Immich is a self-hosted photo system that feels close to Google Photos: phone apps, automatic backup, albums, and on-server face and object search. You run the server. The machine learning runs there, not at a vendor, which means the server has to be allowed to see the photos. That is the opposite of Ente.
Development is fast. Read the release notes before you update a family archive on a Friday. Face recognition wants RAM or a GPU. If the disk is not backed up, Immich is a nice viewer on top of one copy. Put the photo store on a disk that Borg or Restic also copies somewhere else.
Use it when you want the Google Photos features and you accept that the server can see the pictures. immich.app
Immich’s machine learning container is optional and heavy. You can back up photos without face recognition if the server is small. Put the upload folder on a disk with space, and exclude that disk from being the only copy. The mobile app should be told which albums to skip, or it will upload screenshots and every meme. Read the upgrade notes. A fast project breaks more often than a boring one, and your photos are not the place to learn that at random.
