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Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

• philshem 5y ago
  Clickable links! [1]: https://ente.io https://ente.io [2]: https://ente.io/apk https://ente.io/apk [3]: https://play.google.com/store https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=io.ente.photos [4]: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/ente-photos/id1542026904 https://apps.apple.com/in/app/ente-photos/id1542026904 [5]: https://web.ente.io https://web.ente.io [6]: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest [7]: https://libsodium.gitbook.io https://libsodium.gitbook.io [8]: https://ente.io/architecture https://ente.io/architecture [9]: https://github.com/ente-io https://github.com/ente-io [10]: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/njatok/we_built_an_endtoend_encrypted_alternative_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/njatok/we_built_a...
  • sillysaurusx 5y ago
    (Since the original links are now clickable, I propose that it would be nice if HN made all links in self-text posts clickable by default. It seems like it might foster a healthier community, since it will feel less like it's a special privilege to have clickable links.)
• mynameismon 5y ago
  Kudos on your launch! I just had a question: the pricing plans seem slightly pricey, is it to break even before bringing prices down, or is it due to expensive storage? If the latter, is there a self-hosted option? Also, the website looks absolutely great!
  • lol1lol 5y ago
    yes! googol is cheaper and the bottom line matters to lot of people. perhaps this is a good way to ask people whether they'd pay additional 5-10$ for privacy.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Thanks! We're currently focusing on breaking even and becoming self sustaining. With scale we're hopeful that we'll be able to reduce the prices.
  • bogidon 5y ago
    Have been hoping for something like this for probably a decade – and your product looks great. Also have a question about the pricing. I’m happy to pay at the current tiers, especially to help getting y’all bootstrapped. But I’m curious if reducing the pricing will be an objective for you as you scale? I’m not sure I see myself maintaining the current expense indefinitely or it making it easy to recommend to less technical friends/family.
    • vishnumohandas 5y ago
      The idea behind the project is to make privacy accessible. We are hopeful that we'll be able to lower the price points as we scale up and still remain profitable.
  • raobit 5y ago
    ELI5 what does self hosting option mean here in this context?
    • ignoramous 5y ago
• lol1lol 5y ago
  congrats! wishing you good luck
• hzay 5y ago
  V cool service! What metadata do you store btw? Can I use it to store nice dslr pics and later sort by ISO?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    On mobile we already include EXIF information in the encrypted-metadata. We will be doing the same on web soon, and will then enable client-side search over that data.
• explodingcamera 5y ago
  This is looks super cool, however not something I'd be interested in using myself if I can't selfhost it (at least it looks like thats not possible from the website).
  • lol1lol 5y ago
    self hosting is not worth the time and effort.
    • andrewmunsell 5y ago
      That is not categorically true. On the business side, there's plenty of companies that have offered and succeeded with self-hosted software. On the client side, there's many individuals like myself willing to dedicate time, money, and effort to self-host services. I spent quite a bit of time setting up my NAS with self-hosted services, not only because the number of photos and media I store would be prohibitively expensive to host elsewhere (I do photography and videography as a hobby, 120 fps 10 bit footage adds up), but because I enjoy the hobby.
      • lol1lol 5y ago
        we have so many consumer facing apps. you'd want to maintain all those and actually have a life to use those? good luck!
        • necovek 5y ago
          Not everybody has to use "many" apps. You can only self-host those you care about.
  • YPPH 5y ago
    Self-hosting a zero knowledge service is probably unnecessary. If you're hosting the service, there's no need for data to be encrypted client-side. Unless, of course, you were intending on running the service on a public cloud which you didn't control, but that's something I don't think many privacy conscious folk would do. There's plenty of open source, self-hosted alternatives to Google Photos.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• pgrote 5y ago
  I noticed on one of the screenshots there are buttons labelled "When in Rome" and "Christmas 2019". What do the labels reference? Are you using tags added from the photos metadata? Thanks!
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Those are manually created album names. We don't have automatic clustering enabled yet. But it is in the pipeline and we hope to ship it later this year.
• ridaj 5y ago
  What are your plans for when your app is found to host content such as terrorist executions, child porn, etc.? (This isn't trolling, it's something that eventually happens with every product, and I've been wanting a non-Google version myself but wondering how that kind of abuse would be dealt with.)
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    The answer to this question is why the only solution in the long run is local storage.
    • imhoguy 5y ago
      Just imagined a distopian future where storing data locally would be illegal, for the society good of course /s
    • fortran77 5y ago
      Not when you have government-mandated software checking your local files against hashes. Not today, but someday.
  • mynameismon 5y ago
    I don't think they would be able to do anything about it, since (from what I could infer from reading) it is zero-knowledge, so no one from the company can access the pictures. I might be wrong, though
    • user-the-name 5y ago
      Yes, and that is a problem.
      • mynameismon 5y ago
        What is the problem/why is there a problem?
        • 5y ago
• llIIllIIllIIl 5y ago
  Awesome work. Although the price is 5x of google’s, the privacy is worth it. Is there a family plan? We currently have 200gb google photos plan with my wife, but to migrate we have to take 1000gb plan (which we fill maybe in 8 years at current pace of adding content). Maybe something in between 100gb and 1000gb would find it’s audience.
  • abhinavDev 5y ago
    Yes, we have both a 100GB and a 1000GB plans, you can check them on https://ente.io/#pricing https://ente.io/#pricing
    • sharps1 5y ago
      Pricing is expensive comparing it to mega (https://mega.io/pro https://mega.io/pro). Mega is end to end encrypted as well (Mega is 2tb for $118. Source code is also available https://mega.io/sourcecode https://mega.io/sourcecode). Why would someone pick your service?
      • vishnumohandas 5y ago
        ente is focused towards solving the sole problem of photo storage and organization while Mega serves as a general purpose drive. The product is in it's infancy right now. Once we have search and indexing, the difference will hopefully be clearer.
    • llIIllIIllIIl 5y ago
      Exactly my point. I’m getting close to 200gb, but it’s gonna be a while I reach 1000gb. So essentially i’ll be paying for the space I don’t use for years.
      • vishnumohandas 5y ago
        Sharing my response to a similar question we ran into on reddit[1]. > Our pricing is structured such that the 1TB plan costs only 3x the 100GB plan. This model works under the assumption that the average utilization of a 1TB plan (across all customers) will be close to 30%. > So if we bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to around 2-2.5x of the 100GB plan. > This seemed like a lose-lose situation for everyone with growing storage needs. > Since Apple and Google don't support per GB billing yet (which IMO would have been the fairest way to go), we had to pick buckets, and the current ones seemed like the fairest possible. -- I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if we can do better. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/enteio/comments/p4m0ee/more_price_tiers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/enteio/comments/p4m0ee/more_price_t...
• perryizgr8 5y ago
  This looks very good and the pricing plans are reasonable. However I want something locally hosted. I will pay to buy the software and run it on my own equipment. I really don't want to keep paying a subscription perpetually in order to store my photos.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Thanks! ente is currently not directed at an audience that has the knowledge to set up and maintain a reliable storage infrastructure. We had started off on the self-hosting route and then realized the difficulties in scaling such a product in the consumer space. So we have for now decided to direct our limited bandwidth into making the product accessible. Sorry about that.
    • perryizgr8 5y ago
      No worries, I understand. Congrats on the launch and good luck!
• cf_ 5y ago
  Looks great - congratulations! Could you please add if / how you store a hash of the user password of authentication - it‘s not discussed on the architecture page. Thank you.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    We don't store your password's hash. Since we use authenticated encryption, clients can identify when the decryption of your masterKey fails because you used a key generated from a wrong password.
    • cf_ 5y ago
      Ok, that‘s cool! But the client get‘s to download the encrypted master key without authentication, right? Doesn’t that enable easy offline attacks or is the decryption too time-consuming?
      • vishnumohandas 5y ago
        No, the client has to first verify their email address and 2FA (if configured) to receive the encrypted keys. In addition to this the decryption is time-consuming.
• abidomar 5y ago
  Congrats! Love the product. I can see myself switching to ente very soon.
• benbristow 5y ago
  Your homepage says "protect your photos/faces etc. from algorithms" The algorithms are what makes Google Photos; Google Photos. If I wanted to just store my photos I'd throw them in a S3 bucket or Dropbox or something. Google Photos lets me automatically categorise my photos by person, lets me search my library using text search for anything (e.g. I can search 'museum' and see pictures I've taken in museums). That is where the real value of Google Photos comes into play. > But we are far from where we want to be in terms of features (object and face detection, location clustering, image filters, ...) and user experience. We are hoping to use this post as an opportunity to collect feedback from fellow hackers. So you're going to implement algorithms then?
  • LightG 5y ago
    You're willing to pay the price of those algorithms and the Google ecosystem. Others are not. I'm excited to review this project. Thanks to the creators. This has come at a perfect moment ... as, this weekend, I'm literally downloading my entire Google photos archive (one year at a time) to my local harddrive and figuring out a way forward. I'm done with Google after a 'straw breaking the camels back' moment with their payment system.
    • alisonkisk 5y ago
      Why not use Takeout to download all at once?
  • gizdan 5y ago
    On top of this, good algorithms should be run if it is possible to do it in a privacy friendly way.
  • Aspos 5y ago
    Those "algorithms" can run locally, on a NAS or a desktop, generate the metadata and make it available to you only on your mobile. I can see myself paying for such software if it was mature enough.
    • 5y ago
• usrme 5y ago
  Looks great, but based on my limited time with it: - when registering via the Android application I got no 1Password prompt to fill in the fields; this is usually the case with other applications - there doesn't seem to be an option to back-up single photos, only whole directories; why is this?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Hey, sorry that the 1Password prompt did now pop up. We'll look into this. Regarding the lack of option for backing up individual files, currently that option exists only on iOS since the OS provides users with an option to grant permission to a few files instead of their entire gallery. There are two ways to work around this on Android right now: 1. Share a file from outside the app to ente. 2. Skip the folder selection, choose the file you want to backup from your device folder, and add it to an album (you will be prompted to create an album if none exist).
• sturza 5y ago
  Is there a way to “one click” move from google photos?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Currently no. You have to manually export your data from takeout.google.com. We are optimistic that with the Data Transfer Project[1], Google will eventually expose APIs for us to perform this migration programmatically. [1]: https://datatransferproject.dev https://datatransferproject.dev
• slater 5y ago
  Sidenote: are you aware that "Ente" is German for "duck"? :)
  • kaycebasques 5y ago
    If I recall correctly "ente" has a pleasant meaning in Portuguese. Google Translate says it means "loved" but I feel like my paperback dictionary said something else... Edit: I think it's similar to "being"
    • athulca 5y ago
      Since OP seems to be from Kerala it might be in Malayalam."ente" in Malayalam(Language of Kerala) means "mine".
      • vishnumohandas 5y ago
        This! Also, I've a thing for rubber ducks. Also, the domain was available. :)
        • murukesh_s 5y ago
          hey, fellow keralite here.. good domain and good luck!
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Yes, hence the icon for "simple" @ ente.io :)
• pilingual 5y ago
  Re: Shared Albums >the receiver just needs a free ente account. I feel like there should be an even more frictionless option to make it easy for family to access photos. For example, if there were a way to just trigger a mailing list when an album is added to, that would be perfect. “Here is an update on our trip: [link]” I love that you mention you are security and privacy focused, and I see how this could conflict with that mission. Perhaps a tradeoff here could be allowing one viewing via link and future viewings require account?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    > if there were a way to just trigger a mailing list when an album is added to, that would be perfect We can do this if all of the participants are already on ente. > allowing one viewing via link and future viewings require account We are hoping to come up with an implementation similar to this where in a link to an album can be shared with N devices. We will persist an accessToken on the viewer's localstorage so that they can re-view the album multiple times without having to sign up.
  • sam0x17 5y ago
    It's funny, I see this being the first feature they kill off unfortunately when it becomes the new super easy way of sharing CSAM on shady forums.
• sneak 5y ago
  Why does this app need to link my identifiers and contact info to my identity? I would feel a lot more comfortable with this if it didn't collect any data of mine, and you were just storing ciphertext. I don't want an account, and I don't want to give you my name or email.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Hey, we do need some information to get the product to work well. You can see the bits of information we collect, along with the reasoning here: https://ente.io/privacy/#account-data https://ente.io/privacy/#account-data
    • dane-pgp 5y ago
      > Browser type and operating system of the devices from which you have logged in to ente to ensure account security. I can't imagine how that information could be used to stop an attack that otherwise would succeed. Is this just so that you can say "Your last login was from Safari on an iPhone" to the user to reassure them their password hasn't been stolen (or the attacker has correctly guessed the most popular browser on the most popular platform)? If so, this seems like a string that could be generated client-side, and stored encrypted on your server, so that you never have to log this data in plaintext.
      • vishnumohandas 5y ago
        In addition to ensuring account security, we were collecting the user-agent to transform API responses depending on the client. But your point is valid. Just the operating system and app version is enough to derive this information. We will make this change and update our privacy policy. Thanks for bringing this up!
    • sneak 5y ago
      Collecting my data is a nonstarter for me. The point of e2e is so that the provider doesn't have useful information. If I have to trust you with my information, you didn't need to bother with the crypto stuff.
• olah_1 5y ago
  is there a way to automatically migrate from google photos?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Yes! You can go to takeout.google.com, export your photos and drag them into https://web.ente.io https://web.ente.io. We will preserve all of the metadata Google generated. If at all the upload flow breaks in between, just drag and drop the exported folder again, we will skip already uploaded files and resume from where we left off.
• Youden 5y ago
  The monthly storage costs are too high. For the price of 1TB from you (15€), I can buy more than 2 TB just about anywhere else. Commercially, Apple and Google are both 2TB for 10 CHF and Amazon gives you unlimited as part of a Prime membership. Storage providers like Backblaze and Wasabi both charge around $5/TB and that's really the table-stakes price. For the more DIY-inclined, Hetzner sells a 2TB OwnCloud instance for 9.90€/month. I'd prefer to buy software from you than storage. It's out of the question for me to pay you per TB but I'd consider paying a flat rate for software I then host myself.
  • imagine99 5y ago
    I fully agree. It's a hard sell getting people to switch from an evil but known cloud provider to an unknown cloud provider that claims to not be evil. What we do not need is more cloud offerings that can change, vanish or lock us out at the blink of an algorithm's eye. What we need, rather, are reliable and easy-to-use solutions that allow us to retain full control of our data (i.e. self-hosted and offline) while having feature parity with the big cloud-only solutions. I for one am convinced that there is plenty of money to be made that way. Perhaps not as much on autopilot as with the quasi-scam that is cloud computing, but people willingly paid hundreds or thousands for software before clouds and subscriptions. People will do so again, if you bring a convincing, unique or competitive product to market. That being said, I like, appreciate and support this project for its impetus, even though I think its distribution strategy is misguided and fad-driven (re-selling cloud space instead of selling software). It's not too late to change that...
    • vishnumohandas 5y ago
      Hey, so the project had initially started off as a self-hostable software (with an option to buy a pre-configured device). We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such a product in the consumer space to the point where it can become self-sustaining. We don't have a problem with offering a self-hosted variant. But given our limited engineering bandwidth we had to take a call on who our target market should be, and we felt that it was more important to make privacy accessible to people like my mom and dad. Hence this direction.
• hackwa 5y ago
  I’ve been using ente for a while now. The user experience has potential for improvement but overall I’ve found it worth the tradeoff. The client app itself is super clean and it feels great to not be thinking about giving more of my money and data to google or amazon or fb. Take my money!
• Brajeshwar 5y ago
  Ouch! This is costly. I'm still shopping for a Backup or a parallel solution to Apple Photos. At $14.99 /mo for a 1TB storage or even the discounted Indian pricing of ₹999 /mo; I would put it at a high price point for a Photo Service/Tool. Just a thought. I'd priced it similar to Google Photos but sell the encrypted/privacy part as a prominent feature.
• 12ian34 5y ago
  Love the idea, sounds like a lot of hard work has gone into it already. I have been looking for this kind of thing to replace Google Photos. I checked out the website and couldn't find enough about the app's usability. So, I downloaded the (android) app hoping for some kind of demo or further insight into the UX but it's asking me to sign up or login. I guess I'll sign up anyway because I'm curious, but I'd have preferred a demo of the app first, especially since I really love the UX of Google Photos which is one of the main reasons prolonging my desire to replace it
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Hey, we know that we should have a demo video of sorts so that you don't have to sign up to experience the product. It's due to a lack of resources that we don't have one yet. But we will prioritize this. Sorry for the trouble, I hope it's worth it.
• arendtio 5y ago
  From what I have seen, I like Photoprism [1] better. Yes, they are a different kind of product, but feature wise they should be considered a competitor. Yes, ente.io is easier to setup, but there are many things lacking or unpolished (e.g. the image sizes that are being loaded while going through the fotos fullscreen in the browser). [1] https://photoprism.app https://photoprism.app
  • domh 5y ago
    I just set up PhotoPrism myself this week! With it being completely self-hosted, this isn't something I'd be comfortable asking someone non-technical to do. I like that it is self hosted, it also uses TensorFlow to classify images so you can perform keyword searches e.g "museum". It doesnt appear to be as good as Google Photos though, e.g in GP you can search "vaccination card" and it does what you expect which is very impressive. Face detection is currently under heavy development also, which is very exciting: https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism/issues/22 https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism/issues/22 There are certainly things that are missing, but I'm okay with the tradeoffs for now in the hope that it will eventually improve.
  • TingPing 5y ago
    That service doesn't look like it's encrypted and not really equal then.
    • arendtio 5y ago
      So far, there isn't even a service. It is only software, which you can use to self-host your pictures, which can serve the same purpose. Both are certainly GP alternatives. Equal: no. Comparable: sure.
• ramesh31 5y ago
  "We built a defacto repository of CSAM" Cloud services have entire departments of people constantly combatting this stuff for a reason. It's the single hardest part about providing an image service.
• upofadown 5y ago
  What is happening here is more properly called client side encryption[1]. End to end encryption is the case where two clients are communicating directly with one another where the identities are established directly between those clients. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_encryption
• me551ah 5y ago
  One of the biggest reasons why I like Google Photos is all the processing that it does on photos, especially some of the features that you have mentioned (object and face detection, location clustering, image filters, ...). Now to process these photos, you would need to read them and since you are end-to-end encrypted it's up to the clients to do this processing. Would some of these features even run on mobile devices(or for that matter javascript on the web)?, since google uses AI heavily for these tasks. You upload a picture on google, and instantly you get all the processing done on your pictures and they are available for you to browse and search. Google uses custom built AI processors and massive GPUs to get that computation done quickly. To replicate that in javascript on the web and mobile devices is going to be hard since there are few libraries which support it and the mobile devices really cannot compete with the computing power available in the cloud. I really love the privacy oriented aspect of this service though and I would really like to share one less thing with google. I've always been concerned about being blocked out of my google accounts and losing my photos.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    You're right, we don't think that the accuracy of the indexes generated on the client will match the ones generated by Google's servers. There is a trade off here between user experience and privacy, and we are hopeful that the outcome with ente will hit a spot that will make it a viable alternative for a certain set of users.
  • robertoandred 5y ago
    Sure. All of Apple's photo analysis is done on device.
• meibo 5y ago
  I don't think I'm ready to invest in a photo hosting solution again, be it with my time, my money, or my data, without it being open source/self-hostable or at least open core with a community behind it. Been duped too many times.
  • mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Curious about the details of how you were duped.
    • ncann 5y ago
      Not OP but I have had many cloud photo accounts in the past: myphotoalbum, Kodak Gallery, photobucket, Flickr and more. Eventually all of them either shut down, or got sold and became unmaintained. Google Photos and Apple's are the only ones that I can trust will still be around in 10 years' time.
      • meibo 5y ago
        Picasa as well, though Google nowadays does a pretty great job at getting all pictures you have on your account together with https://get.google.com/albumarchive/ https://get.google.com/albumarchive/
        • marwis 5y ago
          Pity that once uploaded there's no way to get your data back from Google. API scrambles EXIF location metatada while Takeout, besides being pain to use on an ongoing basis, fails if you store too many files.
          • vishnumohandas 5y ago
            FWIW, ente processes all of the location metadata generated by Takeout during an import via web.ente.io.
• chmod775 5y ago
  Very reasonable pricing, though you could advertise the free 'trial' tier a bit more prominently. I thought the service was paid only until I re-checked the pricing page and read the tiny gray on black text before writing this comment. You also didn't set a single tracking cookie. Nice.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    I'll increase the opacity of that line, thanks for the feedback!
• sabujp 5y ago
  what are currently the best open source projects that allow you to fully automate and manage deployment of your own personal (or multi-user) cloud photos/drive storage service? I found: [1]: https://github.com/nextcloud [2]: https://github.com/Piwigo with S3 extension: https://piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=691 [3]: others https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives-to-google-photos-showdown/ which mentions the most feature packed to be https://photoprism.app/
  • summm 5y ago
    Or, just syncthing, if you don't need a specializes photo web interface. They apparently added support for client-side support recently, so you can put it on some random vserver as well.
  • jaza 5y ago
    I migrated my photo collection to https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics about a year ago, pretty happy with it (so much so that I ended up contributing a number of features and bug fixes back to it). Basically all you have to do, after the initial setup, is an S3 sync to upload new photos, and a gallery web site and resized thumbnails get generated automatically. All private, you configure usernames and passwords. The ongoing cost is just that of S3 standard / infrequent-access storage, which for my collection of ~50GB is currently costing me about ~$1/month. In terms of the auto-generated gallery (lambda function that traverses an S3 bucket) and the password-protection (CloudFront Origin Access Identity), you're locked in to AWS. But in terms of the data, you by definition have all the files in a simple folder tree on your local disk too, you can back it up wherever else you want, you can migrate it elsewhere quite easily. And AWSPics itself is open-source.
  • jayFu 5y ago
    Add https://lomorage.com https://lomorage.com, self hosted, cross platform, mobile friendly, support multiple accounts, and login from multiple devices.
• sysadm1n 5y ago
  What happens if I buy the yearly plan, fill my account with photos, then don't renew my subscription? Can I still access my photos even when downgraded to a free account?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    No, storage and bandwidth are quite expensive. We will purge your data from our systems 2 months after your subscription expires. You will have an easy way to download all of your data, and we will notify you multiple times to do so before the deletion actually happens.
• mattrighetti 5y ago
  In my opinion, people who don’t trust google (like myself) would not trust every other company too. The perfect solution for me would be something that I can self host on my LAN with a clean and intuitive app like the google photos one, that would be a service that I would pay for.
  • criddell 5y ago
    With an Electron client, you also have to trust all the JavaScript libraries that NPM brings in (and this can be a huge number). Electron is pretty cool, but it doesn’t seem compatible with anything related to security or encryption.
• Jnr 5y ago
  If you still want to use the algorithms but keep the data private (self hosted and open source), I can suggest Librephotos. It has face detection, object detection, place markers, etc. It is not perfect but from what I have seen, it's currently still the best self hosted open source solution.
• barbazoo 5y ago
  I've been craving a service like this for a long time!!! I'll check it out asap.
• alex_hirner 5y ago
  > two different storage providers in the EU Which ones did you choose and why?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    BackBlaze because of their reputation. Scaleway because of their cold storage offering in a fallout shelter underground that reduces the risk of natural disasters.
• caffeine 5y ago
  What’s your story for exporting from Google photos? I would happily use this service if it could automatically backup my Google Photos to protect me against the possibility of Google killing my accounts.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    You can take out your Photos data from takeout.google.com, and drag and drop the output folder into https://web.ente.io https://web.ente.io. We understand and parse the metadata files Google generates and support resumable uploads.
• mrobins 5y ago
  I’ve been watching this project for a long time and personally am very excited. The fact that it’s #1 on HN today (congrats!) makes me think I’m not the only one. There are also a lot of valid concerns in these comments about privacy and use of algorithms. A lot of it depends on what you’re looking to gain by adopting a new service/switching away from something else and individual concern. Personally, I’m looking for a place to store personal photos: friends, family, travel etc. Critical needs - easy sharing ideally not locked into Apple’s ecosystem - not to have my photos mined for advertising and social graph data (most important) - ideally around for the long haul but in my mind this is for sharing, not backup I’m not particularly concerned about warrants, government surveillance etc. Again for me this is about sharing so the expectation of true privacy is low. Any photos I considered sensitive I would store elsewhere. For me, the biggest point of confidence I have in this project is that they charge money from day 1 and don’t have a forever free plan. I’m excited about projects that offer the benefits of “social” but where the software, not my data, is the product.
  • Roritharr 5y ago
    I'm in the same boat, have been watching, love that they have a businessmodel and am waiting for the time when they are covering my needs (face recognition, object / scene detection...). I'd even pay a 2$/month "lurker" subscription which has like 100mb of storage so I can check the features from time to time and support the team.
    • Chilko 5y ago
      Looking at their pricing for €0.99 / month you can get 10gb storage, so go at it!
      • dexterdog 5y ago
        Storage is cheaper on S3
        • bigiain 5y ago
          If you're gonna dick them around over the difference between €0.09/GB/Month and $US0.025/GB/Month, they're probably ecstatic to not have you as a customer. Either you're whining about their entire ecosystem of encryption, key sharing, mobile apps, desktop app, web app, etc - not being worth a cup of coffee a month "Cause I can do it all myself using S3!!!", or you're planning on storing many times more than ~200GB on their platform.
• headmelted 5y ago
  I’d love for something like this to exist (a fast, clean, well-designed mobile and desktop app for backing up my photos with E2E), but I’d only switch from one of the big providers if it were FOSS and I can bring my own backend target (e.g. S3, SMB, FTP). In a perfect scenario I could generate my own private key to plug into my client devices and just have everything push to private S3 (and then from there archive to the cheapest, coldest glacier tier after it’s been synced to my home storage). This to me would not be that complicated to build, but would essentially provide E2E Photostream and a backup of last resort in the cloud. Obviously (as is the problem with all FOSS) you have the dilemma of how do the developers get paid, which I’m sure is why you went down this yet-another-paid-cloud-provider route instead of what I’ve suggested above. All that said - I like what you’re trying to build, I could see it being useful to some, but providing E2E photo storage as a direct-to-consumer service is IMHO just asking to be held liable later for what your users store there should you gain any considerable traction.
  • barbazoo 5y ago
    +1 for custom storage target
  • hiimshort 5y ago
    I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion due to the technical know-how involved, but these days I much prefer to selfhost my own services. Far too many times businesses have gone under, changed their practices, had pricing wildly fluctuate, or remove features I wanted. Having setup a handful of useful services on a cluster, I have much more peace of mind involving my data, feature access, etc. I would love to see a FOSS version of ente available for me to host. My family is currently split amongst multiple photo library services and it'd be nice to say "Here's ours."
  • siscia 5y ago
    Well you can, I wrote how here: https://redbeardlab.com/2021/08/03/my-syncthing-setup-cheap-storage-with-zero-maintenance/ https://redbeardlab.com/2021/08/03/my-syncthing-setup-cheap-... The nice thing is that S3QL allows setting a secret key, so your files just get encrypted before to be pushed on the cloud.
• ant6n 5y ago
  Very interested in this. She questions: How does one migrate to this from Google photos? How does one share across the family? Is it possible to have a local backup (e.g. on my desktop) in case something goes wrong? What are plans for features beyond just storing photos (categorizing, tagging, labelling, albums, comments/notes, geotags, stories, etc.)? What's the pricing?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    > How does one migrate to this from Google photos? You can export your data from takeout.google.com, and drag and drop the output folder into web.ente.io. > How does one share across the family? Currently we don't have family plans yet. Existing customers are sharing the same account with their partners. This is on our roadmap and we will ship it soon. > Is it possible to have a local backup? Our desktop app[1] has an option to sync your uploaded data to a local disk drive. > categorizing, tagging, labelling, albums, comments/notes, geotags, stories. We already have albums and stories. All the other features you mentioned apart from "comments/notes" were already on our roadmap. I've just added "comments/notes" too to it[2]. > What's the pricing? https://ente.io/#pricing https://ente.io/#pricing [1]: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest [2]: https://roadmap.ente.io/ability-to-add-commentsnotes-to-a-photo-p-2645/ https://roadmap.ente.io/ability-to-add-commentsnotes-to-a-ph...
    • ant6n 5y ago
      Thanks for the detailed responses! Some more questions: a) I note the pricing is somewhat higher than Google/Dropbox, which is fair. But is there a way to compress the media (esp. videos) before uploading it to conserve some storage? (I wish when Google still had unlimited 'high quality', it was possible to store photos in original and video in hi quality). b) is there a way to detect duplicate photos, including of lesser quality, and only store the higher quality version? (E.g. photo comes from original device but also in a WhatsApp image folder because it was shared). c) assuming search is on the roadmap based on feature detection, are there ways to find photos based on date/uploading device/camera/geolocation?
• barbazoo 5y ago
  Please please support custom storage back ends, I'd love to use my Dropbox or S3 or whatever to still fully own my pictures. And I'd love to pay extra to opt out of and analysis, tagging, etc of my photos. Basically I'd like the interface to be similar to Google Photos but with a privacy focused storage engine and clients.
  • DenisM 5y ago
    I concur. However storage is how they plan to make money, so there will need to be a different monetization strategy for BYO storage. As yet I can't imagine any. EDIT: I think have an idea! Add the S3/OneDrive/Etc support but comment it out. To make use of it one would have to download the source, XCode, compile it, and deploy it. This puts a cap on the number of people who can do that, so you won't end up with everyone getting a free copy. Those people who are able to do it are likely to be asked for advice by their less techy friend, so this is basically free software to key influencers.... Ok, so this does not sound as exciting as it did before I started typing, but maybe this will lead to something...
    • vishnumohandas 5y ago
      So it's a little more complicated than that. Our API server runs the following - authentication - replication - differential sync - and a few more errands that are necessary for the apps to function The solution to this would be to offer a self-hosted variant where you can plug in your S3 credentials. But like I mentioned else where in this thread, maintaining such a project comes with an overhead we cannot afford right now. Hopefully sometime in the future we will be able to afford the necessary engineering bandwidth.
      • barbazoo 5y ago
        I like how Joplin does it for notes. You authorize them as an application in Dropbox or give them credentials to a S3 bucket. Don't get me wrong. I want to pay for your service. I just have to be able to access and decrypt my files if you had to shut down your service all of a sudden.
• subpixel 5y ago
  I like the fresh thinking, but I don't see a market for this. What I see is a market for an Instagram replacement that is: - not about filters or effects - has flexible sharing settings (e.g. you can opt-in to looser privacy on a per-photo basis) that default to 'private' - solves the storage and encryption of my photo library without me even having to understand it That last item is a feature, not a product (but could provide an amazing moat around the product).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• samstave 5y ago
  How ripe is this space? Recall Origami which stated to do same and then they got a qui-killed before they could even launch? I haven't used any online photo storage place for years because I dont trust them, but that's also a lame excuse because I have yet to be able to extricate Google from my life, which is a smoldering desire in the back of my head.. But I feel like any of these photo upstarts are going to be short lived. I'd be happy to pay $60 for the app, and then pay some fee/month for storage space, dedupe etc... What might be cool for an organization option would be a shared library of assets such that dev's and artists can manage a library of digital assets across teams and projects and integrate with ssomethingnlike slack..
• DenisM 5y ago
  Question: Why XChaCha20? If you used aes256 I wouldn't even give it a thought and simply move on to the next question, but now I have stop and ask what's going on and wonder if you did it right. Just seems like unnecessary friction in my decision process.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    We had started off with AES, and the performance was abysmal on low-end mobie devices and certain web browsers. XChaCha20 in comparison added negligible latency and seemed less prone to human errors. These weren't the sole reason however. There's a lot of literature on the security aspects of XChaCha20, some of which I'll link below: - https://soatok.blog/2020/07/12/comparison-of-symmetric-encryption-methods/#aes-gcm-vs-xchacha20poly1305 https://soatok.blog/2020/07/12/comparison-of-symmetric-encry... (in our case your masterKey is used to sign all your fileKeys) - https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/34458 https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/34458 - https://nordpass.com/features/xchacha20-encryption/#why%20NordPass%20chose%20xchacha20%20-%20XChaCha20 https://nordpass.com/features/xchacha20-encryption/#why%20No... - https://blog.cloudflare.com/do-the-chacha-better-mobile-performance-with-cryptography/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/do-the-chacha-better-mobile-perf...
    • nicce 5y ago
      Have you correctly evaluated your threat scenarios? ChaCha is streaming cipher, which is meant to be used on transmission phase, not on data-on-rest(DARE). That is significant difference. In this case, you are implementing Photo storage service, where data is laying mostly on your servers, and not disappearing after the transmission. What is the threat model? In general, streaming ciphers are considered as weaker alternatives for DARE ciphers. The main risk lies on nonce. In service like this, you are using long-term key. xChaCha provides 192-bit nonce. How likely you are generating identical nonces? Well. In this case, it might be that this streaming cipher is safe. 192-bit nonce is quite big number. For example AES-GCM with 96-bit nonce has max message amount of 2^32 when used deterministically [1] In theory, the AES alternative is much weaker than your current implementation. [1]: https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=51288#page=29 https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=51288...
• stiltzkin 5y ago
  I would suggest make your APK compatible with Android TV, there is no Google Photos for Android TV and Google answer is use your phone to cast your photos to TV.
• tills13 5y ago
  9 times out of 10 people will choose convenience over privacy. Google Photos is just too good to care about the supposed "privacy issues."
• tagilux 5y ago
  Is there a way to self host? Backend included?
• tagilux 5y ago
  Is there a way to self host the backend?
• jijosunny 5y ago
  Gotta love the progress y’all made in the last few months! Congrats on the launch!
• ignoramous 5y ago
  Congratulations, this looks neat. A couple questions around this venture: 1. Does ente.io intend to remain bootstrapped or seek funding (tiny-vc, crowd, crypto, public)? 2. Is the founding team in it for long term; serious about sustaining this business in face of capable incumbents (some upcoming ones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338008, some established ones like nextcloud.com, getkeepsafe.com) and competent competition (EteSync)? --- A couple around the app: 1. What are the guarantees around backups / data loss across updates, device changes, account turnovers due to password-loss etc 2. If the founding team is thinking ahead, do they plan to build other such alt-apps too? 3. What's the server-side object store, if okay revealing that: StackPath? Scaleway? Wasabi? 4. How does ente.io handle file versioning, race conditions (file created and deleted with same names across different devices, as one example)? 5. How does ente.io handle abuse? Using ente.io for nefarious purposes such as CSAM, as one example. --- A couple around cryptography (since you emphasize e2ee I took a glance at the architecture doc): 1. To my untrained eye, a lot of crypto cited in the architecture document reads like it was hand-rolled. There exists RFCs that cover recovery for usecases involving public-key crypto (PGP is hard for a reason), but yours is "cross-encrypt master-key with recovery-key and vice versa..." which does not inspire any sort of confidence in me. Besides, the wrapped keys stored on servers are sent to clients without any checks and hence subject to brute-force attacks. Are you sure of what you have designed isn't weak? ente.io sets out to be tarsnap but looks far from it. 2. Another thing that sticks out is the custom "encrypted authentication flow"... 3. How do I rotate the master key, collection keys, file keys etc in case my password is compromised? Sounds like a lot of work given the current architecture? I see that the doc has been "peer reviewed" by 5+ engs, but any cryptographers in there? --- A couple around ToS: 1. ToS states that ente.io may store documents even post-deletion by the customer. Why not delete it right away? That's a security risk? 2. If you suspend access to an account (since ente.io retains the right to do so), what policies govern data-takeout? Thanks. All the best.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Venture: 1. We did apply to YC a few months ago, but was rejected in the interviews because they felt that the total addressable market was low. We don't know if other VCs will feel differently and we haven't applied anywhere else since. Perhaps paid subscriptions is in a way public funding? :) 2. The rate at which photos are being taken (a trillion a year), we believe that the market is large enough for multiple players. Also none of the existing solutions provide a user experience that we are happy with, so we would like to keep building until we have something that works for us (at least). Also it helps that we are not very motivated by money. As long as we get to build useful things while being able to sustain our lifestyles, we will be content. -- App: 1. We have been advised by our lawyers to provide no such guarantees. All I can say is that we follow the best engineering practices to make sure that possibility of a data loss/corruption is minimal. And in the unfortunate case that it does happen, we have strategies in place to minimize the damage by applying rollbacks and triggering re-syncs from clients. We will be transparent about any such event. 2. Our infrastructure is agnostic to the data type. Once we have reasonably polished the photos product, we would like to venture into other spaces where E2EE storage + sync is useful. 3. We use BackBlaze as our hot-storage and Scaleway as our cold storage. 4. All files are versioned. File names are not a primary key. 5. Due to the nature of our encryption protocols, we cannot actively look out for illegal content, but we will take down content that violates our ToS[1] when it is brought to our attention. --- Cryptography 1. The key recovery flow was hand rolled and peer reviewed, since we could not find existing implementations that solved for our use cases. We wanted the recoveryKey to be something that can be shared and rotated if necessary. We have reasoned from first principles and have relied on libsodium for executing the actual cryptographic operations. If you have specific concerns with this, please write to security@ente.io, we would love to engage in a conversation. Wrapped keys are sent to clients only after verifying a user's email address and 2FA (if configured). This is similar to what most other encrypted storage providers do. 2. The extra layer of authentication was added to serve as an implicit second factor. This ensures that even if your email is compromised, an attacker cannot gain access to an auth-token and trigger API calls that could corrupt your data. Both your email and password have to be compromised for them to authenticate against our servers. 3. If by your password being compromised you mean that all of your encryption keys have been compromised, you will have to re-encrypt and re-upload all of your data. It is difficult to rotate a file key without actually re-encrypting the file. 4. These are seasoned engineers who understand and have used high level crypto libraries to build secure infrastructure at a few unicorns. --- ToS: 1. We keep it around just to help users recover their data in case they were attacked. 2. I believe that we should be able to offer a takeout for the data that was not in violation of our ToS, but I would like to speak to our lawyers before confirming this. :)
• satyamkapoor 5y ago
  Super excited for this one.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• olah_1 5y ago
  you have a warning during sign up that says “you will lose everything if you forget your password”. naturally this is off-putting to most normal people. any plans to implement a social-recovery system like we see in the ethereum world? if i can share photos with friends, i should be able to use those friends to recover my account too.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Sorry for the off-putting text. We do offer a recoveryKey that can be shared with your friends and rotated if necessary. As long as you have access to either your password or your recoveryKey, you will be able to decrypt your data.
• surfsvammel 5y ago
  I like the look of this, and I’ll keep watch on it. But, all the negative comments here (even those which are well founded) really is discouraging. Must be absolutely horrifying to post your product on Show HN
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Thank you! :) The point of this post was to be critiqued, and we think everyone has their hearts in the right place.
• yasuocidal 5y ago
  Can it be linked to a personal server? I have been doing backup ( over SFTP ) to a rasberry pi with an external HDD for storage. So far its great but i can not view the photos, i have to download them to view them.
• Gargyle 5y ago
  Last time I looked at your servixe it was web only and did in-browser crypto. This is essentially useless for 2 reasons: - There is no effetive Versioning. - Application and Storage-Vendor are the same entity. Therefore if you are hacked or coerced you can push code to me. The only defense is proper version pinning and compiling myself / taking it from FDroid. Photos are among the highest value phone data. I dont take chances here. You do not post the apk signing key prominently on your front page. Your commits are not signed. You host on Microsoft owned Github. Why would I trust you? This seems like yolo-development.
• joshmn 5y ago
  Super cool. Did you roll your own storage solution or are you using one of the many cloud providers? If the latter, which one? I ask because I've done a ton of work in optimizing costs in this area (at large scales), and as the top comment mentioned, $15 is kind of steep for 1TB.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Hey, we're currently using two S3 compliant storage providers (Backblaze and Scaleway). I would love to talk more about how we could reduce our pricing. Please let me know if I can reach out to you over the email mentioned on your HN profile. Thanks!
    • joshmn 5y ago
      More than welcome to!
      • dddw 5y ago
        Oh please do share some nice tips in this regard
• pkursawe 5y ago
  No thanks. My interest in cloud based e2e services is at 0%. I want a local only, AI based photo (video) solution and I am willing to pay good money for it (100/year) if: - its extendable via plugin system - integrates well into Windows Explorer, Finder, Browser, Media Servers - might be open source to fix bugs myself
• Shank 5y ago
  I'll bite. I think you've got a really really promising product here. The one thing I'd add is that at least from initial testing, the iOS app doesn't detect and offer to backup nested albums. Specifically, I have an album with another album nested inside, and then another three albums nested inside that. The first album and second album contain no photos, but the 3rd level down does, and the app doesn't see them. Other than that, I think you've got a really seriously good product here. libsodium + XChaCha20 is really really good in terms of encryption technology. You've picked all of the right things! Well done :)
  • Gargyle 5y ago
    But forgotten to sign commits and establish a trust chain.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    We hadn't tested out nested albums scenario you pointed out yet, will get this fixed. Thank you for the feedback! :)
• Rume 5y ago
  I really love your product
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Is this encrypted at rest as well? Can you recover the data in case of a loss without seeing the data? Good project, really well done, browsing the GitHub a bit.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Thanks! The data is encrypted once it leaves your device. Not sure what you mean by a data "loss" here. If it's about the customer losing access to their password, as long as they have access to their recoveryKey, they will be able to sign in and change their password. If it's about something else, please let me know.
    • egberts1 5y ago
      Ummmm, data at rest is to mean that the photo remains encrypted on the server's hard drive after power off.
• 71a54xd 5y ago
  Very excited to see the source!
• judge2020 5y ago
  Off-topic, but why is the color for regular text on HN text posts so light? For comments, it indicates a downvoted comment, but seemingly all text posts are this grey color.
  • detaro 5y ago
    AFAIK to discourage people from using them, it's preferred that you submit links. (I think they also get ranked worse)
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  I'm curious what challenges you've faced on iOS -- for example, has Apple made it difficult to implement background sync?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    We are still facing challenges with the reliability of background syncs on iOS. There is a threat of the OS blocking our background tasks altogether and we end up having to be very conservative when it comes to uploading data in the background. Which a lot of times results in 0 files getting synced until the app is in the foreground. These constraints don't seem to apply to Apple Photos though.
• gauthamzz 5y ago
  I have been using ente.io for few months now. It does what i want, to back up my photos. AI and all is something i personally don't care much about. But i would love to have location clustering. Pretty happy with it.
• iknowstuff 5y ago
  I tried it, but unfortunately the complete lack of auto-categorization in all of those e2ee photo storage apps renders them unusable for anyone with a large library. Ente is not the first one to do this, there are many others with similarly lacking UX, like MEGA. Both Apple Photos and Google Photos: 1. have easy search by location on a map of the world. 2. allow browsing to any date in an instant. 3. index photos by objects/faces and allow for instant searching - Apple even does it on-device. Also, frankly, I don't trust you to stay around for long, so I would appreciate the option to store encrypted photos on a cloud of my choosing that I already pay for, with a separate subscription for using your app. Not sure what the Venn diagram of <cares about privacy>, <willing to pay for your storage>, <needs excellent browsing experience> looks like. Looking forward to an app which works for people with large libraries. :)
  • vages 5y ago
    All the features you mention are already addressed in the original post as planned future developments. Knowing that they are planned makes me put my trust more in Ente than in Mega (which I use as an alternative to Dropbox and am very satisfied with). Not that there’s anything wrong with confirming interest in their planned features; I’m just pointing Ente’s plans out for anyone who scrolls right to the comments. As for possible bankruptcy, you can never be too certain, but it’s easier to stay in business with Indian costs of living than US. (The company is located in India.)
  • dotBen 5y ago
    Have you tried the Synology Photos app (https://www.synology.com/en-global/DSM70/SynologyPhotos https://www.synology.com/en-global/DSM70/SynologyPhotos [1]) While it does have some kinks it's surprisingly good and has the features you are looking for in a locally hosted/publicly available option. You do have to buy one of their NAS's however. I have moved over to this partly for privacy and partly due to cost (I produce way too many photos per year to store them economically at Google) [1] fyi this is the reasonably 'new' instantiation as linked to here, they EOL'd the very old, different app of the same name from their v old NAS's. Adding that here in case anyone has or buys an old NAS, you may get the old version of the app - I think you need a NAS with a decent processor to perform the face detection etc.
• ukverwwrttyv 5y ago
  Is there a 20GB plan please?
• d1lanka 5y ago
  Neat. Some UVP / Headlines to split test: 1. Keep your memories yours. 2. Safeguard your memories from prying eyes. 3. Don't let big tech creep on your memories. 4. Keep your memories private. 5. Block creepy algorithms from spying on your life. I like the dynamic sub headline - perhaps test the following variation on that: protect your {memories} from creepy algorithms
  • istingray 5y ago
    Yes and work this into your pricing / tiers. Charging per GB just turns my photos into data. It's not data to me. It's memories, my life, my eyes.
• oyebenny 5y ago
  I am not using this. Sketch.
• istingray 5y ago
  Thank you! As someone who as of a week ago is hardcore switching from Apple to Linux, I applaud you. I've purchased a 16" MBP, both Airpod models, iPhone, and iPad in the last 24 months. Now on to System76! Whatever the past is, I believe there's a new market in 2021 for Apple-switchers that will unleash new funds for companies like yours. De-Google movement will pale in comparison to this in terms of economics. Looking into signing up just on principle. Non-E2EE encrypted, closed source, without ability to self host is a dead end, why put a penny more towards it. Open source options may suck today but it's the only path forward. Thank you for what you do - whether your company succeeds or simply inspires 1,000 new companies in its place. What are your plans for Linux support? Your site only mentions Android and iOS, I see electron mentioned, but again I'm one of these Apple switchers, I have no idea what I'm doing really but I'm willing to pay for solutions. Take my money!!!
  • saladuh 5y ago
    > without the ability to self host is a dead end Indeed, this is why you would be foolish to use Ente as you cannot self host it. At any point they can choose to lock things down, make their clients closed source, etc etc, and you'd once again need to spend time jumping ship because you'd need to find a new ecosystem. Ente is just convient and is coming at the right time (hence the massive amount of upvotes) but does not give you total control nor your freedom back. Using them instead of something you can self host is just running in circles. > open source may suck... What? This was extremely random and out of place with the rest of your comment. What you really want, if you care about self hosting and all the other stuff you mentioned, is Nextcloud[0]. And if you don't want to self host yet, you'd be better off hosting Nextcloud in a VPS, even on Linode you can just 1 click deploy a Nextcloud instance in their app store[1]. That way you don't become dependent on a service you cannot control/deploy yourself. [0] https://github.com/nextcloud https://github.com/nextcloud [1] https://www.linode.com/marketplace/apps/linode/nextcloud/ https://www.linode.com/marketplace/apps/linode/nextcloud/
    • istingray 5y ago
      Yes, Ente needs to have self-hosting on their roadmap or I won't support it. > What? This was extremely random and out of place with the rest of your comment. Edited to say "open source options may suck today" Thanks for giving me the chance to explain. My comment here may give more context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28321460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28321460 I've tried NextCloud, even 1-click hosted by a third party. For all the power, it's not built with me in mind, it seems to treat my photos like files/data, not like photos. I want to pay money for that extra oomph, for algorithms, searchability (about $10/month for my photos seems about right), and I want to pay money so I don't have to pay with my time. Is there something I can buy that's on top of NextCloud?
• novok 5y ago
  How would you compare yourself to Mylio? Mylio is closed sourced & a $10/month subscription, but doesn't have a cloud component to it, so you can have unlimited amounts of photos. You have to manage your desktop computers yourself although. It also lets you store photos E2E encrypted on onedrive, amazon drive and google drive.
• tuismuggler 5y ago
  Assuming this is what I have been looking for I would 100% purchase a one off licence for self hosting should your team ever think about that as an option. Even if it is just a 2021 version or something along those lines.
• novok 5y ago
  So how is it developing with flutter for an app and why not use it as the base for a desktop app vs. make a web version?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Flutter's GitHub issues seem to suggest that the framework is not yet stable on the web or desktop. Also, we wanted a web version so that customers could check out the product without having to install an app. Coming back to Flutter, I personally have high hopes for the framework. The learning curve is one of the smallest I've experienced and they have managed to create a community that actively contributes to their plug-in ecosystem.
    • novok 5y ago
      How has the developer experience on it been overall? I downloaded the flutter app from github on my machine and it's pretty extensive! I'm kind of surprised you don't have a web target just for convenience sakes, but I see your using some stuff that is more mobile focused for background task management.
• encryptluks2 5y ago
  You know you could just use Jottacloud for a fraction of the price. Also, Google Drive supports multiple encryption providers. I use rclone, and for $99 a year you can get 2TB of storage or more with Google Workspace. I don't understand why this is so expensive when in reality you can get the same from other providers for much cheaper. It isn't like Google Drive has to be unencrypted.
• soheil 5y ago
  Love the idea. What happens if I delete a photo in Photos app on iOS does it get backed up by Ente at any point automatiaclly before it's deleted?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    From our observations, the only way to reliably sync data with remote on iOS is to keep the app in the foreground. The behavior is unpredictable otherwise.
• paraknight 5y ago
  To me, the main selling point of Google Photos is their excellent AI search (yes, I understand the implications). Otherwise, Syncthing covers all of my requirements. Is there any alternative that has this kind of indexing/search?
  • ignoramous 5y ago
    Yes: https://photoprism.app/ https://photoprism.app/
• silasdavis 5y ago
  6
• AliBoukeroui 5y ago
  Interesting but prices is high! Guys if you need to hide sensitive information while screen sharing or video recording, check this https://blurdata.net/ https://blurdata.net/
• godmode2019 5y ago
  I use mega.nz which is E2E and very cheap per GB
• ihndan 5y ago
  congrats! initiate a page [here](https://newdin.com/page/App/21485833 https://newdin.com/page/App/21485833) and ready to chronicle your adventure.
• novok 5y ago
  Another thing to keep in mind with this kind of software is tracking data loss, corruption and deletion. I've used photo management services before, and have had data loss that I can't explain from this year or that year. Did I delete it? Did I do a migration wrong? Did the software silently delete it? I'm not quite sure. What is even worse is you cannot get 'another copy' of these photos from elsewhere, because they're all unique. Having a 'recycle bin' and an ability to see the history of photo deletion, modifications and imports can be useful in tracking down what causes data loss. Also having masters accessible in a simple plain directory is essential in being able to audit that the software is working correctly, can be backed up in a simple manner and if your service goes belly up, is easy to migrate from. Another issue is bitrot. Your desktop can bitrot modify a photo, and then your photo management software detects this as the 'new version' and destroys the original good version. You have to make sure you mitigate this by storing a hash on import and restoring to the original hashed version.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Sharing some of the steps we've taken at ente to reduce the probability of such events: - All files uploaded to ente are versioned and older versions are available for 60 days from the day you updated them. - File deletions are performed only as a function of user action. Deleted files are again recoverable for 60 days. - Two copies of each file are maintained with separate storage providers. Both of these providers offer 11x9 durability. - For each uploaded file, we compare the number of bytes uploaded from the client to that received on the server and request a reupload in case there is a mismatch (to be replaced with a hash check). We understand your concerns and will continue to invest in steps that improve data integrity and durability.
• tuttu 5y ago
  Congrats on the launch! Are you guys are from Kerala by any chance? എന്റെ ("ente") means "mine" in Malayalam.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Yes, I am from Kerala. :)
• ludjer 5y ago
  For the privacy centered people Synology has a nas that does all of this and more.
• michaelcampbell 5y ago
  Does it do the auto person/object/place recognition + tagging + search?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Sorry, not yet.
• tw04 5y ago
  What file formats are supported? RAW files? Any plans to integrate with apps like Lightroom/darktable/etc?
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Currently we support image/* and video/* formats. We don't have plans to integrate with professional photo editing tools yet.
• cdrini 5y ago
  I feel like I'm missing something with these E2E encrypted products. I would _never_ recommend one of these to my family. What happens if they lose their password? Suddenly all of their photos are physically impossible to recover? What if the primary account holder dies? I would never trust a physical storage locker that said "if you lose your key we're going to set your stuff on fire". I _do_ place some amount of trust in the owners to potentially get access to the contents of my storage in extreme situations. Making that physically impossible is terrifying.
  • suhlig 5y ago
    I leave the handling of those situations to Lastpass. My wife and kids may request access to my password locker, and if I don't reject within 30 days the locker is opened to them.
    • cdrini 5y ago
      That's an ingenious system.
    • vishnumohandas 5y ago
      Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea Lastpass had such a feature. I guess this means that your family already has access to your decryption keys and the Lastpass servers are merely restricting access to the encrypted data for the 30 day time period.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    In addition to your password, you have a recoveryKey that can be shared with your family members. As long as you've access to either your password or your recoveryKey, you will be able to decrypt your data. A shared recoveryKey can be revoked and a new one generated if necessary. (We don't have a hook for this on the UI yet, but our system is designed to support a key rotation).
    • cdrini 5y ago
      Nice! I appreciate that this is something that you've looked into. I'm still wary of the core tech here, because it's just too powerful. I'm personally ok with my photos being discovered by family many generations into the future. Or by random archivists. So much of the history we have access to is the result of discoveries of people's miscellany. Moving into an age where people's photos/messages/letters will auto-self-destruct by default -- the opposite of their physical counter-parts -- is scary to me.
• stared 5y ago
  Is there an example gallery we can check (without the need to log in, or upload own photos)? Is there a local backup? (Say, in the pessimistic case of Ente going down for any reason.)
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Sorry, we don't have a sample gallery yet. :( We do have a local backup tool that will sync your uploaded files to a local folder: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest
    • stared 5y ago
      Thank you! And is it possible to show publicly selected galleries/photos? I see only on per-person basis via email. Right now I have an inconsistent combination of Dropbox (mostly archive), Zenfolio (public), and FB (some public) - and I am looking for a better solution (aesthetic & long lasting).
• rhindi 5y ago
  Have you considered using FHE for analyzing the photos encrypted?
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  The first thing I read on the landing page is: "Encrypted backups for your photos and videos" But you show apps with images that for me implies that I can you an application you provide to look at the photos that are stored? I dont think of Google Photo as my backup, though I presume it is that as well, but as a way to look at photos, organize them, do some quick editing, and show the same photo collection on all my devices. Is this mostly pure backup? Is there a means to search for photos per keyword, location, or any other meta data. If I wish to export all photos with the keyword "Good dog" can I do that? If so what all meta data is stored and can I adjust what I want to be revealed or not?
• moonlightop 5y ago
  213
• reschlukas10 5y ago
  I think the idea is great, I'm looking for a E2EE photo service already for a long time. Although I'm not a security expert, I have some worries about your security concept. 1. When the user wants to change the password, all photos&videos have to be reencrypted and uploaded which is absurd for most people because ~100GB of photo-storage is not an exception these days anymore. 2. When your database is leaked, it is very easy to compare with leaked passwords, putting users with reused passwords in great risk. My proposal: Masterkey: Random key encrypted with users password Device A creates a masterkey and short-living rolling keys. Device B creates private/pub keys. If the user wants to add another device (B), he has to enter the current rolling key (from A). Device B sends its public key to Device A, encrypted with rolling key. Device A sends back masterkey encrypted with Device B public key. en/decryption-key = masterkey decrypted with users password With this method a database leak would be much less of a problem and a password change much less painful.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    1. A user can change their password without re-encrypting any of the uploaded files. Changing the password only changes the encryptedMasterKey that is stored on the server. 2. Hashes of passwords are not stored at our server, and email addresses are stored encrypted. You can read more about our key-encryption flow here: https://ente.io/architecture#key-encryption https://ente.io/architecture#key-encryption
    • reschlukas10 5y ago
      1. Oh sorry, thanks for the clarification 2. How is the email address encrypted? Why would an attacker need a stored hash? In a database leak situation it's possible to get to the data with only a valid email-password combination or am I missing something ? There is no information from a registered device necessary for the decryption right ?
• calltrak 5y ago
  I think we will need to re-imagine re-jig and pivot or image file sharing site https://picc.io https://picc.io
• timsayshey 5y ago
  One of the biggest ways I use iCloud Photos is as a screensaver on my Apple TV. As I am considering alternatives to Apple products due to privacy concerns, I am looking for something that has screensaver integrations with Android TV and/or Apple TV. It seems all open source Google Photos alternatives don't have a screensaver app for any TV platform.
  • vishnumohandas 5y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion, we already have this on our roadmap[1]. [1]: https://roadmap.ente.io/tv-app-p-1257/ https://roadmap.ente.io/tv-app-p-1257/
• benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Why is your app not available on the App Store in France?
• felixg3 5y ago
  I highly appreciate this project and I will watch it. Once I travel back to India again, I'll knock on the office door (its like 300m away from my usual place ;). Respect btw for being one tech startup that finally has an address on their website.
• thunkshift1 5y ago
  Excellent work guys! If you can make your service cheaper and keep your promises, you have a winner.