To be honest, $2/month isn't that unreasonable from a useful service. I would definitely class Google Photos as useful, especially its ability to search for pictures. I personally use iCloud, and back everything to a Synology.
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Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
211–220 of 317 posts
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#212I tried Mylo but didn't really like it so I ended up with Apple Photos. At least they "allow" me to have a local copy of my photo library unlike Google. So in any extremely unlikely case they nuke my account, I have my locals.
How did you manage to get a local copy of Apple Photos?
Their API seems not designed to be publicly used, and tools like pyicloud still have their issues with some types of media.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got and email about this few weeks back (I must have signed up to the list at some point) but I was put off by two things. > We've already preserved 100,000+ files, and are quite reliable at this point. "quite reliable" doesn't cut it for a paid service for me, even a new one. My second issue, and I might be wrong about this, is that there's no way to share photos with someone who isn't a (paying) ente user.
> "quite reliable" As an engineer, I shy away from using superlatives. But sorry, I now understand that this could have been phrased better. Thank you for pointing it out. > no way to share photos Correction, the receiver can be on the free plan.
I am guessing he is expecting to share pics with users who did not sign up. It maybe a one time thing.
But I think you need user logged in because of encryption.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#214Hey, over the last year we've been building ente[1], an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos. We have shipped open-source[2] web and mobile apps that have preserved 180,000+ files. Apart from cross-device sync, you can share your albums end-to-end encrypted, and filter photos by location and time. We recently had a "successful" launch on r/degoogle[3]. We wanted to Show HN after incorporating the feedbac…
This looks pretty neat, I wonder how I've been missing it so far. Do you have an public API? I'd love to have a tiny sync client to fetch photos and store them on my laptop.
The API is public, but the documentation needs work.
If your current use case is only to sync your uploaded files to a local folder, we have an Electron app that does just that: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/tag/v1.0.3
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#215Does anyone know of a solution with robust search? Google Photos limits what terms it will actually find - whether due to technical limitations, prudishness, or some combination of the two, I don't know, but as an artist who uses my personal archive as an alternative to Pinterest to store reference, it's very frustrating how limited it's become.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#216Hey, over the last year we've been building ente[1], an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos. We have shipped open-source[2] web and mobile apps that have preserved 180,000+ files. Apart from cross-device sync, you can share your albums end-to-end encrypted, and filter photos by location and time. We recently had a "successful" launch on r/degoogle[3]. We wanted to Show HN after incorporating the feedbac…
I got and email about this few weeks back (I must have signed up to the list at some point) but I was put off by two things. > We've already preserved 100,000+ files, and are quite reliable at this point. "quite reliable" doesn't cut it for a paid service for me, even a new one. My second issue, and I might be wrong about this, is that there's no way to share photos with someone who isn't a (paying) ente user.
I think this is a mismatch between UK English where "quite" means "extremely" and US English where "quite" means "mostly".
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#217If you're willing to self-host, Photoprism[0] is pretty nice and easy to get up and running. It has the flavor of Google Photos, but it's definitely a step down in UX. One of the features I really love about Google Photos is the ability to jump quickly through time. Like if I'm looking for a photo I took around June 2018, I can get to it in I didn't realize what a magical feature it is until I tried looking for it wi…
>Like if I'm looking for a photo I took around June 2018, I can get to it in Not only that, you can search for a photo of a light bulb you know you took, but don't know when, but simply typing "light bulb".
PhotoPrism does this too.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Haven't you all learned by now that you are the product if it is free. So when I'm running the Linux kernel, or compiling with gcc, or editing with vim, I'm the product? Could you explain to me how exactly? Sorry but that sentence is completely stupid.
It's valid when speaking about a service. None of those are. Services have operating costs, if you are not paying it means someone else is and your data and attention is very likely part of the package.
> Services have operating costs
So does ordinary, non-service software (like mentioned, Linux, gcc or vim). Hosting of their websites, mailing lists, CI, time of developers... they all cost very real money. And yet, somehow these programs don't track you and sell your data.
I don't mind paid services, but I don't think they should get a free pass for being unethical just because they run on someone else computer, under a different label.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "quite reliable" As an engineer, I shy away from using superlatives. But sorry, I now understand that this could have been phrased better. Thank you for pointing it out. > no way to share photos Correction, the receiver can be on the free plan.
I am guessing he is expecting to share pics with users who did not sign up. It maybe a one time thing. But I think you need user logged in because of encryption.
That’s right.
We could generate public URLs that contain the decryption key of the album within the URL fragment. But as an encrypted storage provider, we would like to ship this only after we're reasonably confident that there are checks in place to prevent abuse.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "quite reliable" As an engineer, I shy away from using superlatives. But sorry, I now understand that this could have been phrased better. Thank you for pointing it out. > no way to share photos Correction, the receiver can be on the free plan.
I am guessing he is expecting to share pics with users who did not sign up. It maybe a one time thing. But I think you need user logged in because of encryption.
ente looks interesting to me, but I would like to have the feature to share an album with anyone who has the link. I guess that is not so easy to do though as it would require creating a decrypted copy of the photos in the album that you wish to share which would take extra time and space.