Google Photos Alternatives

Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Photos

Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.

What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.

In this series we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions.

Google Photos AlternativesGoogle Photos lets you store your images in the cloud for convenient access from anywhere. Undeniably, the service offers lots of useful tools, but it’s difficult to shake the sinking feeling that Google is analysing your pictures.

What do we recommend if you have any privacy concerns regarding your pictures?


1. PhotoPrism

PhotoPrism is an AI-powered photos app for the decentralized web. It uses modern technologies to tag and find pictures. The software can be run at home, on a private server, or in the cloud.

One of the most interesting features of PhotoPrism is its AI-powered facial recognition. This lets you find pictures of your family and friends without any fuss or bother.

Searching pictures with PhotoPrism
Click image for full size

2. Piwgo

Piwigo is another sublime gallery software for the web. You can add photos with the web form, any FTP client or a desktop application like digiKam, Shotwell, Lightroom or mobile applications. The software is designed for organisations, teams and individuals. Source code is available, editable, auditable and extendable thanks to plugins and themes.

Piwigo offers a good range of features includes albums hierarchy, batch management, permissions control which let you make your photos private and decide who can see each of them.

Piwigo
Click image for full size

3. Immich

Immich is a self-hosted photo storage and sharing service with backup functionality. If you don’t want your photos firmly under someone else’s control, you might like Immich. The software makes your media accessible for all your devices including mobile devices.

Immich is jam-packed with useful functionality such as optional machine-learning features to enhance search results. Like PhotoPrism, Immich also recognizes faces in your photos and videos and groups them together. You can then assign names to the faces and search for them.

Gallery of images in Immich
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4. Photoview

Photoview is a simple and user-friendly photo gallery that’s made for photographers and aims to provide an easy and fast way to navigate directories, with thousands of high-resolution photos.

You configure Photoview to look for photos and videos within a directory on your file system. The scanner automatically picks up your media and start to generate thumbnail images to make browsing super fast.

Photoview in action
Click image for full size

5. LibrePhotos

LibrePhotos keeps all your photos and metadata on your local machine. Your data is never sent to or stored on a 3rd party server. Get the same power as those commercial services without giving up your personal data and privacy.

It uses ImageMagick for image conversion, FFmpeg for video conversion, ExifTool for EXIF support, and face_recognition for face detection. The software also uses scikit, im2txt, places365, and Mapbox.

LibrePhotos
Click image for full size

For other alternatives, we’ve covered the best open source web photo gallery solutions.


All articles in this series:

Alternatives to Google's Products and Services
Google AnalyticsAnalytics is a platform for both website and mobile app analytics. This hosted web analytics software remains the mostly widely used analytics service.
Google CalendarCalendar helps manage your busy life with a digital calendar. It offers tons of features and makes it easy to keep track of life’s important events all in one place.
Google ChatChat is communication software which provides direct messages and team chat rooms, together with a group messaging function.
Google ChromeChrome is application software for accessing the World Wide Web. It's the most popular web browser but has a chequered track record from a privacy perspective.
Google ClassroomClassroom is a learning platform for educational institutions that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The main aim of the platform is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students.
Google Contacts iconContacts is a contact management service. It's available on the sidebar of Gmail, a web app, and for Android.
Google DNSDNS resolves a particular domain name to its IP equivalent. There are many free DNS providers. A few stand out from the crowd.
Google DocsDocs is a web-based productivity office suite. The suite includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google Keep.
Google DrawingsDrawings is diagramming software included as part of the web-based Google Docs Editors suite. Create and edit flowcharts, organizational charts, website wireframes, mind maps, concept maps, and more.
Google DriveDrive is a file storage and synchronization service. Want a solution that also includes the online office components available in Google Docs?
Google Earth ProEarth Pro maps Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS. Fly anywhere to see satellite imagery, 3D buildings, 3D trees, terrain, Street View, planets and much more.
Google FinanceFinance is a website focusing on business news and financial information. It provides real-time market quotes, international exchanges, financial news, and analytics.
Google FirebaseFirebase is a platform for creating mobile and web applications. It's currently their flagship offering for app development providing an all-in-one cloud service.
Fonts is a computer font and web font service. It offers font families and an interactive web directory for browsing the library.
Google FormsForms is a survey administration software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite.
GboardGboard is a virtual keyboard app developed for Android and iOS devices. It features Google Search and predictive answers.
Google MailGmail is a hugely popular email service. You might not like the automated scanning of email content.
Groups is a service that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. Part of the service is similar to mailing lists.
JamboardJamboard is a digital interactive whiteboard developed to work with Google Workspace. Sketch your ideas whiteboard-style while benefiting from the access and connectivity of an interactive canvas, on mobile or directly from your web browser.
Google KeepKeep is a note-taking service. The app offers a variety of tools for taking notes, including text, lists, images, and audio.
Google MapsMaps is a web mapping service offering satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, and interactive panoramic views.
Google MeetMeet is a video-communication service. It offers enterprise-grade video conferencing built on Google’s global infrastructure.
News is a news aggregator service. It offers a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines.
Google SearchPassword Manager is a password manager built into Chrome and Android devices. It's published under a proprietary license with little information about security used.
Google PhotosPhotos stores your images in the cloud for convenient access from anywhere. Lots of useful tools, but it’s difficult to shake the sinking feeling that Google is analysing your pictures.
Google SearchSearch looks at privacy-focused alternatives to Google Search. If you believe that Google invades your privacy, what alternatives do we recommend?
Google SheetsSheets is a spreadsheet program included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite.
Google SitesSites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool. Build internal project hubs, team sites, public-facing websites, and more—all without designer, programmer, or IT help.
Google SlidesSlides lets you create pitch decks, project presentations, training modules, and more. It's part of the Google Docs Editors suite.
Google TranslateTranslate is a multilingual neural machine translation service that translates text and websites from one language into another.
Google YouTubeYouTube is an online video sharing and social media platform. It's a hugely popular service but has encountered a number of privacy issues.
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