Hey, Ente's CEO here.
We had opensourced our server[1] yesterday, which is perhaps why we are on the front page. Stoked to be here
Ente had launched on HN[2] a while ago and has been sustainably growing since.
We took the feedback from our Show HN seriously and have since
- undergone a cryptography audit [3]
- published our replication strategy [4]
- added requested features (family plans, collaborative albums and links, ...) [5][6][7]
- made progress with Edge ML [8][9]
- built a CLI for incremental data exports (our desktop app supports this as well) [10]
- and in general matured as a company [11]
Also, apart from our source code, our Figma[12] is public as well.
If you've feedback on what we could do better, please do share, it'd be very helpful.
And if you've any questions, do ask, I'd love to make myself useful.
[1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439
[3]: https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/
[4]: https://ente.io/reliability
[5]: https://ente.io/blog/family-plans
[6]: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/
[7]: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/
[8]: https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/
[9]: https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/
[10]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli
[11]: https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/
[12]: https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visua...
Do you provide an easy migration from google photos with full quality? The instructions in the FAQ are a bit vague. Last time I heard about this, Google takeout won’t let you download the full quality images.
Google Takeout downloads the images in full quality.
But it splits your metadata (like capture time, geo coordinates) and places them in a separate sidecar file.
This isn't an issue if you're migrating to Ente because during import the desktop app[1] will merge the metadata with their respective files.
If it's for you to keep a local copy, you will unfortunately need to write some scripts. There's in fact a paid product[2] that does just this.
[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop
[2]: https://metadatafixer.com/
That’s good to hear. Do you forsee the 2tb plan getting cheaper in the future?
Not unless our existing providers provide a volume discount, or we start managing some of the infrastructure (1/3 replicas) ourselves.
The latter is very likely in the long run.
I hope you will grow and start running your infrastructure. It seems that you have a strong technical team. Just curious, did you take any funding so far?
Friends and founders ("angels"), no VC.
Is it possible to use this import tool for my own local files without an Ente subscription? Because I have that metadata issue with Google Photos, but unfortunately I don't have the programming skills to write a script.
Not right now, sorry!
There's this tool that can fix capture times: https://github.com/mattwilson1024/google-photos-exif
There are perhaps more that I'm unaware of.
I'll check out this, thanks!
no, takeout gives you the full quality. All other ways of accessing your photos from the api (there is some github projects) don't give you the full quality images though.
But with takeout the problem is that all dates and metadata gets messed up. I had to learn this the hard way. There is some tools that somehow correct the dates. But it's not perfect and I wouldn't really want my photos to be locked up like that. What if google decides to discontinue Google Takeout? Or just give you lower quality pictures after some point? You really are not safe.
Since that experience I moved to onedrive temporarily because it's a bit safer solution for now until all of these new services get stable (immich, ente, etc). Onedrive let's you access you photos like normal Onedrive files so that's really good. I know microsoft will have my data now and sync is also not perfect. So it's definitely not perfect. But I had to move to something else before the better solutions emerge.
Takeout fails if you have too many files. I had to takeout few albums at a time which is a PITA.
OneDrive ceased to be a good backup alternative when they stripped GPS from all my photos 1-2 years ago. Unlike Google, there's no way to recover original files. They simply destroyed them.
This is scary. Isn't OneDrive supposed to keep files bit-identical? Or were you using their iOS/Android apps to back up photos, and some bug caused the photos to be backed up without their metadata?
Isn't Takeout their GDPR compliance tool? I don't see them ever removing it. Only exporting lower quality pictures at some point down the road is a valid concern, though.
Takeout is malicious compliance.
Google Photos already has a public API. But you cannot consume it if you are building a competing service[1]. Also, the APIs will not serve you files in their original quality.
If they wanted to honor the intent behind GDPR's portability mandate, it would have been trivial for them to enable seamless migrations.
Now what's ironic is how Google is a "partner" in the Data Transfer Initiative[2].
[1]: https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/acceptab...
[2]: https://dtinit.org
I have the exact same metadata issue after exporting from Google Photos. Would you mind to share which tools you used to fix it?
This is awesome to see, congratulations from the Immich team on building an amazing app!
Thank you! We're fans of Immich!
Question:
Do you backup changed photos in iOS?
How do you backup a slow motion video on iOS? Synology exports, meaning your 240fps video becomes a 30fps video.
Immich retains the 240fps.
Yes, we do backup updated photos.
Just tested out a slow-motion video on iOS, we unfortunately don't retain the transformation.
On the brighter side of things, it's just a transformation. We are retaining the original file as is. So will look into how Immich is handling this format. Thanks for bringing this up!
Oh no. If you keep the 240fps video, that is what a backup is. Which is what I want.
How it's played is not a concern of the backup tool. It is a concern of the player.
Synology exports. So I record something at 240fps, and then the file uploaded is 30fps. That's not a backup.
It's like when you backup a photoshop PSD. You want a backup of the PSD, not a flattened PNG.
To double check, I just recorded a slow-motion video, downloaded it from Ente to my desktop, ran `ffmpeg -i FILE.MOV`, and the stream info says:
```
Stream #0:0[0x1](und): Video: hevc (Main) (hvc1 / 0x31637668), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1920x1080, 78644 kb/s, 239.70 fps, 240 tbr, 2400 tbn (default)
```
Yea. That's correct.
I think it would be cool for the player to recognize a 240fps video and allow it to play slow mo. But again, that's a client responsibly.
Hey, a fellow mallu, just wanted to send my appreciation on the product. It literally looks great, my kudos to your illustrator and FE developers. Best wishes!
Why do you have to say this? Why say mallu instead of saying a fellow Indian?
Cause both of them are from the state of Kerala?
I don't think it's malicious. It's just mallucious :)
Thank you for your kind words, will forward them :)
Tangential, is this intended to be pronounced like "എന്റെ", judging by your HN handle? Stoked to run into a fellow mallu founder of a consumer product. A huge fan of how the product/business is being run.
എന്റെ.അയ്യോ to be exact. :D (എന്റെ means mine, and അയ്യോ is a word used to express surprise). I remember the Show HN and I'm glad to see them grow.
deva.me being already taken, I guess.
Thank you!
I've scribbled a bit about the story behind the name and the mascot here: https://ente.io/blog/ducky/
Unrelated but there’s a retired Warcraft 3 pro called Ente:
https://liquipedia.net/warcraft/EnTe
I suspect that every pronounceable combination of four Latin letters, and a number of unpronounceable ones, has been used as a moniker in the past, often multiple times.
Quick note: your website front page currently says
I think you probably mean "reputable", as "reputed" inspires a lot less confidence.
Fixed, thank you for pointing this out!
Do you have an import from smugmug? I have been a smugmug user for about 19 years and finally thinking of moving on...
Not yet, but you should be able to drag-and-drop the data on your disk into Ente's desktop app[1].
Please note that if you're primarily using SmugMug to store RAW files, their support (in terms of previewing capabilities) is limited right now. It's on our roadmap, and we will prioritize it, but just wanted to give you a heads up.
[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop
This looks great - thank you so much for opening up the server too!
About auth, I'm not sure the claim in the readme is entirely correct:
Surely bitwarden existed and had 2fa support two years ago? Granted it's not only an authenticator app...
Ed:[I guess 2fa is/was a pay-only feature, so only source-available? ]
Looks like auth is a great dedicated 2fa app by the way, surprised I've not come across it before.
The primary issue with Bitwarden is that your passwords and 2FA tokens are stored at the same place, essentially nullifying the second factor.
Also, the feature to store 2FA tokens is only available on Bitwarden's paid plan, while with Ente it's free.
IMHO your marketing (incl. the title of this HN post) should more heavily emphasize that this has a native mobile app available in App Stores, that talks to this self-hosted server. There are many other private photo-hosting systems, but most of them are web-only — very few have a good, comfortable native mobile UI that you'd actually want to use!
See also: the directory https://github.com/relink2013/Awesome-Self-hosting-for-the-w..., that collects "self-hostable services with native mobile app clients." This project should be on there! (Right now, the only entries in the Photos category are two [closed-source!] Synology offerings, and one other app that's not E2E-encrypted. You're better than these — go claim your crown.)
This is exciting, I've been looking/hoping for something like this for a while but all the options I've come across so far were lackluster. I have just tried setting it up with the iOS and Windows apps, I do not see an option to point it to a self-hosted server at all, am I missing something?
sorry for the eye sore, if someone can split the bullet points into multiple lines, please do, I'm unable to edit my comment
Congratulations!!
Always good to see some one from this side making to the front page of HN!!