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Finding a private self hosted Google Photos alternative that doesn’t profit from my photos
(alternativeto.net)
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Anyone with Nextcloud Memories setup? I've read it's the only one that still respects a sane files and folders setup, whereas the other options basically force you to forever use their database-based system and files are terribly organized, so you are forced to use their interface.
I use Nextcloud Memories for uploading folders to quickly share to relatives. Love it, very straightforward for them to use.
I also host Immich but unlike Memories not exposed, local only. I set Immich up because we found we never looked at our photos when they were just stored on a hard drive but we look at them much more now theyre easily accessible. I spent months slowly retrospectively tagging & adding geo locations to our photos in order to utilise the powerful search capability of Immich. I use the template option & set it up to match the folder structure of our photos.
I'm using Kopia to back up the entire Immich directory including the nightly Immich-db dumps & ive also moved a backup of the backup to another drive, currently somewhere in the region of about 80+GB.
Yeah. It integrates so cleanly with nextcloud and also means I don't have to pay for a second service just for photos so that's nice
In immich you can also get the files organized in folders. I have it year > month > day. You can create templates for how you want to organize it.
Immich has a "storage templates" section which allows you to choose a folder structure that it will use to store the files in.
Or go the other way and include your folders as external libraries.
"external library" is the way
This is my preferred solution.
Since I would recommend everyone 3-2-1. I have both a good structured photobackup AND immich.
What do you use for 3-2-1? I try, so far I have my phone, backed up to a server HDD via SMB (Too poor for RAID-1 atm), and the very important stuff sent to a USB drive and returned to a drawer. Am I doing it right haha
Couple of considerations for you.
Is it a backup or a sync? Sync will sync your deletes and corrupted data.
It's ideal that you have your USB offsite.
I use restic and have a repo on a USB and a repo on AWS S3
I have it and immich set up. Nextcloud memories is fine, but for me the auto upload would randomly stop at some points. Overall ux with immich is better, but memories gets the job done.
I use FolderSync to push my photos to Nextcloud. Much more reliable than their app
Does that automatically add it to the database or do you have a scan schedule?
I don't use Memories, but yes, uploading photos with FolderSync to Nextcloud (via WebDAV) does add them to the Nextcloud database. They show up as new photos in the recent activities list.
Ah, that makes sense. Didn't realize FolderSync went through the WebDAV protocol. I'm used to manually copying things to my nextcloud drive and running a scan.
I think Memories schedules its scan with the normal cron job for Nextcloud
I have one setup. The setup was abit clunky since cli work is required. But after that I had a great experience.