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Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative

vishnumohandas
43 replies
9h17m

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...

kosolam
14 replies
7h47m

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.

vishnumohandas
7 replies
7h15m

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/

kosolam
3 replies
6h7m

That’s good to hear. Do you forsee the 2tb plan getting cheaper in the future?

vishnumohandas
2 replies
6h3m

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.

kosolam
1 replies
5h57m

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?

vishnumohandas
0 replies
5h54m

Friends and founders ("angels"), no VC.

anneessens
2 replies
2h27m

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.

anneessens
0 replies
1h59m

I'll check out this, thanks!

hruzgar
5 replies
7h8m

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.

marwis
1 replies
3h1m

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.

ValentineC
0 replies
23m

OneDrive ceased to be a good backup alternative when they stripped GPS from all my photos 1-2 years ago.

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?

addandsubtract
1 replies
6h35m

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.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
6h17m

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

anneessens
0 replies
2h40m

I have the exact same metadata issue after exporting from Google Photos. Would you mind to share which tools you used to fix it?

bo0tzz
6 replies
9h2m

This is awesome to see, congratulations from the Immich team on building an amazing app!

vishnumohandas
5 replies
8h53m

Thank you! We're fans of Immich!

WirelessGigabit
4 replies
3h20m

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.

vishnumohandas
3 replies
2h49m

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!

WirelessGigabit
2 replies
1h39m

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.

vishnumohandas
1 replies
1h35m

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)

```

WirelessGigabit
0 replies
1h24m

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.

aarjithn
4 replies
4h48m

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!

throwaway44lk
2 replies
3h56m

Why do you have to say this? Why say mallu instead of saying a fellow Indian?

rdedev
0 replies
3h0m

Cause both of them are from the state of Kerala?

ganeshkrishnan
0 replies
1h5m

I don't think it's malicious. It's just mallucious :)

vishnumohandas
0 replies
4h13m

Thank you for your kind words, will forward them :)

keerthiko
3 replies
8h43m

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.

random_ind_dude
1 replies
5h27m

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.

aptwebapps
0 replies
4h20m

deva.me being already taken, I guess.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
8h40m

Thank you!

I've scribbled a bit about the story behind the name and the mascot here: https://ente.io/blog/ducky/

nine_k
0 replies
14m

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.

vvanpo
1 replies
8h37m

Quick note: your website front page currently says

Our open source code has been audited by reputed cryptographers.

I think you probably mean "reputable", as "reputed" inspires a lot less confidence.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
8h33m

Fixed, thank you for pointing this out!

raj2569
1 replies
2h42m

Do you have an import from smugmug? I have been a smugmug user for about 19 years and finally thinking of moving on...

vishnumohandas
0 replies
2h7m

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

e12e
1 replies
48m

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:

Two years ago, while building Ente Photos, we realized that there was no open source end-to-end encrypted authenticator app.

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.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
38m

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.

derefr
1 replies
1h30m

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.)

ENadyr
0 replies
18m

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?

vishnumohandas
0 replies
5h56m

sorry for the eye sore, if someone can split the bullet points into multiple lines, please do, I'm unable to edit my comment

raj2569
0 replies
2h47m

Congratulations!!

Always good to see some one from this side making to the front page of HN!!

robertwt7
22 replies
9h45m

The best decision for me is still to buy synology and store everything locally on Synology photos. No subscription, expandable storage, and full privacy. It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway

flakeoil
15 replies
9h16m

It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway

I think many people forget about this. They pay for a monthly or yearly cloud storage subscription, but forget they have to pay this amount every year for the rest of their lifes if they want to keep their data. That's why I also use a Synology disk. I also have an additional lifetime subscription at a cloud storage provider (which pays back within 3.5 years). Sure they can disappear after say 10 years, but at least I have the Synology and I got a much better deal during those 10 years and can look for something else.

Another thing, don't upload all pics you take immediately, only sync after you have cleaned out all the bad photos and near duplicates.

yau8edq12i
14 replies
9h7m

To be fair, the underlying storage of the synology won't last forever. A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. You also need to pay for the electricity necessary to keep your server running 24/7, if you want a service level equivalent to a cloud storage service. All this adds up. The scales will probably stay in favor of the self-hosting options, but you have to take all this into account for a fair comparison.

diggan
7 replies
8h16m

A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know.

It's unlikely that people are using SSDs for the main storage on a NAS though, commonly just used for smaller parts (think metadata in ZFS-land for example), not for the main storage. Precisely for that reason.

yau8edq12i
6 replies
6h8m

Hard drives last even less, what is even your point? I don't understand. Do you suggest they store their photos on magnetic tape or what?

diggan
4 replies
4h53m

My point is regarding writes specifically. A HDD can typically survive longer than a SSD if they were both to receive the same amount of writes over time.

SSDs use flash memory cells, which have a limited amount of writes you can do to them before they start to fail. Compared to magnetic disks in HDDs that don't have a finite lifetime of writes.

If you are mostly reading data, then no worries, probably won't affect you. But NASs typically gets a lot of writes, so you want something more durable than SSDs (in terms of writes).

yau8edq12i
3 replies
3h47m

How often do you move or delete your backed up photos?

diggan
2 replies
3h32m

Or add to your collection. Depends on how many people you are who use the same NAS and how many photos you take.

Sure, if you upload 10 photos a week and never do any other reads, go with a SSD for all I care, it'll last long enough.

yau8edq12i
1 replies
2h0m

If you don't move or delete old photos, all new photos will be written to a new cell. The writes add up for cells, not for the whole SSD...

meatmanek
0 replies
1h23m

Modern SSD controllers should be doing wear-leveling such that you don't need to worry about this.

jeffreygoesto
0 replies
5h20m

The ones in my QNAP lasted at least 12 years. I replaced it just recently. The only durable storages are acid free paper and microfiche afaik. And you need a controlled climate.

darkwater
4 replies
6h55m

A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know.

Solution: a RAID system with 5 reliable disks and you replace 2 of them every 5th year, and the other 3 in the following 4 years.

vitus
2 replies
3h42m

This works great, until you have coordinated failures, e.g. due to a firmware bug that's dependent on the uptime of the disk (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031243).

RAID is only useful as long as you don't suffer more simultaneous disk failures than you've provisioned for (where "simultaneous" is dependent on your time-to-repair, since if it takes you a week to replace a dead drive, then two failures in the same week are indistinguishable from two failures in the same minute, in that you've lost the entire array).

darkwater
1 replies
3h14m

That's why I suggested replacing at most 2 disks at the same time. But you could just one extra year and replace all of them one by one. Or you can just use some dumb & cheap storage backend (in the cloud) as an extra backup layer, which you can easily replace at any moment if costs go wild or it goes bankrupt, without having to change the user experience.

vitus
0 replies
1h4m

Right. It's possible to stagger your replacements so as to avoid bad batches, or even to buy from different vendors for additional diversity (although for SSDs you have much more divergent performance characteristics), but when you're talking about rotating disks one at a time that's a lot of non-negligible overhead.

Depending on how much data you have to archive and frequency of access, it may very well be worth the cost to entirely offload opex and capex to cloud storage.

AWS Glacier Deep Archive in us-east-1 is $1/TB/month (GCP and Azure offer comparable pricing for archival storage). If you have 5x 4TB SSDs that, say, run you $200 each, and you run RS(5,3) then you're storing 12TB of data for $1000 of capex for 5-10 years. Meanwhile AWS would set you back $144/year, so the breakeven on capex alone would be if you would normally rotate your disks every 7 years.

yau8edq12i
0 replies
1h59m

You expect this to be cheaper and/or easier than cloud hosting?

stavros
0 replies
8h46m

Plus time spent upgrading, every so often.

sen
3 replies
9h3m

Yeah I tried all sorts of photo services and ended up going for a Synology. You can pick them up very cheap in sales and don’t need the fastest drives or the latest CPUs if you’re only doing photo stuff and not transcoding HTPC media. With RAID and offsite backups it’s a solid and cheap (over time) system, and I don’t have to worry about some service getting bought out or shutting down.

deanc
2 replies
5h51m

Sales. This must be an American thing. Have never seen any decent discounts on them here in Europe.

brnt
1 replies
3h35m

In the Netherlands we have them all the time too. Also on Synologys.

deanc
0 replies
2h46m

Don't think I've ever seen Synology on sale in Finland in the last 15 years. I have been looking fairly regularly on amazon.de too.

joking
0 replies
7h30m

It’s what I have, the only drawback I have is that if you want to free space on your device (at least on iOS) you have to delete photos and those are not available through the image picker in iOS anymore. It’s really a fault from iOS not having the option to select a image manager different from iOS photo app.

I actually have 2 backups, google photos low quality backup, and the synology one.

huijzer
0 replies
7h54m

It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway

Have you taken depreciation into account in that calculation? Compute, memory, and storage are still getting cheaper each year due to manufacturing improvements.

mavamaarten
12 replies
9h26m

I'm really happy with immich. It's amazing how well everything works and how feature-complete it is given how relatively young the project is and fast-moving development is going. I self-host an instance and do a nightly backup with duplicati to cloud storage.

The only downside for me is that there's a new release almost every couple of days, with a message that the backend is out of date. Which is both a pro and a con, but for me it's anxiety inducing because there's breaking changes sometimes and you can't just auto-update. A pace like Home Assistant feels more comfortable.

sanex
4 replies
4h59m

Been running immich for a while but haven't dropped my Google photos just to make sure I can manage immich and not lose everything. Updated from 1.8.something to 1.9something which includes a big db rework and lost all my user accounts. I imagine the photos are still in there somewhere but i haven't dug in yet so they're effectively gone. Lost a lot of trust for me with that even though it was probably my fault.

nirav72
1 replies
4h32m

I keep seeing immich mentioned a lot in selfhosting community. Is there a mobile app that can connect to the selfhosted backend server?

cmrdporcupine
0 replies
3h59m

yes. And even an Android TV app in dev, too.

I self-host on my own local server on my LAN (an RK3588 ARM SoC board running in a cigar box...) and expose it to the app via Tailscale when I'm out and about. Works great

Though I still back up to Google Photos as well

raudette
0 replies
4h51m

This one got me too - check out: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/5907

Running REINDEX TABLE USERS; on the DB solved the issue for me.

Immich is definitely fast moving - it is awesome, but has been a challenge to keep it current.

patmorgan23
0 replies
4h35m

Yeah I think immich recommends keeping a separate archive for anything you care about.

js4ever
1 replies
5h31m

I can confirm there is a breaking change literally every single week, check here: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/7405#discus...

It's a great software but I would not recommend it at all because of this and the answer from the authors about the issue

Jnr
0 replies
2h35m

I have 600GB of data with 70K+ photos and videos in Immich.

I have been using it for some time now, and none of the "breaking changes" broke anything because they have excellent release notes.

Worst case - you can restore your postgre backup (which you make, right?) and try again, reading release notes. I make backups and I read release notes, luckily didn't need to do a restore yet.

ikari_pl
1 replies
7h19m

does it, by any chance, do search by any keywords and grouping the same face together, like Google Photos?

darkwater
0 replies
6h59m

Yes, it does. You can also search for terms like "pizza" or "beach with palms"

xrd
0 replies
7h59m

Me too. It is frustrating to see an update to the app and then have the app indicate it is out of date. But generally it still works, and upgrading the server has always been nothing more than changing the docker image tag and restarting. It's an incredible project.

dspillett
0 replies
8h34m

I've been looking at immich and seen similar concerns about the update regularity, but that is due to it being a relatively young project. That it has come so far quickly is a good sign, as long as the release cycle becomes slower and more regimented as it approaches a certain level of maturity.

BodyCulture
0 replies
7h17m

Manual action is needed for an update? Why not let the computer do this instead?

pants2
1 replies
17m

It's not clear from downloading the mobile app how one would point it to the self-hosted server.

I would gladly pay $10-20/mo for Ente apps to use my own backend. Unfortunately I have around 8TB of photos so paying for a storage plan is out of the question.

semiquaver
0 replies
5m

This is my question. I don’t actually see any statements from the company here or in the post that you can actually self-host and point the app at your server. The app dumps you in a mandatory sign-up flow with no server url setting possible.

It seems more likely this is only open source for audit/transparency purposes.

reacharavindh
9 replies
9h33m

Does it do background sync on iOS?. There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. “Leave the app open for it to sync”

Photos are the only reason I pay for the 2 TB plan on iCloud. I don’t need all the photos on device all the time. If I can _reliably_ stash them in remote servers and have a way to access them on-demand on the phone, I can take the money I give Apple and pay for the app that enables me. But only if I don’t have to remember to open the app every now and then and watch it sync my photos. It needs to be as easy to use as Apple Photos..

soziawa
5 replies
9h21m

There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap.

Apple doesn't allow background execution for third party apps. Can't increase service revenue if you allow competition.

qweqwe14
4 replies
9h3m

They don't "allow" it, but most apps that need background execution just ask permission for geolocation tracking and pretend to use it, for example iSH[1]. There are a few activities that the app can do to prevent itself from being suspended when it goes out of focus, like playing sound, geolocation etc.

[1] https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-54433...

stavros
3 replies
8h21m

And you're at the mercy of Apple deciding to remove your app for violation of the terms when it gets more popular. This is what the EU wants to fix with its new directives that level the anticompetitive playing field.

qweqwe14
2 replies
8h15m

Apple can remove your app for whatever reason anyway, pretty sure every single company has that clause buried in their ToS somewhere. It's not like they constantly exercise it, but it's more for "just in case we really want to"

stavros
0 replies
8h13m

Sure, but "they were abusing permissions to keep their app burning your battery" sounds a lot better for Apple than "it was competing with Photos too effectively".

RuggedPineapple
0 replies
7h55m

One of the big differences though is iOS apps can only be provided by Apple. If the google store policies restrict you, you're free to distribute the app yourself. There are well known examples of this. Telegram from the play store blocks adult content its aware of. They also distribute an APK on their website without that if you want it.

mcfedr
1 replies
9h13m

Apple is the reason.

They make it impossible to compete, their apps have permissions no one else can have.

sofixa
0 replies
3h4m

The EU is working on forcing their hand there via the Digital Services and Markets Acts.

mnvrth
0 replies
7h18m

Yes, the app does iOS background sync. Many of us (I'm part of the Ente team) are avid users and have a huge photo libraries, and day-to-day, it works seamlessly. We don't need to reopen for it to sync etc. The only time one needs special care is when doing the initial import - at that time, we sometimes need to keep the app running in the foreground for the initial sync to complete.

As the other commenters are mentioning though, this is all black magic at the mercy of Apple. The way we've evolved with our code works now, but who knows what future updates to iOS bring. One thing we've observed that it takes sometimes like say seven days for Apple's on device ML to pick up that the user really wants to use the app, and convince the OS to allow the app to run in the background to sync. But again, this is not something we've needed to worry about as _users_ - we just use it normally as we'd use Apple Photos, and it just works after the initial sync completes.

manmal
8 replies
10h31m

I’d be interested in reports from people who have used or are using Ente for self-hosting.

arendtio
3 replies
10h27m

I tried Ente a while ago but decided I liked a self-hosted Photoprism instance better.

vishnumohandas
2 replies
8h44m

Hey, are there any specific features in Photoprism that you liked better?

arendtio
1 replies
8h27m

It has been a while and Ente probably progressed too, but I remember that I looked multiple times at Ente.

However, one feature that I love about PhotoPrism is the performance. I have about 120.000 pictures on my Raspberry Pi and for the most part, the experience is flued (just try opening a picture and hold the right arrow key on your keyboard (just try it in the demo)). I have had local solutions that had problems with that amount of pictures and this one works via network. Other features like face recognition, automatic labels, or the map view are cool too.

Photoprism has a feature list [1] and a demo [2].

[1]: https://www.photoprism.app/features

[2]: https://try.photoprism.app/

vishnumohandas
0 replies
7h40m

Thank you for sharing the demo, it was simple to experience the product. This is a reminder for us to provide one as well :)

Ente now has everything except cross-platform face-recognition (it's desktop only right now), labels and EXIF edits. The first two are being worked on, we should have v1s ready by Q3. Polishing will take a bit longer.

The long-press-to-skim-through albums is very neat, will add this.

david_p
2 replies
10h27m

Same here.

I currently use photoprism, which is good, but i’m always on the look for a great self-hosted photo app.

manmal
0 replies
9h56m

I’m using Immich and it’s quite decent. The native app has some annoying glitches.

DirkH
0 replies
9h53m

The AI in photoprism was too embarrassing that I gave up on it. How did you get it working properly?

2Gkashmiri
8 replies
10h15m

I want a self hosted photo backup service for family that doesn't need 4gb ram.

I do not need heavy transcoding or stuff. Just a place for people to dump their photos on.

I have looked at some alternatives but they are all resource hungry from respective docs.

If pixelfed can run on php and limited resources , why not some google photos alternative?

Is there something lightweight that let's multiple people to share their photos together.

I have attempted to use pixelfed but that's stupid as it only let's 4 photos per post. Urrgh.

eklavya
2 replies
9h32m

What exactly would you want? Would you be willing to pay for it? How much?

2Gkashmiri
1 replies
6h49m

Set up a software on a vps that uses s3 backend.

People would upload, backup, share their photos and media.

Its not in a single place so I can't use local sync and stuff.

eklavya
0 replies
3h20m

Ok, the reason I asked is that I have been searching for a photos solution myself. I am not sure if it's a god idea to pursue and if there is actually a market for it. If there is, maybe not a bad idea to explore a bit.

bo0tzz
1 replies
9h2m

Immich is resource-hungry on the initial import, but should run on very little after that, especially if you make some tweaks like disabling ML and transcoding.

(disclosure, I'm one of the Immich maintainers)

2Gkashmiri
0 replies
3h53m

Uh... Will it be fine on a 1 GB ram 1 vcpu for basic stuff? I won't do a fat import, but one by one and staggered.

izacus
0 replies
9h59m

Grab a Synology NAS and run their Synology Photos software? It has almost all the features of Google Photos, self hosted and very little maintenance.

globular-toast
0 replies
10h5m

Syncthing? I just have my photos folder synced to my NAS.

jacques-noris
6 replies
10h29m

I’m looking exactly for something like that. But 2.99 Euro a month is too expensive, when even Apple only wants 99 cents.

davidodio
3 replies
9h34m

Honestly, everyone can do what they want with their money but working in tech and being on a site like this and seeing this comment makes me really sad

We all want cool things, secure, where our data is protected and we are not the product, but 3 euros a month is too much?

No wonder big tech gets bigger and the rich get richer. The silicon valley VC funded feifdoms become more entrenched and, in the end, we all suffer for it

jacques-noris
1 replies
6h0m

There are much cheaper alternatives to Ente. Filen.io, which is also E2E encrypted, for example costs 200 GB montly for 1.99 Euro. Its difficult to compete with iCloud if your service costs three times as much.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
4h42m

Filen is perhaps cheaper because they are storing lesser replicas. It is not financially feasible to provide 3 replicas at their price points, unless they're running their own storage infrastructure, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Now Ente could of course choose to keep lesser replicas and offer "lite" plans that are more affordable. But we would rather not complicate our pricing structure right now. Understanding buckets of GBs is hard enough, and adding tiers on top would worsen the experience for most.

All of that said, Filen does seem like a really cool project for storing files.

jdthedisciple
0 replies
7h51m

I agree.

Over a 10 year horizon, the difference between 1€/m and 3€/m is a mere 240€.

That's like 2-5 extra work hours over the course of 10 years!

I seriously don't get how someone working in tech would fear bankruptcy over this.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
9h9m

Hey, one of the reasons Ente is expensive is because we maintain 3 copies of your data across 3 clouds.

You can read about our replication strategy here: https://ente.io/reliability

We could in the future offer cheaper plans at the cost of additional replicas.

dietr1ch
0 replies
10h12m

Apple's cloud probably gets a better deal on their datacenter's costs and already charged you through your device and app store tax.

daeros
6 replies
8h49m

NAS is so damn expensive, I'm still planning on building a PLEX media server myself and using it was way. Those QNAP things pushing 2500 for the 4k transcode things it's like OK at that point I can build something myself that has way more of the features I'd want and have way more customizability.

Timber-6539
1 replies
8h23m

Pretty sure the Intel NUCS(now manufactured by ASUS)/other mini PCs with Intel chips can do 4k transcodes easy.

diggan
0 replies
8h18m

This. My 4K 10-bit HDR viewing is served from a Intel Celeron N4505 dual-core processor (2.0 GHz/2.9 GHz) + integrated GPU that is running TrueNAS and a bunch of other services + Jellyfin for the actual media.

Works perfectly fine.

notum
0 replies
8h48m

Buy a Mac Mini (older generations work well) for the actual transcoding, and use NAS as a, well, NAS.

layer8
0 replies
4h7m

The sensible thing is to separate NAS from transcoding. Use NAS only for storage, and solve your computational needs with a mini PC or even just a RasPi.

haunter
0 replies
8h45m

Yeah, I went with mini PCs myself. Have a Lenovo M720 Tiny and a Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro (they are virtually almost the same). You can change parts, there are ample ports available and you can pretty much run any OS you want. In the Dell you can even put 3 storage drives (1x 2.5" and 2x M2) so perfect for an SSD NAS.

brnt
0 replies
3h34m

NAS's aren't expensive, 4K@10bit is.

adithyassekhar
6 replies
6h26m

Why is local on device ml a pro when compared to google photos? Part of the value for photos for me is the fact that they do all the ml work ahead of time on their servers and not my tiny battery powered gadget. I can open it in on any device and search any photo instantly.

lakpan
5 replies
6h23m

You plug your phone in at night, so it probably has 7 hours a day to do that work.

iOS does the same. They cannot do it on the server because they don’t have access to them.

adithyassekhar
4 replies
6h7m

I am aware of the why, it's claimed to be e2e. But then it shouldn't be touted as a "pro" when compared to Google Photos which the site's home page is asking me to do. Hence the question.

As for iOS, Apple controls the whole stack. Whatever ML they do, they do it only on devices capable of that level of ML.

I can buy the cheapest android I can find with a 10 year old mediatek processor and search for pictures of my dog and it'll show it. There is a value to doing the heavy things on a heavy hitting server.

vishnumohandas
2 replies
5h58m

Hey, one of the folks building Ente here.

We have to pick our battles, and we currently aren't looking at serving customers on low-end devices. But if they access Ente on a laptop, the indexing will run there, and the computed indexes will sync to their low-end devices, e2ee.

Also, given that compute on smart phones is getting better and cheaper with every iteration, we believe it's best to bet on Edge ML for the long term.

adithyassekhar
1 replies
5h18m

Thanks for clarifying; you guys have built something amazing and also made it open source, which you didn't have to. Please don't take my comments as an attack or as demotivating.

I wanted to share my view as a regular person, sadly for whom absolute privacy is a feature and not a necessity, which I think is the vast majority.

Good luck; hope you guys figure this out.

A fellow Malayali :)

vishnumohandas
0 replies
5h15m

Comments were taken in the best of spirits :)

We do get your perspective. Privacy does not outweigh convenience for vast majority. We are hoping to find the balance.

lakpan
0 replies
5h21m

when compared to Google Photos

You’re comparing apples to oranges. Google Photos is not E2E. Explain how you can do ML without having the key. Either you hand them the key or you don’t.

Of course they mention it as an alternative to Google and Apple Photos, but that doesn’t imply that they have 100% of the feature set of each.

prmoustache
5 replies
6h21m

I don't think this service is End-to-End encrypted the way we would like to think it is. If you can share pictures with friends by just giving them a link to a page, the server app has the encryption keys too.

icar
2 replies
6h18m

The link contains the needed keys. It's explained in their FAQ.

thisgoodlife
1 replies
6h7m

If the link contains the keys, does that mean the server can also see these keys?

jeltz
0 replies
6h2m

Nope, the secret is in the url fragment. Of course this means you need to trust that they do not change the JS code so that it steaks your keys.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
6h16m

Hey, details on how we're providing E2EE with links has been documented here: https://ente.io/blog/building-shareable-links/

Some bits of the blog post are outdated, since the feature has matured since then. But the implementation details are roughly the same.

TL;DR: The keys are added to the URL fragment (the part that follows the #), and these fragments are not accessible to the server.

upofadown
0 replies
5h59m

I think a better term for what is happening here is "client side encryption". That reduces the chances of getting things confused with messaging, which is a different sort of a problem.

This at least has a user accessible cryptographic identity, so end to end secure key exchange is possible. So if you really wanted to call it end to end encrypted, it would be legitimate to do so. I suspect that the motivation here is still mostly marketing driven.

danlugo92
4 replies
10h38m

Great now I just need Google's export/data migration feature to actually work.

roozbeh18
2 replies
10h18m

use google takeout.

VladimirGolovin
1 replies
8h28m

I'd guess that the emphasis in OP's reply was on 'actually work'.

akkartik
0 replies
3h3m

In case it's useful, here's the solution that worked for me the last time I tried it:

1. Takeout to Google Drive :grimace:

2. rclone from Google Drive

But I do this around once a year, and the last few times there are new roadblocks every time.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
9h11m

Hey, you can use Ente's desktop app[1] to import the archives you export via Google Takeout. The app stitches together metadata with their original files so you'll have your library in one-piece.

[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop

contrarian1234
4 replies
3h14m

I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers.

Out of curiosity I checked Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage

9 USD per month gives you 2TB storage (vs. 500GB here)

I don't really get what justifies the 4x price (some of the features look like what you can get from a Gallery app like Aves) So it's looking kinda DOA to me.

The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule. If Dropbox goes rogue and you need to switch providers.. that doesn't seem like a big deal? It's nice here that you can in theory selfhost and keep using it.. but that doesn't seem like "a big win" either. Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host

EDIT: There is a comparison: https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/

It seems like the added feature boils down to automatically encrypting files. With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price

Sayrus
1 replies
2h43m

I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers.

Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host

Which is why they are offering a managed service as well. Even people with the technical skills are not always inclined to selfhost.

With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price

Privacy is for criminals and storing CSAM, right? Why would you even want Dropbox at this point, Google Drive is all you need. Unless you wanted to help diagnose your child[1] and unfortunately the photo was synchronized to Drive and flagged.

You have every right to expect your photos to stay private. Even if those are just a landscape. Why should you be obligated to have an AI scan them for offending content or scan them to detect who you met and when (surely so they can build a yearly recap for you, how kind!)? Did you ever get consent from everyone on your photos for this sharing and processing?

You may not be interested in E2EE or open source, and that's absolutely fine. But you shouldn't actively undermine it by associating encryption and privacy with crimes.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-cs...

contrarian1234
0 replies
2h24m

You're getting butthurt about stuff that's not relevant. The point is the encryption is: 1 - trivial to layer yourself 2 - not a viable business model

You just need to look at Signal. It's at the same price ($0) as its competition (not 4x). And messages you can't really encryption yourself. It's still struggling to get a market foothold.

Yeah, it'd be great to have Google/Dropbox/etc with privacy. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. But you also have to pay the bills and feed your babies. This isn't a charity. Maybe I'm missing something, but this product make no sense in the market. They can't even match the market prices. They're toast

sofixa
0 replies
3h6m

Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host

And that's probably better for them, because it's much easier to lose data from your own NAS than it is for a cloud storage provider to do so.

lewiscollard
0 replies
1h20m

The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule.

This seems like a lack of imagination, which is not to be confused with any deficiency of the software or its business model. As for me, I think this completely rules.

Aeolun
4 replies
10h38m

Interesting I’d never even heard of this before. I was fairly certain I’d seen all the common open source solutions, but apparently not.

infogulch
3 replies
10h29m

It seems to have been open sourced very recently.

jpeeler
1 replies
5h49m

Do said clients have the ability to specify a custom endpoint? Obviously with the clients being open source a rebuild can fix that, but hoping that's not required.

tjoff
3 replies
4h23m

New to me, looks nice. But I'm a bit perplexed by the lack of functionality regarding group access.

You typically want to have a place for your family to manage your photos. A completely separate one for friends etc. Yet I don't see that usecase represented in software such like this (thinking of apps such as Immich, Ente seems quite similar). Managing your own photos is rather trivial in comparison, just need to sync your folder and 90% of the functionality is done.

And that is before the usecase of collaborating between participants on a trip. Or letting guests upload pictures for an event (such as a wedding). Such a hassle.

From the site: "Sync your library with your partner, and even designate them as an heir to your account." Nice, but not exactly it.

"Can I share my subscription with family and friends? You can add up to 5 family members and share your available storage space with them at no extra cost. Each member will get their own private space, and can only access their own photos."

Almost like it goes out of their way to not support this. Seems like such low-hanging fruit. I get that storage costs could become an issue, but in a self-hosting scenario that is not a problem.

tjoff
1 replies
4h5m

That is great :) I will look into it, from a first glance collaboration seems to only be on a per album basis? Can you have nested albums?

For a group of friends / family you'd probably want many tens of albums tracking different trips/events etc.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
3h57m

We don't support nested albums, yet.

Thanks for sharing your use case, will figure out how to best solve for it.

(Right now a "stream" of photos within a feed sounds like simpler UX than nested-albums, but will think more)

therealmarv
3 replies
7h38m

Ente Auth https://auth.ente.io/ was my go to choice for migrating from Authy. It supports importing and exporting (so no dead end unlike Authy) and I can see the second factor on my desktop without reaching my phone (through Ente Auth website).

I've exported from a rooted phone from Authy->Aegis->Ente Auth.

I have no need for their main product but they are building amazing software!

dabeeeenster
1 replies
7h12m

oooh this is interesting - I'd like to self host this...

ffpip
0 replies
1h21m

It is e2ee, so using their server would be the same (unless you are hosting just cuz you want to :) )

physicles
0 replies
6h30m

Thanks, this looks fantastic. I just installed the mobile app and will be migrating off Authy as well. Don’t have a lot of faith in Authy’s longevity after they discontinued the desktop apps, and the dead end is an issue too.

melicerte
3 replies
6h35m

Ente verification code email is considered dangerous by Google mail.

"Similar messages were used to steal people's personal information. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information."

So you know

vishnumohandas
2 replies
6h29m

We've spend time debugging this and talking to our service provider's[1] support, but haven't been able to figure out the root cause.

If there are any experts reading this, we'd be grateful if you could let us know what we're doing wrong here.

We're in the middle of switching over to SES because they are landing flawlessly into Gmail inboxes, but it would still be good to understand what we could have done better.

[1]: https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail

acejam
1 replies
3h53m

The problem is your service provider, Zoho. Zoho is used by a massive amount of spammers. As a result, many email blocking and verification services will flag any MX records that lead back to Zoho.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
3h41m

Thanks for the information. This is sad if true. In my limited experience Zoho been an honest business to deal with.

SillyUsername
3 replies
10h7m

End to end encrypted AND encrypted at rest? Otherwise all the staff can see your photos too...

shawnz
1 replies
9h49m

End to end encrypted implies encrypted at rest. Maybe you're thinking they meant "encrypted in transit"?

SillyUsername
0 replies
6h37m

I did, thanks.

franky47
2 replies
10h39m

Their local approach to ML is to be praised, I just wish we had different terms for Edge (cloud servers running close to users) vs Edge (end user devices).

rmnclmnt
0 replies
9h43m

Hey Franky47, glad to see our latest discussion still on-going on the edge semantics!

Jack5500
2 replies
10h17m

This looks great and the self hosting instructions are fine too. But I think the Apps don‘t support using your own server yet, right?

Faizan711
2 replies
6h30m

Isn't the pricing a bit on the upper side, It could have been lower like similar to google one

vishnumohandas
0 replies
6h6m

Google has ways to monetize your data. If I were them, I would be attaching a price tag to cloud storage simply to not seem suspicious :)

Most of our costs come from keeping 3 replicas of your data: https://ente.io/reliability

We could perhaps reduce the replicas from 3 (2 hot, 1 cold) to 2 (1 hot, 1 cold), and lower our costs, but it's not something we've actively thought about.

Also, our prices are designed such that the business can run sustainably, and we believe that's the best way to build Ente, where the expectation is for the company to outlive its customers.

teekert
0 replies
6h26m

You mean where part is paid for with your data? ;) (sorry low hanging fruit)

stockhorn
1 replies
5h23m

I gave the webapp and android app a quick test. It looks nice, but it is still not as smooth as google photos or similar. E.g. the photos are not preloaded fully and I still need to wait a few milliseconds to get a photo fully rendered. (Also there is some white flickering when swiping through the photos on android)

I wonder how the big players do it. Of course they have a lot more manpower, but maybe the also have some clever caching/rendering lib..?

Kudos for doing this and opensourcing everything. I really appreciate this and I might stick around.

vishnumohandas
0 replies
4h19m

Thanks for checking us out!

We currently keep 2 versions of a photo - one the original, and the other a downscaled copy to be rendered as the thumbnail.

Unlike non-e2ee providers, we cannot transcode and serve optimised images on the fly, when it's faster to downscale than serve the original image over network.

What we could do is

1. Intelligently preload original photos when their thumbnails are in scope

2. Store an extra version of the photo, whose resolution is between that of the thumbnail and the original, and perform #1 over those

Sorry about the flicker, will fix it.

sagz
1 replies
2h1m

Hi, your plans are capped at 2TB ($200/yr). Any chance to get higher tiers? Looking for 15tb...

vishnumohandas
0 replies
1h4m

Sorry, we don't support use cases above 6TB right now. This is an arbitrary limitation, it is just that we haven't figured out a sensible price point for larger tiers.

firstrowraver
1 replies
47m

Registration does not work with Hide My Email (input fields stay empty)

vishnumohandas
0 replies
37m

That's odd, thanks for the report, will look into this!

bobek
1 replies
10h26m

Uh, never came across them. Though Immich and damselfly were the only really usable.

ValentineC
1 replies
1h59m

The sad thing about seeing new hosted photo services (like what we see when we click into the linked Ente site) is how I think they'll eventually fail the same way Picturelife did [1], or how they'll eventually get acquired, and their services/features nerfed by the whims of their new overlord.

I guess it's a good thing Ente might become a viable self-hosted option in the future. I haven't tried the hosted service, but a metadata export guarantee could be huge in attracting paying users for which this is a concern.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12587656/picturelife-shut...

vishnumohandas
0 replies
1h41m

I believe that we can build an incredibly profitable business by serving photos well. SmugMug has proven this. But their audience is Pro while ours is consumers. ARPU and TAM are different for both, but I think the product will favor us (once we are about more than just e2ee).

That said, I understand your concern.

Open-sourcing the server was a step towards ensuring posterity. Pricing ourself sustainably from day #1 was another. We'll have to do a lot more work on this front over the next few decades and eventually find someone aligned with our ethos to pass the baton to.

I find this to be a very interesting problem to work on :)

whatscooking
0 replies
40m

Prices are way too high compared to competitors

ulrischa
0 replies
7h47m

Price is too high

terseryedu
0 replies
7h47m

I typically self-host but I'm happy to outsource if the service is end-to-end encrypted and has no lock-in.

Now that Ente has open source server, and incremental backup, I'm in!

etesync is the other service I'm happy to pay for.

rishikeshs
0 replies
38m

Does the name signify ‘Ente’/‘എന്റെ’ - my in Malayalam language?

quicon
0 replies
4h3m

I'm a customer of Ente since more than a year ago. I transferred my 30K photos from Google Photos without a problem. Very happy with this product. While some functionalities where missing at the beginning (powerful editor, sharing, collaborating, search) the Mobile and desktop apps have improved a lot, and continue to do so. Today, I do not miss Google Photos.

pppoe
0 replies
3h2m

This looks great. I have been using self hosted next cloud for a while and it is pretty slow in loading image thumbnails under a large folder. I am curious about Ente’s performance.

pierrelf
0 replies
8h54m

How does this compare to Nextcloud photos? Looking forward to running this at home in the future :)

pard68
0 replies
2h30m

I had ente for about a year. Does what the label says, but then Proton Drive released support for auto backup of pictures and I switched since pay for Proton and have a few terabytes of space with them.

j1nd4L
0 replies
3h4m

I have been using it for last 1 year. I have been amazed by the fast pace of the development, not many features lacking now compared to Google Photos despite being E2E.

Kudos on the Ente team!!

hum3hum3
0 replies
9h11m

I have just been working with photoprism. Ente looks nice but going to stay with photoprism as I like the go binary and can build features I want.

eurekin
0 replies
4h2m

Does it handle iPhone hdr photos?

esafak
0 replies
2h28m

I think you would find more success, and ultimately serve your mission better, if you leaned on qualities other than privacy, which consumers unfortunately don't value as much as we might like.

albertzeyer
0 replies
6h55m

Hm, maybe I make too much photos/videos, but my current collection already has more than 2TB, and 20$/month/2TB seems a bit too high.

Btw, in contrast, Google has 100$/year/2TB, so a bit less. (https://one.google.com/about/plans)

However, I am lucky that almost all my photos/videos at Google Photos were either uploaded when it was still not counted towards the storage (and that did not change for the previously uploaded media) or made with some older Pixel phone, where photos/videos in high quality were also not counted, i.e. unlimited storage. My current phone is a Pixel 5, which still has this feature, but it's unfortunately the last Pixel phone where they had this, and support of this phone ended September 2023.

I'm not sure what to do when I cannot use this phone anymore. Change my habit to make less photos/videos? Or just self-host. I could maybe also filter the media a bit, but I'm somewhat too lazy to do that, and I hope that some AI could maybe anyway do this automatically for me, and I don't really like to delete things, even if they seem maybe not so great quality right now, but it seems like they still might have some value, and storage is cheap.

EchoReflection
0 replies
50m

i have been using Ente for a few years now and totally love/recommend it

Daviey
0 replies
9h16m

I'm looking forward to trying our the self-hosted option, but I will say the transparency they've provided to their reliability model for hosted is awesome.

https://ente.io/reliability/

Compare this to the approach of CSP's, their model is mostly around "trust me bro", and even on enterprise/commercial terms the transparency they provide is poor. I would love to see this sort of transparency by service providers in the future.