Immich Home & family· Instead of Google Photos
The open alternative to Google Photos: automatic backup, search by faces and places, shared albums.
PiGallery2
A photo gallery that takes your folders as they are — no import, no renaming.
Screenshots
What PiGallery2 does
PiGallery2 shows your pictures straight from the folder structure they already live in. Nothing is copied, renamed or sorted into a library — the gallery only reads.
A directory tree stays a directory tree. Take the gallery away and the photos sit exactly where they were, readable by anything else.
Reads folders directly, no import step- Search by date taken, place and camera data
- Map view from the GPS data in your photos
- Share links with an expiry date
Good to know before the first start. PiGallery2 starts with the login "admin" and the password "admin". Change it first thing in the settings — until you do, anyone who knows the address can get in. Then upload your pictures into the photo folder and the gallery indexes it and builds the thumbnails. A large collection takes a while on that first pass, and is quick afterwards.
PiGallery2 instead of Google Photos
What you get out of it
- Your photos live in your own instance, not in someone else’s account
- Face recognition and search run on your side, not elsewhere
- You decide how much storage you book
| Google Photos and Podless | Google Photos | On Podless |
|---|---|---|
| Where the data lives | Google PhotosOn the provider’s servers | On PodlessIn your own instance in the EU |
| Source code | Google PhotosNot open to read | On PodlessOpen, you can read what runs |
| Ads and profiling | Google PhotosPer the provider’s terms | On PodlessNone |
| Your own domain | Google PhotosUsually not offered | On PodlessIncluded, certificate too |
| Getting out again | Google PhotosAs far as the provider allows | On PodlessSFTP, database, backups to your storage |
| If it gets shut down | Google PhotosYou have to move | On PodlessYou decide when you leave |
Additional information
- Category
- Home & family
- Replaces
- Google Photos, Flickr, Synology Photos, Lychee
- Recommended size
- 0.5 cores · 1 GB RAM · 50 GB Storage
- Estimated per month
- €3.60 At the recommended size, running around the clock. Stop the app and CPU and RAM stop costing.
- Source
- bpatrik/pigallery2
- Links
- Website
Common questions
At the recommended size (0.5 cores · 1 GB RAM · 50 GB Storage) about €3.60 a month, billed by the hour. Stop PiGallery2 and you only pay for storage.
No. No server, no Docker, no terminal commands. You click start and PiGallery2 runs. Updates are tested on our own instances first and then rolled out.
In your own PiGallery2 instance on servers in Germany and France; bulk storage sits in Frankfurt. Add your own S3 bucket and we back up there daily, encrypted.
PiGallery2 is open source and keeps running on your own server. You fetch the files over a time-limited SFTP access and reach the database with the credentials from the dashboard.
