstrat

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Anyone have an Ente vs Immich comparison?

warmaster

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Immich got bought by FUTO, how that plays in the long run remains to be seen.

TheHobbyist

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I'm a customer and have moved over multiple family members, everyone seems happy. Their face recognition and smart search are still WIP, but they are impressively present, despite being all E2EE, by leveraging local processing. They are making very good progress.

lustrum

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Considering this also. Currently we're all on my google one plan, however I want to move away.

Any tips?

TheHobbyist

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Yes, actually it can be quite straightforward. What you are probably best off doing is requesting a google takeout and upload that takeout to Ente directly. I have not followed this process myself so I can't say much about it but it is described here and is probably the easiest way to migrate:

https://ente.io/faq/migration/from-google-photos/

jeena

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I have around 800 GB of photos from me, my dad and my fiance. That would be $ 20 a month. Ok, still not bad, I don't think I could get it much cheaper on a VPS.

For now what I'm doing is running https://immich.app on my laptop at home with a connected external USB drive. It's not e2e encrypted, just with ssl on https. But other than that it seems to have similar functionality.

SeeJayEmm

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B2 is about $5/TB.

If you keep your eyes open for deals (LowEndBox) you could find an inexpensive storage VPS. I've got one now providing 2 TB for $5/mo.

Father_Redbeard

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Damn, that's a great price. Who is your VPS provider so I can keep an eye out for similar deals?

victor9

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Would like to hear how it workes out for you if you decide to transfer all 800 GB

jeena

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I also really wonder, they say face recognition and ML categorization happen on the edge. I guess this would drain the battery quite a lot doing it for the 800 GB and it will take forever.

bdonvr

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I really like Immich and it works great for me. But I will be setting up Ente authenticator self hosted at some point

I can't tell you how long I've wanted to have a self hostable authy alternative with mobile and desktop apps plus a web portal.

gaylord_fartmaster

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I can't tell you how long I've wanted to have a self hostable authy alternative with mobile and desktop apps plus a web portal.

Why not just use one of the password managers that also support this? Vaultwarden also has all that.

KryptonNerd

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Lots of people like to keep their 2FA separate from their password manager, so that there isn't a single point of failure

gaylord_fartmaster

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Sure, but if you're already going to have your 2FA codes available from anywhere you could possibly want them like that then you're already sacrificing security for convenience.

I'll still take my chances with my LAN/VPN-only accessible Vaultwarden instance that manages both passwords and TOTP over anything internet-accessible that handles just one, but to each their own.

bdonvr

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I like them separate, call me weird. I already run Vaultwarden

Zagorath

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Someone should get it added to this git project comparing different open source photo libraries.

anzo

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Author of that list reached out devs here, https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/983

Cover_czar

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Can I expect ente servers from usual Foss providers ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ Its encrypted and can be self hosted so public servers are possible??

victor9

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Can't see why not. Personally I'll be paying for them(ente) to host it for me to support development.

QuizzaciousOtter

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I recently migrated to their hosted plan and can highly recommend. It's as close as you can get to Google Photos with E2EE right now.

Father_Redbeard

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I'd love to try it out but only self-hosted. And so far I can't get it spun up. To be clear, I'm sure that's a me problem. That said, the instructions are pretty spartan and a few commands to run and "that's it. you can now create an account and login!" but that doesn't work for me.

I currently have Immich running and it's good. But I've had two updates break my install, requiring hours of work to get it back to working reliably. They have a disclaimer that this can happen and isn't ready for production yet, so I don't fault them for that. I'm just on the hunt for something more reliable. Ente seems like it's been around a good while. I just need to figure out what I'm doing wrong. The S3 backend is a pretty great feature, imo.

MayonnaiseArch

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I got Photoprism, it works much better than immich in that it works and doesn't break. Satisfied my needs, although you need a bunch of android apps. Still, it works and doesn't give me any lip

Father_Redbeard

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I've heard good things. I will admit I don't like hiding features that I would consider to be essential behind a paywall. But I may have to give it another try.

MayonnaiseArch

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That's true, I'm not a fan of the way they handle the paid parts of the app, the user creation and administration is as basic as it gets - and doing it through docker shell or whatever is a huge pain in the ass. But most of the other stuff is sort of ok, I pay for the thing but I rarely if ever use the map. Main thing is it just doesn't crash (knock on wood)

Dariusmiles2123

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It looks like a great service, but since I’m already paying for cloud storage (kDrive from Infomaniak) I wouldn’t want to have another subscription.

Although I wouldn’t mind paying once for an equivalent to Google photos which would be storing and going through my pictures on my cloud storage.

Does anyone knows if such a program exists?

toastal

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Since we are making open source apps and building with continuous community feedback, effectively our GitHub and our Discord are our offices.

— Contact Page

Soo the only way to really communicate with your free software project that is all about self-hosting & privacy is thru fully-closed, US-based services with ads & ToS that let them track you. Way to practice what you preach.

Specal

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Most people don't use federated services. I know it's ironic that an open source project isn't using open source channels, but sometimes it's best to stick to services that are easy access and popular.

I'm sure if enough people got in contact about using open source communication they would likely attempt it.

BaumGeist

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Not to mention that self-hosting/federation comes with a million small headaches.

If the devs are paid, do you want to pay them to work on the project or work on maintaining a contact infrastructure?

If they aren't paid, do you want them using what little free time they have working on the app or working on maintaining a communications network?

If it's someone else's forum/matrix/chat server, are you okay with 1. a third party having access to your communications and 2. being able to force a comms blackout for any reason whatsoever?

Or would you rather they use their time and money focusing on finding a provider who meets every need of the project AND every user?

Specal

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You said it better than I could

toastal

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These do not meet the philosophical or privacy needs of users. Look at how the Switch emulator situation was handled where one megacorporation told another megacorporation to shutdown their communications & they did. Look at how US sanctions prevent users form touching these platforms. Look at how the feds & advertizers use all the collected data.

toastal

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I'm sure if enough people got in contact about using open source communication they would likely attempt it

You see the chicken-egg situation here, right?

You can have multiple channels. You can bridge. You can designate some spaces as reserved but unofficial. They do list a Matrix in the finer print, but not choosing it as primary is madness IMO since the option are certainly good enough & if you believe in the philosophy you will direct your community in this direction to inspire other folks to uptake & hopefully improve our freedom-respecting options. Instead you start at bifurcating a community along lines of those that want ethical software & privacy over those who are willing/able to give it up—which as you say is definitely ironic given the marketing buzzwords chosen like “self-hosted”, “respects your privacy”, “open source”.

Specal

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Right but a small company or even a group of people aren't going to put resources into something that a few % of people use. Look at Linux, despite it being the most used operating system in the world, retail sticks to windows and Mac, so it just doesn't get the same level of support.

I completely agree in the sense people should educate themselves and use products that benefit them and don't abuse them, but people don't. And because people don't, companies won't.

toastal

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Folks are free to do what they want with their project just as I am free to judge them for their choices. The big problem with these sort of communication decisions is that you effectively silence those that would like to raise their hand toward wanting something for them too. “We asked our Discord chat room if they like it & they all said yes, so the community has already spoken with regards to Discord”. If lazy, it is next to zero effort to say: “we also (unofficially) support a Libera.Chat/OFTC room @ #foobar” so the other folks know where to find the other ones that value their bandwidth, system resources, freedom, privacy, security, blocked by sanctions, or just sick of mainstream social media/ads.

With regards to Linux, it’s been a grassroots effort by enthusiasts that take the philosophies to heart, & it is just a shame to adopt the licensing, but not the general philosophy. As users, I think we should be more critical of these choices, but there’s a lot of shrug it would be nice, but…

Specal

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It's harsh to criticise people for not working for free..

toastal

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Start with good, accesible tools you can have control of—either by self-hosting or that they have their source code available so you can suggest fixes, or migrate off later. Choosing proprietary software like this leads to inevitable lock-in so why start there if we have seen this play out many times?

Andromxda

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They are also on Mastodon and Matrix. If you cite stuff from the website, at least read it properly. You had to scroll down to the very bottom to find the link to that contact page, right above it you can see a whole bunch of other (including federated) platforms.

toastal

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I noted it in a different comment, the open options are listed at the end, it still shows the priority of the platform the devs specifically noted it in the body of the contact page, & doesn’t address the software forge + source contributions.

Andromxda

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The contact page probably wasn't updated in years. It's also really irrelevant, since no one goes to that page, and even if someone finds it, they still see all the other platforms before actually clicking on the link to the contact page.

toastal

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I went there. I go there often usually in search of the non-garbage options that might be hidden on this page instead of a logo for a for-profit entity in the banner of every page. Sometimes you find the other communities which is good—but increasingly you don’t.

Andromxda

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Ok but I still want to know how the actual fuck you found this tiny link to the contact page on the bottom of the website, but managed to overlook the 10 links to other platforms right above it.

toastal

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The first page I went to was: https://ente.io/community/ where the big 3 priority links are Discord, Figma, Microsoft GitHub--these are Ente’s priority platforms. Seeing no alternative to the code forge under ‘Community’, I was curious if ‘Contact’ had listed another forge or a mailing list since this page is generally where you find email addresses. The page did not have an alt forge or mailing list, but there was a call to how they prioritize communications for their free software on nonfree Discord & MS GitHub.

Matrix sucks, but it as a chat option in the ‘better’ category. Bugs can be reported via email according to the ‘Contact’ page …but there is no other option for sending patches--not one of your 10 links.

Sunny

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Ente really keeps on giving and improving their services, very happy to be a customer!

istanbullu

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you lost me at s3 backend

flux

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If you want to have multi-host redundant storage at home (via e.g. minio or ceph), S3 is a pretty good protocol to provide it.

S3 is nice in the way it's not a file system so it can have relaxed semantics, while also providing secure access to individual files over HTTPS via URL signing.

Some people seem to be stuck in the idea that S3 means cloud hosting. Not sure if that was your view, but it's worth spelling out sometimes.