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Looking to store your media privately? Explore five top self-hosted photo and video gallery solutions for full control and customization.

Are you tired of storing your photos in the cloud only to have the cloud provider change the deal and ask you to pray they don’t alter it further? Have you looked at all the photos on your hard drive or phone and thought, “Well, I have them. I just want easier ways to share and store them?” Self-hosting is for you.

Here are five self-hosted photo storage options for you to consider.

SEE: The definition of open source can be controversial, with some commercial models claiming the title.

NextCloud

This open-source project offers a mobile app and auto-upload feature. You can also use it as the host for other photo management apps. Plus, it can host non-photos like documents, calendars, and contacts.

Nextcloud offers collaboration tools and file hosting. Screenshot: Megan Crouse / TechRepublic

Photoprism

This open-source app uses Google TensorFlow to automatically classify images. It extracts location data, detects duplicates, and can sync with Nextcloud.

Photoprism offers smartphone-like smart search on an independent platform. Screenshot: Megan Crouse /TechRepublic

Piwigo

This open-source photo gallery software offers geolookup and multi-user support. Its album features are great, including batch management, album hierarchies, and more. It also has a mobile app.

Piwigo is suitable for organizations and features admin tools and accounts for individuals. Screenshot: Megan Crouse / TechRepublic

Lychee

This open-source photo gallery app has excellent album and metadata-editing features. But, of course, its gallery features are where it does its best work. Just be aware that it doesn’t have any machine learning for auto-detection.

Find Lychee on GitHub and run it on a private server. Screenshot: Megan Crouse / TechRepublic

LibrePhotos

Like most tools named Libre, LibrePhotos is a fork. In this case, it’s a fork of OwnPhotos that enables object detection, face training, and event-based album generation. LibrePhotos also integrates with NextCloud.

LibrePhotos can be installed using Docker. Screenshot: Megan Crouse / TechRepublic

Self-hosted photo storage provides albums, sharing, and automatic facial recognition — all the tools you’d get from that cloud provider that suddenly wants to charge you while still gathering your data for its ad targeting. If you have the space on your computer or server, you can self-host your own photos in no time.

What is a self-hosted photo and video gallery?

A self-hosted photo and video gallery allows users to store and share media on their own hardware or virtual server. It provides an alternative to smartphone photo apps or social media.

What are the system requirements for hosting my photo gallery?

Different self-hosted photo galleries have different requirements. Most services will have documentation available.

Nextcloud, for instance, offers cloud hosting as part of some of its plans. Photo hosting generally doesn’t require a lot of RAM — PhotoPrism can be installed on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM. LibrePhotos requires 10 GB of HDD Space to operate through Docker Compose.

Megan Crouse updated this article.

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