26 votes

ente.io as a Google Photos alternative?

Posted by fazit (edited )
Tags: privacy, google.photos, ask.advice, ente io

I've been in the lengthy process of degoogling myself. Email is done, Calendars are done, drive is more or less done (but now at MS, so... yeah) - but a real sticking point is Google Photos.

I just love looking up places and faces and the occasional "This day one year ago" albums really lighten up my day.

Additionally, I am a bit of a hoarder, I never ever throw out photos, so I have right now 101 GB of pictures since 2012. This will be a pain to migrate so I only want to do it once.

I tried Immich, but could not make it work on my NUC with a very limited connection to the Internet and probably because of the vast number of images.

I came across ente.io, and it looks promising. While 4.99€ per Month for 200gb isn't exactly cheap, it feels still okay for hosting all of my visual memories.

But before committing, I would like to get some more feedback on this service, what is nice and what is not so nice and why you feel comfortable with entrusting them with your pictures.

Edit
After the very helpful answers in this thread, I signed up for a 200 GB plan, downloaded all my pictures from google and I'm currently in the process of uploading them to ente. This takes a bit longer than I thought, but then again, these are 45.000 pictures and live-pictures.
So far, this feels pretty slick. Thanks for the feedback here.

31 comments

  1. [10]
    unknown user
    Link
    Ente is great. I've been using it since March. It has all the features I wanted to use on Google Photos but never did because of privacy implications (face recognition and tagging, location maps,...
    • Exemplary

    Ente is great. I've been using it since March. It has all the features I wanted to use on Google Photos but never did because of privacy implications (face recognition and tagging, location maps, "magic" image recognition search, "on this day" memories, etc). All the machine learning and analysis of your photos is done locally on your device. And as others have mentioned, it's open source and self-hostable, so if that's a route you want to go, you can.

    I occasionally have issues when bulk uploading huge files (multi-GB videos) but I've never encountered problems with the routine syncing between my phone, PC, tablet, and their servers. Any time I've run into trouble (twice total), their staff were very responsive, both on Discord and at the support email address. I do get slightly tech-bro-y vibes from the company sometimes, but it seems like they take their work, and privacy in particular, seriously.

    Regarding compatibility: I use Ente on a new-ish laptop running Linux Mint (the Flatpak), GrapheneOS, and Samsung's flavor of Android. All works great. It's available on F-droid too so you can completely cut Google out of the loop.

    I'm not usually this guy, but if you want my referral code for extra storage, let me know. I very much don't need it (I'm currently using 55/200GB) but it sounds like you might.

    I'm happy to answer any questions you have! Love to see more people ditching Google.

    15 votes
    1. [9]
      fazit
      Link Parent
      Finally, a user! Thanks for your insights! I have several questions but don't expect you to know all the answers :D Did you use Google Takeout or something similiar to import your previous...

      Finally, a user!

      Thanks for your insights!

      I have several questions but don't expect you to know all the answers :D

      • Did you use Google Takeout or something similiar to import your previous pictures? If so, how successful was the import process w.r.t. respecting albums, metadata like GPS locations etc.?
      • Was there ever a significant downtime?
      • It sounds like you use the mirroring between your computer, the phone and the cloud. How does this handle deletion? Can you delete old media from your phone but have it still in ente and on your hard drive?
      • Is the problem with bulk uploads only for huge files or for lots of files? I don't have any huge files, but as I said, I have lots of them.
      • What was the trouble in your case?

      And I will happily use your referral code if it also works with the Kagi 25% :)

      4 votes
      1. [5]
        unknown user
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Google Takeout: Yep, this is what I did. It worked flawlessly except for the larger videos (see final bullet). As far as I'm aware all metadata made the transition. If I go to the "your map"...
        • Exemplary
        • Google Takeout: Yep, this is what I did. It worked flawlessly except for the larger videos (see final bullet). As far as I'm aware all metadata made the transition. If I go to the "your map" screen, it shows memories from every location I can think of, definitely including those from before I was using Ente. As far as respecting albums, I do remember that something was a little odd, but IIRC it was that Takeout created extra albums out of groups of uncategorized photos (like by year or something), so not an Ente issue. Metadata like date and time are both easy to edit (there's items for them in the standard long-press/info menus), and you can even do it in bulk.
        • Downtime: Never that I'm aware of in the ~6 months I've been using it. After a very quick search in the Discord, the only mention of downtime I found is an apology from 2022.
        • Mirroring deletion: When deleting anything, Ente makes it very clear which copy(ies) you'll be deleting. If an item is only in the cloud, it's a simple "yes, delete this" dialog. If it's in the cloud and on the device you're using, you get a "Some items are in both Ente and your device." message, and are offered options to "Delete from Ente", "Delete from device", or "Delete from both". There's a trash can you can retrieve items from if you ever accidentally delete something.
        • Bulk uploads don't seem to be an issue, it was specifically the massive files that tripped it up (see final/next bullet).
        • I have a bunch of videos from grad school that are 10-30+ minutes long, and those are what caused some problems. During my initial bulk upload (~4.4k items total) the desktop app repeatedly stalled out when it hit the huge .mp4s, even crashing a few times. I did eventually get everything uploaded, but the videos took some extra work. Images were totally fine. I can DM you the full description of the issue that I sent to support back in March if you want. I also just this week had another issue with uploading big videos, but it was much, much less of a roadblock and I got around it in about 10 minutes. I haven't had any crashes on any platform since the initial upload in March.

        Other comments:

        • Sharing is very good. I haven't had the opportunity to share items with other Ente users (family's still on Google Photos), but the external sharing works great. You can obviously share individual files just like anything else, but they also offer a few ways to share albums with people who don't use Ente. It generates a public link for the album, and then there's options to keep it as read-only or allow people to add photos to it.
        • Family plans: Again, not actually using this, but the terms seem very reasonable. I believe the way it works is you simply invite other accounts (up to five) to share your storage space. It keeps each person's stuff separate of course, you just share a plan.
        • Legacy: Includes an option to set up a trusted contact(s) who can access your account if you depart this mortal plane.
        • Supports MFA and all that good stuff.
        • Good duplicate/similar/related item detection for cleaning out space.
        • Like I said, I never used the face tagging in Google Photos, so I guess I don't really have much to compare to, but the face recognition in Ente has impressed me. It's obviously not 100% perfect (I've been amused at its mistakes several times), but there were cases where I was very surprised it not only detected a face but also labeled it correctly. You can turn this off if you're not comfortable with it, but it looks like it's just a global "use machine learning" or "don't".

        My understanding of the Kagi discount is that you just need a paid Ente plan, right? Referral code should work just fine, I'd think (definitely confirm that though). Here you go: AUN3SI.

        Let me know if there's any other info you'd like!

        4 votes
        1. [2]
          kaffo
          Link Parent
          I've had a look at this since this thread has been going on and it's impressed me so far with an upload up to the 10gb free limit. I'll give your referral code a go tomorrow and see what it's like...

          I've had a look at this since this thread has been going on and it's impressed me so far with an upload up to the 10gb free limit.
          I'll give your referral code a go tomorrow and see what it's like with my full image set. Plus it would be great for my partner who's photo collection is a mess.

          Thanks for the detailed feedback by the way!

          2 votes
          1. unknown user
            Link Parent
            Of course, I enjoy talking about this stuff and helping people out. I only stopped writing where I did because it was getting too long and I was probably starting to sound like a shill lol. No...

            Of course, I enjoy talking about this stuff and helping people out. I only stopped writing where I did because it was getting too long and I was probably starting to sound like a shill lol. No company is perfect or deserving of blind loyalty.

            1 vote
        2. [2]
          fazit
          Link Parent
          Alright, thanks to your answers I just signed up for one year and 200gb. I could use your referral and also the Kagi Code, so that all went smoothly. Now: Let's download all these takeout images...

          Alright, thanks to your answers I just signed up for one year and 200gb.
          I could use your referral and also the Kagi Code, so that all went smoothly.

          Now: Let's download all these takeout images and upload them again... not looking forward to it on my 50mb/s jittery upload line. :/

          Uuuh, and I just saw that I can use my own domain for referring to the pictures. I love that!

          1 vote
          1. unknown user
            Link Parent
            I think 50mb/s up is better than I what I get lol. Not really jittery here though. Let me know how it goes! RE: metadata mention in another comment: I'm pretty sure Ente accounts for the fact that...

            I think 50mb/s up is better than I what I get lol. Not really jittery here though. Let me know how it goes!

            RE: metadata mention in another comment: I'm pretty sure Ente accounts for the fact that Takeout gives the metadata to you separately in a JSON. I don't remember having to do anything special to deal with it. AFAIK you just dump the whole (unzipped) folder(s) into Ente and they take care of the rest.

      2. winnietherpooh
        Link Parent
        Also an Ente user that switched due to degoogling. Not sure I can answer all your questions as I'm fairly minimalist when it comes to photos (currently only using 2GB and ~1.5k photos), but happy...

        Also an Ente user that switched due to degoogling. Not sure I can answer all your questions as I'm fairly minimalist when it comes to photos (currently only using 2GB and ~1.5k photos), but happy to give my personal anecdotes on the few questions I can answer!

        Did you use Google Takeout or something similiar to import your previous pictures? If so, how successful was the import process w.r.t. respecting albums, metadata like GPS locations etc.?

        • I used Google Takeout, and all albums were imported correctly. I tend to scrub EXIF data for privacy, but glancing at a few photos shared from my partner, it looks like all that metadata saved correctly as well.

        Was there ever a significant downtime?

        • Not that I've noticed! But I don't look at my photos super frequently. UX has generally been solid all around on both web browser and on Android running /e/OS. I'm generally pleased with the switch, and happy with the encryption and ability to share album links on rare occasion.
        4 votes
      3. [2]
        fxgn
        Link Parent
        Somewhat unrelated, because I don't use Ente, and it probably has some automatic import functionality that handles this. But I don't use any cloud photo storage, I just back them up to my laptop...

        Did you use Google Takeout or something similiar to import your previous pictures? If so, how successful was the import process w.r.t. respecting albums, metadata like GPS locations etc.?

        Somewhat unrelated, because I don't use Ente, and it probably has some automatic import functionality that handles this. But I don't use any cloud photo storage, I just back them up to my laptop with Syncthing, so I didn't have that. Google Photos export doesn't download photos directly with the metadata, it stores all the metadata in separate json files alongside the photos. I didn't want to manually figure it out so I used Claude to write a script to process all of that into proper EXIF metadata, but it took a few attempts because the json files are named very annoyingly and don't always exactly match the names of the image files they're related to

        1 vote
        1. fazit
          Link Parent
          Yeah I saw that while importing my Google Keep Files in Obisidian - very annoying. You just reminded me of an item on my to-do list - clean up this mess from importing and assign proper tags like...

          Yeah I saw that while importing my Google Keep Files in Obisidian - very annoying.

          You just reminded me of an item on my to-do list - clean up this mess from importing and assign proper tags like creation date etc.

  2. [4]
    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    It looks to be "proper" open-source, so you could always self-host it: https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/

    While 4.99€ per Month for 200gb isn't exactly cheap, it feels still okay for hosting all of my visual memories.

    It looks to be "proper" open-source, so you could always self-host it:
    https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/

    4 votes
    1. [3]
      fazit
      Link Parent
      Yeah, I tried selfhosting with Immich and wasn't convinced, but I guess that was also my fault. My only "VPS" is a NUC on my home internet connection, which I access via Tailscale. I felt that the...

      Yeah, I tried selfhosting with Immich and wasn't convinced, but I guess that was also my fault.

      My only "VPS" is a NUC on my home internet connection, which I access via Tailscale. I felt that the syncing had too many problems in this setup. I don't think that ente.io would be better or easier to selfhost, which is why I am looking to pay somebody to do it.

      1 vote
      1. cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Fair enough. I don't self-host much either. It's often way more maintenance than I want to deal with, especially since the overall time spent doing that quickly adds up the more services you...

        Fair enough. I don't self-host much either. It's often way more maintenance than I want to deal with, especially since the overall time spent doing that quickly adds up the more services you self-host. And I also usually end up tinkering with things for far longer than I should too, which takes time away from other, more important things I should probably be doing instead. :P

        3 votes
      2. puhtahtoe
        Link Parent
        FYI, if your only issue with Immich was the self hosting part there are other options. There are services that you can pay to spin up a private instance of Immich and many other typically self...

        FYI, if your only issue with Immich was the self hosting part there are other options.

        There are services that you can pay to spin up a private instance of Immich and many other typically self hosted projects. I haven't tried any of them myself so I can't give any recommendations but in one of Immich's recent releases they announced a one click deploy option at Digital Ocean
        https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/immich

        You should be aware though that Immich is not yet considered stable. Personally I'm holding off on fully relying on it until they go stable. According to their roadmap that should be sometime in 2025.

        2 votes
  3. [2]
    skybrian
    Link
    I hadn’t paid attention to Ente before, but from a casual browse through the documentation, it looks quite nice. They talk a good game. Apparently Ente lets you backup and continuously sync your...

    I hadn’t paid attention to Ente before, but from a casual browse through the documentation, it looks quite nice. They talk a good game. Apparently Ente lets you backup and continuously sync your photo collection to your own computer, which is a feature I’ve always wanted.

    Servers are at three locations in Europe. An address in Delaware is listed as company headquarters, but is anyone there? Apparently there are physical offices in India and the Netherlands, and nearly everyone on the team looks Indian. According to this article, the CEO used to work at Google. The company is bootstrapped (no VC funding).

    4 votes
    1. fazit
      Link Parent
      Thanks for doing my due diligence ;D Too bad that no one here is an actual user, though. I thought of all the online communities I am involved in, tildes would be the one where somebody actually...

      Thanks for doing my due diligence ;D

      Too bad that no one here is an actual user, though. I thought of all the online communities I am involved in, tildes would be the one where somebody actually uses this kind of niche service.

      I guess I'll bite the bullet and try it, then.

      I hadn’t paid attention to Ente before

      What got me interested, actually, is that they have a deal with Kagi, the ad-free search engine. Every user of Kagi gets 25% off of the first year subscription.

      Edit: Aaah, they have a subreddit. I'll read that and check if it has any obvious astroturfing o rother red flags... /r/enteio

      3 votes
  4. [6]
    trim
    (edited )
    Link
    I host a NextCloud instance on a VPS. NextCloud app on the phone handles auto upload of all my photos and there's a photos add on for NextCloud that does what you want for photo memories, check...

    I host a NextCloud instance on a VPS. NextCloud app on the phone handles auto upload of all my photos and there's a photos add on for NextCloud that does what you want for photo memories, check out the 'Memories' add on for NextCloud.

    It's of course where I also host all my contacts, to-do, calendar and other files.

    I didn't want to leave one cloud provider not under my control, for another also not under my control

    The fact you could self host it changes the dynamic though. If you like the page and the integration then why not? You've not much to lose apart from your valuable time in setting up a vps (or self) hosted version of this.

    I wouldn't pay them to host it though. At least if you get your own vps or self host, you can back it up, I don't think that's going to be so easy if you pay them to host it. Note that they talk about 'back up' in their docs, but they think that /they/ are the back up for /your/ photos, where as I take a cloud first approach, so my photos cloud is my /main/ place for photos, and I have to back /it/ up, IYSWIM

    3 votes
    1. [5]
      fazit
      Link Parent
      Apparently, ente.io is also E2E encrypted. I signed up and they gave me a recovery phrase to unlock my pictures vault if I ever lose access. So that looks solid. I tried hosting nextcloud on my...

      Apparently, ente.io is also E2E encrypted. I signed up and they gave me a recovery phrase to unlock my pictures vault if I ever lose access. So that looks solid.

      I tried hosting nextcloud on my NUC, but I also found the sync to be troublesome. Then again that was a few years ago, so maybe things have improved to be usable?

      1 vote
      1. F13
        Link Parent
        I definitely have had sync issues in the past with Nextcloud, but for a couple years now it's been pretty solid. The most common issues I encountered were related to Android changing permissions,...

        I definitely have had sync issues in the past with Nextcloud, but for a couple years now it's been pretty solid. The most common issues I encountered were related to Android changing permissions, and there being no way for the app to notify users about that change if the app wasn't opened.

        I swapped to an F-droid installation on my Android devices since.

        2 votes
      2. [3]
        trim
        Link Parent
        I've not had any Nextcloud sync issues, from the auto photo upload on Android or iOS, nor from the generic files part on those platforms, plus on Linux and macOS. Never tried it on Windows. There...

        I've not had any Nextcloud sync issues, from the auto photo upload on Android or iOS, nor from the generic files part on those platforms, plus on Linux and macOS. Never tried it on Windows. There are lots of configurations out there though, and endless use cases.

        1 vote
        1. [2]
          Eji1700
          Link Parent
          I find this to often be the problem. I'm looking at getting nextcloud set up on my server, but having messed around with a few things now, it's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot or not...

          There are lots of configurations out there though, and endless use cases.

          I find this to often be the problem. I'm looking at getting nextcloud set up on my server, but having messed around with a few things now, it's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot or not notice some setting that you didn't know you needed.

          Can't say if that's actually the case for nextcloud as I hadn't really gotten it fully up, but i'm also not sure it's an answer to OP's issues.

          1 vote
          1. trim
            Link Parent
            No. But the fact that I use the Photos and Memories add on for it made it worth mentioning I think, as it sounds like they were the features they wanted. Plus, you could pay for nextcloud as a...

            No. But the fact that I use the Photos and Memories add on for it made it worth mentioning I think, as it sounds like they were the features they wanted.

            Plus, you could pay for nextcloud as a service, or use a VPS like me, or self host. It has a lot of options, and does way more than just the photos.

            Anyway, I quite like OPs photo solution and I may have ended up using it myself (if I'd known about it) if I didn't also have lots of other services I wanted to migrate.

            1 vote
  5. [5]
    chocobean
    (edited )
    Link
    I've been using SmugMug but looking to transfer. Their folder structure was annoying enough I never fully migrated away from Google. Anyone used both ente.io and SmugMug can offer comparison?...

    I've been using SmugMug but looking to transfer. Their folder structure was annoying enough I never fully migrated away from Google.

    Anyone used both ente.io and SmugMug can offer comparison?

    Edit: additional question, does it matter where this company is based (India) when it comes to privacy?

    2 votes
    1. [2]
      unknown user
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      It's unclear to me, but I think the answer is "no, because they're not based in India anymore." It's also probably not that simple because their storage is in the EU and their HQ is in the US....

      does it matter where this company is based (India) when it comes to privacy?

      It's unclear to me, but I think the answer is "no, because they're not based in India anymore." It's also probably not that simple because their storage is in the EU and their HQ is in the US.

      Some quotes from their documents:

      Storage Locations

      (...) our current basket of replicas contains the following 3 (2 hot, 1 cold) copies:

      • Backblaze, Amsterdam. Our primary hot storage.
      • Wasabi, Frankfurt. Our secondary hot storage.
      • Scaleway, Paris. Our cold storage. (...)

      Source: "Reliability and Replication"

      Legal stuff and areas of jurisdiction
      1. TERRITORIAL RESTRICTION
        Our Services are available for use and download globally. If you are a resident of the United States ("US"), the laws of the State of Delaware, United States shall apply. (...)
      1. FOR OUR EUROPEAN CUSTOMERS AND VISITORS

      • a. International Data Transfers:
        We are headquartered in United States of America. Our servers or our third-party hosting services partners are located in Europe. (...) As applicable, we require that our Partners, affiliates, and subsidiaries sign data processing agreements and/or agree to the European Union's model contract for the transfer of personal data to third countries (also known as the "EU Standard Contractual Clauses," of June 4, 2021) to ensure adequate protection of your personal data. (...)

      • b. Your Rights:
        We agree to fully comply with the letter and the spirit of the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). (...)

      1. FOR OUR CANADIAN USERS
        This Section supplements the information contained in our Privacy Policy above and applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who use or access our Services, who reside in Canada ("consumers" or "you"). (...)

      Source: "Privacy Policy"

      "India" appears nowhere in the privacy policy. So I think it depends on how things are handled in the US (HQ location) and the EU (data location)?

      1 vote
    2. [2]
      fazit
      Link Parent
      But isn't this irrelevant with their End to End Encryption? Or do I not understand this concept correctly? I thought all my images are safe from their eyes?

      But isn't this irrelevant with their End to End Encryption? Or do I not understand this concept correctly? I thought all my images are safe from their eyes?

      1 vote
      1. unknown user
        Link Parent
        Yeah, I almost mentioned that in my reply to chocobean - as I understand it, E2EE means that even if they're legally compelled, they can't hand over anything besides useless blobs of encrypted...

        Yeah, I almost mentioned that in my reply to chocobean - as I understand it, E2EE means that even if they're legally compelled, they can't hand over anything besides useless blobs of encrypted nonsense, because that's all they have access to. But I'm far from an expert on that topic so there could be something I'm missing.

  6. [4]
    vord
    Link
    I'm going to copy/paste an older post of mine, because I'm still on the hunt. Any suggestions are welcome. There's a plethora of online photo libraries out there, but from the ones I've test...

    I'm going to copy/paste an older post of mine, because I'm still on the hunt. Any suggestions are welcome.

    There's a plethora of online photo libraries out there, but from the ones I've test drove, they're lacking in the ability to quickly do super basic editing.

    I don't really care about advanced editing, but I want a web-based open source photo library with:

    • A basic authentication to prevent abuse, though I guess I could throw behind a proxy
    • A mobile CSS
    • Seamless backup of edited photos
    • Tagging
    • Metadata editor
    • Ability to rotate and crop
    • Easily prune the library
    • Easily share individual photos/folders/albums with or without metadata
    • Doesn't even need file upload capabilities, because the photo dumping is done via other tools.
    1 vote
    1. [3]
      unknown user
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      To perhaps save you time on your hunt, I looked into some of these features RE: Ente. It checks most of the boxes, but not all of them. YES - Has a web client YES - Open source YES - Auth (if...

      To perhaps save you time on your hunt, I looked into some of these features RE: Ente. It checks most of the boxes, but not all of them.

      • YES - Has a web client
      • YES - Open source
      • YES - Auth (if you're just referring to logging in with a password + MFA)
      • YES - Has a mobile-compatible browser client (tested only in Firefox)
      • YES - Auto-backup (not sure what your specific needs are on this though)
      • LIMITED - Tagging1
      • LIMITED - Metadata editor (name, date, and time, not sure if you need more than that)
      • YES - Rotate and crop (no fine tuning rotation at the moment, just 90 degree adjustments)
      • LIMITED - Easy pruning (you can examine "duplicates", "similar", and "related" items in any of the apps, but this appears to be limited to just duplicates in the mobile browser)
      • LIMITED - Easy share (Sharing is great but there is no option to do so without metadata)2

      1You can add both file names and descriptions and then search by strings contained in those. So not proper tagging but I think you can achieve most of the same things? I don't need that personally so I can't confirm that it would be sufficient for you.
      2You can view all EXIF data, but there does not appear to be a way to strip it or edit it (aside from the attributes mentioned above). However, there is this GitHub discussion created by the founder, along with a comment suggesting that functionality. It's two years old, so take from it what you will.

      So I'd say it depends on how important each of those factors is to you. If they're all must-haves, then I'd say Ente is not the answer for you yet.

      3 votes
      1. [2]
        vord
        Link Parent
        Looks like I'll have to take this for a test drive. Thanks!

        Looks like I'll have to take this for a test drive. Thanks!

        1 vote
        1. unknown user
          Link Parent
          No problem. Hopefully I interpreted all of your needs the way you meant them lol.

          No problem. Hopefully I interpreted all of your needs the way you meant them lol.

          1 vote