23 ms·

Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative

964 points by madmax108 3y ago

Jack5500 3y ago
This looks great and the self hosting instructions are fine too. But I think the Apps don‘t support using your own server yet, right?
- Maledictus 3y ago
  Do you have a link to the self hosting instructions? edit: found it: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hosting https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hostin...
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, not yet. Currently you've to pass build time flags[1] to modify the endpoint. Providing an option in-app to change the endpoint is under discussion[2]. [1]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/server/RUNNING.md#docker https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/server/RUNNING.md#... [2]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504
franky47 3y ago
Their local approach to ML is to be praised, I just wish we had different terms for Edge (cloud servers running close to users) vs Edge (end user devices).
- rmnclmnt 3y ago
  Hey Franky47, glad to see our latest discussion still on-going on the edge semantics!
- philips 3y ago
  https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/
danlugo92 3y ago
Great now I just need Google's export/data migration feature to actually work.
- roozbeh18 3y ago
  use google takeout.
  - VladimirGolovin 3y ago
    I'd guess that the emphasis in OP's reply was on 'actually work'.
    - akkartik 3y ago
      In case it's useful, here's the solution that worked for me the last time I tried it: 1. Takeout to Google Drive :grimace: 2. rclone from Google Drive But I do this around once a year, and the last few times there are new roadblocks every time.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, you can use Ente's desktop app[1] to import the archives you export via Google Takeout. The app stitches together metadata with their original files so you'll have your library in one-piece. [1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop https://ente.io/download/desktop
Aeolun 3y ago
Interesting I’d never even heard of this before. I was fairly certain I’d seen all the common open source solutions, but apparently not.
- infogulch 3y ago
  It seems to have been open sourced very recently.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Hey, one of the folks working on Ente here. Our clients were always open source, we published the code to our server[1] into a monorepo[2] just yesterday. [1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ [2]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente https://github.com/ente-io/ente
    - jpeeler 3y ago
      Do said clients have the ability to specify a custom endpoint? Obviously with the clients being open source a rebuild can fix that, but hoping that's not required.
      - vishnumohandas 3y ago
        Not yet, there's a discussion about this @ https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504
manmal 3y ago
I’d be interested in reports from people who have used or are using Ente for self-hosting.
- infogulch 3y ago
  There's a note on the server readme about self hosting: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hosting https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hostin...
- arendtio 3y ago
  I tried Ente a while ago but decided I liked a self-hosted Photoprism instance better.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Hey, are there any specific features in Photoprism that you liked better?
    - arendtio 3y ago
      It has been a while and Ente probably progressed too, but I remember that I looked multiple times at Ente. However, one feature that I love about PhotoPrism is the performance. I have about 120.000 pictures on my Raspberry Pi and for the most part, the experience is flued (just try opening a picture and hold the right arrow key on your keyboard (just try it in the demo)). I have had local solutions that had problems with that amount of pictures and this one works via network. Other features like face recognition, automatic labels, or the map view are cool too. Photoprism has a feature list [1] and a demo [2]. [1]: https://www.photoprism.app/features https://www.photoprism.app/features [2]: https://try.photoprism.app/ https://try.photoprism.app/
      - vishnumohandas 3y ago
        Thank you for sharing the demo, it was simple to experience the product. This is a reminder for us to provide one as well :) Ente now has everything except cross-platform face-recognition (it's desktop only right now), labels and EXIF edits. The first two are being worked on, we should have v1s ready by Q3. Polishing will take a bit longer. The long-press-to-skim-through albums is very neat, will add this.
jacques-noris 3y ago
I’m looking exactly for something like that. But 2.99 Euro a month is too expensive, when even Apple only wants 99 cents.
- dietr1ch 3y ago
  Apple's cloud probably gets a better deal on their datacenter's costs and already charged you through your device and app store tax.
- davidodio 3y ago
  Honestly, everyone can do what they want with their money but working in tech and being on a site like this and seeing this comment makes me really sad We all want cool things, secure, where our data is protected and we are not the product, but 3 euros a month is too much? No wonder big tech gets bigger and the rich get richer. The silicon valley VC funded feifdoms become more entrenched and, in the end, we all suffer for it
  - jdthedisciple 3y ago
    I agree. Over a 10 year horizon, the difference between 1€/m and 3€/m is a mere 240€. That's like 2-5 extra work hours over the course of 10 years! I seriously don't get how someone working in tech would fear bankruptcy over this.
  - jacques-noris 3y ago
    There are much cheaper alternatives to Ente. Filen.io, which is also E2E encrypted, for example costs 200 GB montly for 1.99 Euro. Its difficult to compete with iCloud if your service costs three times as much.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      Filen is perhaps cheaper because they are storing lesser replicas. It is not financially feasible to provide 3 replicas at their price points, unless they're running their own storage infrastructure, which doesn't seem to be the case. Now Ente could of course choose to keep lesser replicas and offer "lite" plans that are more affordable. But we would rather not complicate our pricing structure right now. Understanding buckets of GBs is hard enough, and adding tiers on top would worsen the experience for most. All of that said, Filen does seem like a really cool project for storing files.
bovem 3y ago
The UI looks great. Couldn't find any info about self hosting but I did find a feature request in GitHub Issues [1]. I guess I'll stick with Immich [2] for now. Edit: Found a Reddit AMA [3] from the CEO and I'm happy to know that self hosting is a goal in the long run. [1] https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/141 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/141 [2] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/116fx9v/ama_im_vishnu_ceo_of_enteio_e2ee_alternative_to/j96yu1p/ https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/116fx9v/ama_im_vi...
- mavamaarten 3y ago
  I'm really happy with immich. It's amazing how well everything works and how feature-complete it is given how relatively young the project is and fast-moving development is going. I self-host an instance and do a nightly backup with duplicati to cloud storage. The only downside for me is that there's a new release almost every couple of days, with a message that the backend is out of date. Which is both a pro and a con, but for me it's anxiety inducing because there's breaking changes sometimes and you can't just auto-update. A pace like Home Assistant feels more comfortable.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    I've been looking at immich and seen similar concerns about the update regularity, but that is due to it being a relatively young project. That it has come so far quickly is a good sign, as long as the release cycle becomes slower and more regimented as it approaches a certain level of maturity.
  - xrd 3y ago
    Me too. It is frustrating to see an update to the app and then have the app indicate it is out of date. But generally it still works, and upgrading the server has always been nothing more than changing the docker image tag and restarting. It's an incredible project.
    - f3d46600-b66e 3y ago
bobek 3y ago
Uh, never came across them. Though Immich and damselfly were the only really usable.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  For self-hosting, there's Photoprism[1] as well. Ente's strength lies in end-to-end encryption[2] and its cloud[3] offering so you don't have to worry about reliability. So if self-hosting is what you're after, Immich, Photoprism and Damselfly (TIL!) are perhaps better designed to serve your needs. [1]: https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism [2]: https://ente.io/architecture https://ente.io/architecture [3]: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
I want a self hosted photo backup service for family that doesn't need 4gb ram. I do not need heavy transcoding or stuff. Just a place for people to dump their photos on. I have looked at some alternatives but they are all resource hungry from respective docs. If pixelfed can run on php and limited resources , why not some google photos alternative? Is there something lightweight that let's multiple people to share their photos together. I have attempted to use pixelfed but that's stupid as it only let's 4 photos per post. Urrgh.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Syncthing? I just have my photos folder synced to my NAS.
- izacus 3y ago
  Grab a Synology NAS and run their Synology Photos software? It has almost all the features of Google Photos, self hosted and very little maintenance.
- eklavya 3y ago
  What exactly would you want? Would you be willing to pay for it? How much?
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    Set up a software on a vps that uses s3 backend. People would upload, backup, share their photos and media. Its not in a single place so I can't use local sync and stuff.
    - eklavya 3y ago
      Ok, the reason I asked is that I have been searching for a photos solution myself. I am not sure if it's a god idea to pursue and if there is actually a market for it. If there is, maybe not a bad idea to explore a bit.
- bo0tzz 3y ago
SillyUsername 3y ago
End to end encrypted AND encrypted at rest? Otherwise all the staff can see your photos too...
- lojewalo 3y ago
  It appears so (using libsodium primitives): https://ente.io/architecture/ https://ente.io/architecture/
- shawnz 3y ago
  End to end encrypted implies encrypted at rest. Maybe you're thinking they meant "encrypted in transit"?
  - SillyUsername 3y ago
    I did, thanks.
robertwt7 3y ago
The best decision for me is still to buy synology and store everything locally on Synology photos. No subscription, expandable storage, and full privacy. It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway
- flakeoil 3y ago
  > It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway I think many people forget about this. They pay for a monthly or yearly cloud storage subscription, but forget they have to pay this amount every year for the rest of their lifes if they want to keep their data. That's why I also use a Synology disk. I also have an additional lifetime subscription at a cloud storage provider (which pays back within 3.5 years). Sure they can disappear after say 10 years, but at least I have the Synology and I got a much better deal during those 10 years and can look for something else. Another thing, don't upload all pics you take immediately, only sync after you have cleaned out all the bad photos and near duplicates.
  - yau8edq12i 3y ago
    To be fair, the underlying storage of the synology won't last forever. A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. You also need to pay for the electricity necessary to keep your server running 24/7, if you want a service level equivalent to a cloud storage service. All this adds up. The scales will probably stay in favor of the self-hosting options, but you have to take all this into account for a fair comparison.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Plus time spent upgrading, every so often.
    - diggan 3y ago
      > A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. It's unlikely that people are using SSDs for the main storage on a NAS though, commonly just used for smaller parts (think metadata in ZFS-land for example), not for the main storage. Precisely for that reason.
reacharavindh 3y ago
Does it do background sync on iOS?. There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. “Leave the app open for it to sync” Photos are the only reason I pay for the 2 TB plan on iCloud. I don’t need all the photos on device all the time. If I can _reliably_ stash them in remote servers and have a way to access them on-demand on the phone, I can take the money I give Apple and pay for the app that enables me. But only if I don’t have to remember to open the app every now and then and watch it sync my photos. It needs to be as easy to use as Apple Photos..
- soziawa 3y ago
  > There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. Apple doesn't allow background execution for third party apps. Can't increase service revenue if you allow competition.
  - qweqwe14 3y ago
    They don't "allow" it, but most apps that need background execution just ask permission for geolocation tracking and pretend to use it, for example iSH[1]. There are a few activities that the app can do to prevent itself from being suspended when it goes out of focus, like playing sound, geolocation etc. [1] https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-544338096 https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-54433...
    - stavros 3y ago
      And you're at the mercy of Apple deciding to remove your app for violation of the terms when it gets more popular. This is what the EU wants to fix with its new directives that level the anticompetitive playing field.
      - qweqwe14 3y ago
        Apple can remove your app for whatever reason anyway, pretty sure every single company has that clause buried in their ToS somewhere. It's not like they constantly exercise it, but it's more for "just in case we really want to"
vishnumohandas 3y ago
Hey, Ente's CEO here. We had opensourced our server[1] yesterday, which is perhaps why we are on the front page. Stoked to be here Ente had launched on HN[2] a while ago and has been sustainably growing since. We took the feedback from our Show HN seriously and have since - undergone a cryptography audit [3] - published our replication strategy [4] - added requested features (family plans, collaborative albums and links, ...) [5][6][7] - made progress with Edge ML [8][9] - built a CLI for incremental data exports (our desktop app supports this as well) [10] - and in general matured as a company [11] Also, apart from our source code, our Figma[12] is public as well. If you've feedback on what we could do better, please do share, it'd be very helpful. And if you've any questions, do ask, I'd love to make myself useful. [1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439 [3]: https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/ https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/ [4]: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability [5]: https://ente.io/blog/family-plans https://ente.io/blog/family-plans [6]: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ [7]: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ [8]: https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ [9]: https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/ https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/ [10]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli https://github.com/ente-io/cli [11]: https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/ https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/ [12]: https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visual-Design https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visua...
- bo0tzz 3y ago
  This is awesome to see, congratulations from the Immich team on building an amazing app!
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Thank you! We're fans of Immich!
    - 3y ago
Daviey 3y ago
I'm looking forward to trying our the self-hosted option, but I will say the transparency they've provided to their reliability model for hosted is awesome. https://ente.io/reliability/ https://ente.io/reliability/ Compare this to the approach of CSP's, their model is mostly around "trust me bro", and even on enterprise/commercial terms the transparency they provide is poor. I would love to see this sort of transparency by service providers in the future.
hum3hum3 3y ago
I have just been working with photoprism. Ente looks nice but going to stay with photoprism as I like the go binary and can build features I want.
pierrelf 3y ago
How does this compare to Nextcloud photos? Looking forward to running this at home in the future :)
daeros 3y ago
NAS is so damn expensive, I'm still planning on building a PLEX media server myself and using it was way. Those QNAP things pushing 2500 for the 4k transcode things it's like OK at that point I can build something myself that has way more of the features I'd want and have way more customizability.
- notum 3y ago
  Buy a Mac Mini (older generations work well) for the actual transcoding, and use NAS as a, well, NAS.
- haunter 3y ago
  Yeah, I went with mini PCs myself. Have a Lenovo M720 Tiny and a Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro (they are virtually almost the same). You can change parts, there are ample ports available and you can pretty much run any OS you want. In the Dell you can even put 3 storage drives (1x 2.5" and 2x M2) so perfect for an SSD NAS.
- Timber-6539 3y ago
  Pretty sure the Intel NUCS(now manufactured by ASUS)/other mini PCs with Intel chips can do 4k transcodes easy.
  - diggan 3y ago
    This. My 4K 10-bit HDR viewing is served from a Intel Celeron N4505 dual-core processor (2.0 GHz/2.9 GHz) + integrated GPU that is running TrueNAS and a bunch of other services + Jellyfin for the actual media. Works perfectly fine.
- layer8 3y ago
  The sensible thing is to separate NAS from transcoding. Use NAS only for storage, and solve your computational needs with a mini PC or even just a RasPi.
- brnt 3y ago
  NAS's aren't expensive, 4K@10bit is.
ulrischa 3y ago
Price is too high
terseryedu 3y ago
I typically self-host but I'm happy to outsource if the service is end-to-end encrypted and has no lock-in. Now that Ente has open source server, and incremental backup, I'm in! etesync is the other service I'm happy to pay for.
therealmarv 3y ago
Ente Auth https://auth.ente.io/ https://auth.ente.io/ was my go to choice for migrating from Authy. It supports importing and exporting (so no dead end unlike Authy) and I can see the second factor on my desktop without reaching my phone (through Ente Auth website). I've exported from a rooted phone from Authy->Aegis->Ente Auth. I have no need for their main product but they are building amazing software!
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  oooh this is interesting - I'd like to self host this...
  - ffpip 3y ago
    It is e2ee, so using their server would be the same (unless you are hosting just cuz you want to :) )
  - therealmarv 3y ago
    probably better to look into this project? https://github.com/Bubka/2FAuth https://github.com/Bubka/2FAuth
- physicles 3y ago
  Thanks, this looks fantastic. I just installed the mobile app and will be migrating off Authy as well. Don’t have a lot of faith in Authy’s longevity after they discontinued the desktop apps, and the dead end is an issue too.
- archon810 3y ago
  There's no landing page to describe what the heck I'm signing up for. This company makes some weird UX decisions.
  - mortos 3y ago
    From the response I got from the CEO, I'm assuming the expected discovery process is for users to start with the phone app.
albertzeyer 3y ago
Hm, maybe I make too much photos/videos, but my current collection already has more than 2TB, and 20$/month/2TB seems a bit too high. Btw, in contrast, Google has 100$/year/2TB, so a bit less. (https://one.google.com/about/plans https://one.google.com/about/plans) However, I am lucky that almost all my photos/videos at Google Photos were either uploaded when it was still not counted towards the storage (and that did not change for the previously uploaded media) or made with some older Pixel phone, where photos/videos in high quality were also not counted, i.e. unlimited storage. My current phone is a Pixel 5, which still has this feature, but it's unfortunately the last Pixel phone where they had this, and support of this phone ended September 2023. I'm not sure what to do when I cannot use this phone anymore. Change my habit to make less photos/videos? Or just self-host. I could maybe also filter the media a bit, but I'm somewhat too lazy to do that, and I hope that some AI could maybe anyway do this automatically for me, and I don't really like to delete things, even if they seem maybe not so great quality right now, but it seems like they still might have some value, and storage is cheap.
melicerte 3y ago
Ente verification code email is considered dangerous by Google mail. "Similar messages were used to steal people's personal information. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information." So you know
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  We've spend time debugging this and talking to our service provider's[1] support, but haven't been able to figure out the root cause. If there are any experts reading this, we'd be grateful if you could let us know what we're doing wrong here. We're in the middle of switching over to SES because they are landing flawlessly into Gmail inboxes, but it would still be good to understand what we could have done better. [1]: https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail
  - acejam 3y ago
    The problem is your service provider, Zoho. Zoho is used by a massive amount of spammers. As a result, many email blocking and verification services will flag any MX records that lead back to Zoho.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      Thanks for the information. This is sad if true. In my limited experience Zoho been an honest business to deal with.
  - ZohoMailSupport 3y ago
    Hello Vishnu, Truly sorry that you are facing this trouble and we are here to help. Please do share your Zoho account details and an elaborate description of the issue you are facing here - https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/contact.html?src=pd-menu https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/contact.html?src=pd-menu. Or you may also write an email to support@zeptomail.com. Rest assured, we will get to the bottom of it and help in resolving the same. Looking forward to your email. - Regards, Zoho Cares.
Faizan711 3y ago
Isn't the pricing a bit on the upper side, It could have been lower like similar to google one
- teekert 3y ago
  You mean where part is paid for with your data? ;) (sorry low hanging fruit)
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Google has ways to monetize your data. If I were them, I would be attaching a price tag to cloud storage simply to not seem suspicious :) Most of our costs come from keeping 3 replicas of your data: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability We could perhaps reduce the replicas from 3 (2 hot, 1 cold) to 2 (1 hot, 1 cold), and lower our costs, but it's not something we've actively thought about. Also, our prices are designed such that the business can run sustainably, and we believe that's the best way to build Ente, where the expectation is for the company to outlive its customers.
adithyassekhar 3y ago
Why is local on device ml a pro when compared to google photos? Part of the value for photos for me is the fact that they do all the ml work ahead of time on their servers and not my tiny battery powered gadget. I can open it in on any device and search any photo instantly.
- lakpan 3y ago
  You plug your phone in at night, so it probably has 7 hours a day to do that work. iOS does the same. They cannot do it on the server because they don’t have access to them.
  - adithyassekhar 3y ago
    I am aware of the why, it's claimed to be e2e. But then it shouldn't be touted as a "pro" when compared to Google Photos which the site's home page is asking me to do. Hence the question. As for iOS, Apple controls the whole stack. Whatever ML they do, they do it only on devices capable of that level of ML. I can buy the cheapest android I can find with a 10 year old mediatek processor and search for pictures of my dog and it'll show it. There is a value to doing the heavy things on a heavy hitting server.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      Hey, one of the folks building Ente here. We have to pick our battles, and we currently aren't looking at serving customers on low-end devices. But if they access Ente on a laptop, the indexing will run there, and the computed indexes will sync to their low-end devices, e2ee. Also, given that compute on smart phones is getting better and cheaper with every iteration, we believe it's best to bet on Edge ML for the long term.
      - adithyassekhar 3y ago
        Thanks for clarifying; you guys have built something amazing and also made it open source, which you didn't have to. Please don't take my comments as an attack or as demotivating. I wanted to share my view as a regular person, sadly for whom absolute privacy is a feature and not a necessity, which I think is the vast majority. Good luck; hope you guys figure this out. A fellow Malayali :)
prmoustache 3y ago
I don't think this service is End-to-End encrypted the way we would like to think it is. If you can share pictures with friends by just giving them a link to a page, the server app has the encryption keys too.
- icar 3y ago
  The link contains the needed keys. It's explained in their FAQ.
  - thisgoodlife 3y ago
    If the link contains the keys, does that mean the server can also see these keys?
    - jeltz 3y ago
      Nope, the secret is in the url fragment. Of course this means you need to trust that they do not change the JS code so that it steaks your keys.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, details on how we're providing E2EE with links has been documented here: https://ente.io/blog/building-shareable-links/ https://ente.io/blog/building-shareable-links/ Some bits of the blog post are outdated, since the feature has matured since then. But the implementation details are roughly the same. TL;DR: The keys are added to the URL fragment (the part that follows the #), and these fragments are not accessible to the server.
- upofadown 3y ago
  I think a better term for what is happening here is "client side encryption". That reduces the chances of getting things confused with messaging, which is a different sort of a problem. This at least has a user accessible cryptographic identity, so end to end secure key exchange is possible. So if you really wanted to call it end to end encrypted, it would be legitimate to do so. I suspect that the motivation here is still mostly marketing driven.
stockhorn 3y ago
I gave the webapp and android app a quick test. It looks nice, but it is still not as smooth as google photos or similar. E.g. the photos are not preloaded fully and I still need to wait a few milliseconds to get a photo fully rendered. (Also there is some white flickering when swiping through the photos on android) I wonder how the big players do it. Of course they have a lot more manpower, but maybe the also have some clever caching/rendering lib..? Kudos for doing this and opensourcing everything. I really appreciate this and I might stick around.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Thanks for checking us out! We currently keep 2 versions of a photo - one the original, and the other a downscaled copy to be rendered as the thumbnail. Unlike non-e2ee providers, we cannot transcode and serve optimised images on the fly, when it's faster to downscale than serve the original image over network. What we could do is 1. Intelligently preload original photos when their thumbnails are in scope 2. Store an extra version of the photo, whose resolution is between that of the thumbnail and the original, and perform #1 over those Sorry about the flicker, will fix it.
  - stockhorn 3y ago
    Ah this totally makes sense! Do you use progressive JPEGs already when opening the full image? If only there was a progressive encoding which lets you get a perfectly downscaled (not blurry) version of an image by just reading parts of the file.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      TIL about progressive JPEGs, will check it out, thanks! We currently render the thumbnail first (in most cases it's available locally) and then replace it with the original image once fetched from remote, while replicating the zoom and pan operations (if any) performed by the user. So it is "progressive" in some sense, but goes from something like 20% to 100% in one shot. ("20%" is a simplification, the actual value will depend on the resolution of the original image and that of the generated thumbnail, the latter is fixed)
tjoff 3y ago
New to me, looks nice. But I'm a bit perplexed by the lack of functionality regarding group access. You typically want to have a place for your family to manage your photos. A completely separate one for friends etc. Yet I don't see that usecase represented in software such like this (thinking of apps such as Immich, Ente seems quite similar). Managing your own photos is rather trivial in comparison, just need to sync your folder and 90% of the functionality is done. And that is before the usecase of collaborating between participants on a trip. Or letting guests upload pictures for an event (such as a wedding). Such a hassle. From the site: "Sync your library with your partner, and even designate them as an heir to your account." Nice, but not exactly it. > "Can I share my subscription with family and friends? You can add up to 5 family members and share your available storage space with them at no extra cost. Each member will get their own private space, and can only access their own photos." Almost like it goes out of their way to not support this. Seems like such low-hanging fruit. I get that storage costs could become an issue, but in a self-hosting scenario that is not a problem.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, we do support the use cases you mentioned! 1. Album collaboration: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ 2. Photo collection: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ Please let me know if I missed something. Sharing is an important feature for all of us, and we would love to get it right.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    That is great :) I will look into it, from a first glance collaboration seems to only be on a per album basis? Can you have nested albums? For a group of friends / family you'd probably want many tens of albums tracking different trips/events etc.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      We don't support nested albums, yet. Thanks for sharing your use case, will figure out how to best solve for it. (Right now a "stream" of photos within a feed sounds like simpler UX than nested-albums, but will think more)
quicon 3y ago
I'm a customer of Ente since more than a year ago. I transferred my 30K photos from Google Photos without a problem. Very happy with this product. While some functionalities where missing at the beginning (powerful editor, sharing, collaborating, search) the Mobile and desktop apps have improved a lot, and continue to do so. Today, I do not miss Google Photos.
eurekin 3y ago
Does it handle iPhone hdr photos?
contrarian1234 3y ago
I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers. Out of curiosity I checked Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage 9 USD per month gives you 2TB storage (vs. 500GB here) I don't really get what justifies the 4x price (some of the features look like what you can get from a Gallery app like Aves) So it's looking kinda DOA to me. The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule. If Dropbox goes rogue and you need to switch providers.. that doesn't seem like a big deal? It's nice here that you can in theory selfhost and keep using it.. but that doesn't seem like "a big win" either. Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host EDIT: There is a comparison: https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/ https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/ It seems like the added feature boils down to automatically encrypting files. With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host And that's probably better for them, because it's much easier to lose data from your own NAS than it is for a cloud storage provider to do so.
- Sayrus 3y ago
  > I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers. > Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host Which is why they are offering a managed service as well. Even people with the technical skills are not always inclined to selfhost. > With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price Privacy is for criminals and storing CSAM, right? Why would you even want Dropbox at this point, Google Drive is all you need. Unless you wanted to help diagnose your child[1] and unfortunately the photo was synchronized to Drive and flagged. You have every right to expect your photos to stay private. Even if those are just a landscape. Why should you be obligated to have an AI scan them for offending content or scan them to detect who you met and when (surely so they can build a yearly recap for you, how kind!)? Did you ever get consent from everyone on your photos for this sharing and processing? You may not be interested in E2EE or open source, and that's absolutely fine. But you shouldn't actively undermine it by associating encryption and privacy with crimes. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-csam-scanning-account-deletion-investigation https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-cs...
j1nd4L 3y ago
I have been using it for last 1 year. I have been amazed by the fast pace of the development, not many features lacking now compared to Google Photos despite being E2E. Kudos on the Ente team!!
pppoe 3y ago
This looks great. I have been using self hosted next cloud for a while and it is pretty slow in loading image thumbnails under a large folder. I am curious about Ente’s performance.
pard68 3y ago
I had ente for about a year. Does what the label says, but then Proton Drive released support for auto backup of pictures and I switched since pay for Proton and have a few terabytes of space with them.
- afh1 3y ago
  The thing I miss in Proton Drive is being able to move the photos from the sync folder to somewhere else, or otherwise organize them into folders. Not sure if Ente delivers on it, but for now I'm sticking with Proton since I already have a plan that gives me other services. Nice to know about this alternative, though.
esafak 3y ago
I think you would find more success, and ultimately serve your mission better, if you leaned on qualities other than privacy, which consumers unfortunately don't value as much as we might like.
sagz 3y ago
Hi, your plans are capped at 2TB ($200/yr). Any chance to get higher tiers? Looking for 15tb...
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Sorry, we don't support use cases above 6TB right now. This is an arbitrary limitation, it is just that we haven't figured out a sensible price point for larger tiers.
ValentineC 3y ago
The sad thing about seeing new hosted photo services (like what we see when we click into the linked Ente site) is how I think they'll eventually fail the same way Picturelife did [1], or how they'll eventually get acquired, and their services/features nerfed by the whims of their new overlord. I guess it's a good thing Ente might become a viable self-hosted option in the future. I haven't tried the hosted service, but a metadata export guarantee could be huge in attracting paying users for which this is a concern. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12587656/picturelife-shutdown-streamnation-jonathan-benassaya https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12587656/picturelife-shut...
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  I believe that we can build an incredibly profitable business by serving photos well. SmugMug has proven this. But their audience is Pro while ours is consumers. ARPU and TAM are different for both, but I think the product will favor us (once we are about more than just e2ee). That said, I understand your concern. Open-sourcing the server was a step towards ensuring posterity. Pricing ourself sustainably from day #1 was another. We'll have to do a lot more work on this front over the next few decades and eventually find someone aligned with our ethos to pass the baton to. I find this to be a very interesting problem to work on :)
EchoReflection 3y ago
i have been using Ente for a few years now and totally love/recommend it
firstrowraver 3y ago
Registration does not work with Hide My Email (input fields stay empty)
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  That's odd, thanks for the report, will look into this!
rishikeshs 3y ago
Does the name signify ‘Ente’/‘എന്റെ’ - my in Malayalam language?
- coldtrait 3y ago
  I'm curious too. Fellow malayali here.
whatscooking 3y ago
Prices are way too high compared to competitors
devaiops9001 3y ago
https://Syncthing.net https://Syncthing.net
FloatArtifact 3y ago
I can not overstate how much value your email conveys. It's because of our culture that and users can't communicate with a human. Thank you for valuing human contact at human@ente.io
fifafu 3y ago
On the website Ente mentions the AI features are not yet ready and can not be used on phones yet. Is there an approximate timeframe on when they will be usable (on Desktop & Phone and if possible even shared in a family)? I use the search & face recognition on Google Photos a lot. Once that works on Ente, I‘ll try to switch :-) I‘m absolutely fine with having the ML run on my Desktop as long as it syncs to the phone as well.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Semantic search is ready. Face recognition should be ready by Q3 2024.
  - fifafu 3y ago
    great, thank you!
  - megak1d 3y ago
    I would love this paired with sharing photos of certain faces in (eg our children with my wife). Perhaps a dynamic album (with a list of faces) that I could then share.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      This is on the cards. Thanks for reinforcing the importance :)
f3d46600-b66e 3y ago
How does it compare to immich?
willwade 3y ago
I was so close to buying this. But dang. Im nearly 300Gb of photos. Thats pretty pricey for me since job security right now isnt great. Man the big guys have this sewn up. Here's wishing you guys the best of luck. I'll keep an eye on it
anarcat 3y ago
I just tried the free trial (1GB, 1 year, nice and thanks!) and this is pretty impressive software. I like the mobile app: it's snappy, and Just Works. Obviously, I couldn't fully test it because I have many gigabytes of photos on my phone (which is a problem I'm trying to fix!), at least not without going out of the free trial range. Also, uploading all that stuff takes time, and I'm not sure I want to share all that personal stuff with you fine folks, even though you seem to have your house in order. Which brings us to self-hosting, of course: really nice that the server is open source! I found ente first through f-droid when the app landed there but put it aside because the server was closed-source then. But wow, really nice design! I like the docker-compose just shoves a minio in there, really neat and probably how I would build something like that myself if i would start from scratch. Compared to photoprism and immich, for sure server-side machine-learning is missing, but then that's obviously a tradeoff you must live with if you want E2EE. As I mentioned in the goodbye note, I won't be using this short term because I do need to have something on my desktop I sync photos with that's not a bulging pile of Chrome (AKA "electron"). I really appreciate you spent all that energy writing those apps, but I really need something more lightweight on the desktop. Right now I'm syncing photos with git-annex, and I wonder if ente could be a "special remote" there, even, but for now this is not really compatible with my workflow. But congrats on this tool, it looks really nice and I'm likely going to recommend this to friends and family as a hosted solution.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Thank you, you're very kind! :)
CaptainFever 3y ago
Hey I use this! Thank you for building such good UX with E2EE! Photos are really private to me and I'm paying for the convenience on the cloud. I'm happy with it.
krick 3y ago
Seriously, 500 GB is "most users"? I never actually measured how much space my photos take (I put the off the phone onto a NAS), but I would guess it must easily fit under 50 GB, or I should reconsider how I store them. And I don't consider myself as somebody who barely takes photos. Granted, I have no idea how those people who have instagram actually think, but I don't imagine I might need that much of photos to be constantly accessible on my phone (I mean, the point of these apps is to have them actually accessible on demand on your device, right?) For a "professional" 2TB is probably not quite enough as well, but then, why would a "professional" store their photos as JPEGs on a Google Photos alternative? But otherwise, I might dump all my photos from Ente on a drive just in case, but to store in the cloud just actually nice photos, all dups removed. How would I ever exceed 50 GB this way? So, what's the catch? Is 500 GB photos on Google Drive actually "most users"? Is there something with that service that would prevent me from staying within 50 GB? Like, maybe it's impossible to delete a photo later on? This is a serious question, 500 GB of photos for "most users" seems absolutely nuts to me.
- draven 3y ago
  The page says "Every plan can be shared with your family." In that case I guess 500GB make sense.
davidmurdoch 3y ago
> Now to run algorithms over your photos, all the computation must be done on the edge. Edge is an overloaded and fuzzy term [0]. It just means "on device" here, right? [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/glossary/what-is-edge-computing/ https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/glossary/what...
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Yes, it means on device.
  - ignoramous 3y ago
    Might want to s/edge/device/g in your docs.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      "Edge" unfortunately is a broad term whose definition depends on the scope of the system. But "Edge ML" is the precise way to communicate what we're doing. I agree that "on device ML" is less ambiguous, so will give this some more thought. Thanks for the suggestion!
      - davidmurdoch 3y ago
        Your can probably communicate both without consequence. A change as simple as: > all the computation must be done on the edge: your own device. Might do the trick.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
Immich is agpl and fully open, in case you are looking for that
egberts1 3y ago
Too bad that ente.io app is not available on Apple App Store. Yeah, searched "ente.io": *cricket* Also no encryption-at-rest capability: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/450 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/450
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Ente is available on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1542026904 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1542026904 Looks like we've quite a bit of "ASO" work todo. Thanks for the heads up! Regarding encryption, the link you shared points to Immich. Ente uses client side encryption, so your data is encrypted before it leaves your device, and only you have the keys to decrypt it.
dylmye 3y ago
I'm very interested in Ente's thoughts on the impact of first class support for self hosting on their revenue
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  We think the set is disjoint. We aren't hurting our revenue by catering to the tinkerers. They will hopefully help spread the word about Ente, and contribute to making the product better in the long run.
barbazoo 3y ago
Better source: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ Repo here: https://github.com/ente-io/ente https://github.com/ente-io/ente
internetter 3y ago
While I want to be optimistic about competitors to big tech, I always fear that if your pitch is "it's not big tech" that won't be enough. This is 3 times more expensive than similar offerings from google and apple. Obviously I understand the economics of scale. Obviously I understand there might be other factors allowing big tech to sell this for cheaper. All I'm saying is I worry this app will not survive as I don't think most consumers believe "isn't big tech" is worth 3x more.
- NoNotTheDuo 3y ago
  The article and the blog post is about open-sourcing their server software though... which means you will be able to run the same software at home for free, instead of paying them to host it for you.
  - internetter 3y ago
    "You can host it yourself" won't help their business either
nolok 3y ago
If anyone is looking for something similar but "at home", on your own docker or vm, Photoprism and Immich are pretty nice, though both have their issues if using "for free" : Photoprism is awesome and does not require you to change your setup/paths/organisation but it has no non admin accounts (need a 2€/month subscription for that, which is quite cheap still), while Immich is not "stable" as-in it changes and break things regularly between updates (well, it's gotten better lately, but still).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

964 points by madmax108 3y ago

This looks great and the self hosting instructions are fine too. But I think the Apps don‘t support using your own server yet, right?

Maledictus 3y ago
Do you have a link to the self hosting instructions? edit: found it: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hosting https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hostin...
vishnumohandas 3y ago
Hey, not yet. Currently you've to pass build time flags[1] to modify the endpoint. Providing an option in-app to change the endpoint is under discussion[2]. [1]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/server/RUNNING.md#docker https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/server/RUNNING.md#... [2]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504

franky47 3y ago

Their local approach to ML is to be praised, I just wish we had different terms for Edge (cloud servers running close to users) vs Edge (end user devices).

rmnclmnt 3y ago
Hey Franky47, glad to see our latest discussion still on-going on the edge semantics!
philips 3y ago
https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/

danlugo92 3y ago

Great now I just need Google's export/data migration feature to actually work.

roozbeh18 3y ago
use google takeout.
- VladimirGolovin 3y ago
  I'd guess that the emphasis in OP's reply was on 'actually work'.
  - akkartik 3y ago
    In case it's useful, here's the solution that worked for me the last time I tried it: 1. Takeout to Google Drive :grimace: 2. rclone from Google Drive But I do this around once a year, and the last few times there are new roadblocks every time.
vishnumohandas 3y ago
Hey, you can use Ente's desktop app[1] to import the archives you export via Google Takeout. The app stitches together metadata with their original files so you'll have your library in one-piece. [1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop https://ente.io/download/desktop

Aeolun 3y ago

Interesting I’d never even heard of this before. I was fairly certain I’d seen all the common open source solutions, but apparently not.

infogulch 3y ago
It seems to have been open sourced very recently.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, one of the folks working on Ente here. Our clients were always open source, we published the code to our server[1] into a monorepo[2] just yesterday. [1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ [2]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente https://github.com/ente-io/ente
  - jpeeler 3y ago
    Do said clients have the ability to specify a custom endpoint? Obviously with the clients being open source a rebuild can fix that, but hoping that's not required.
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      Not yet, there's a discussion about this @ https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/504

manmal 3y ago

I’d be interested in reports from people who have used or are using Ente for self-hosting.

infogulch 3y ago
There's a note on the server readme about self hosting: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hosting https://github.com/ente-io/ente/tree/main/server#self-hostin...
arendtio 3y ago
I tried Ente a while ago but decided I liked a self-hosted Photoprism instance better.
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Hey, are there any specific features in Photoprism that you liked better?
  - arendtio 3y ago
    It has been a while and Ente probably progressed too, but I remember that I looked multiple times at Ente. However, one feature that I love about PhotoPrism is the performance. I have about 120.000 pictures on my Raspberry Pi and for the most part, the experience is flued (just try opening a picture and hold the right arrow key on your keyboard (just try it in the demo)). I have had local solutions that had problems with that amount of pictures and this one works via network. Other features like face recognition, automatic labels, or the map view are cool too. Photoprism has a feature list [1] and a demo [2]. [1]: https://www.photoprism.app/features https://www.photoprism.app/features [2]: https://try.photoprism.app/ https://try.photoprism.app/
    - vishnumohandas 3y ago
      Thank you for sharing the demo, it was simple to experience the product. This is a reminder for us to provide one as well :) Ente now has everything except cross-platform face-recognition (it's desktop only right now), labels and EXIF edits. The first two are being worked on, we should have v1s ready by Q3. Polishing will take a bit longer. The long-press-to-skim-through albums is very neat, will add this.

jacques-noris 3y ago

I’m looking exactly for something like that. But 2.99 Euro a month is too expensive, when even Apple only wants 99 cents.

dietr1ch 3y ago
Apple's cloud probably gets a better deal on their datacenter's costs and already charged you through your device and app store tax.
davidodio 3y ago
Honestly, everyone can do what they want with their money but working in tech and being on a site like this and seeing this comment makes me really sad We all want cool things, secure, where our data is protected and we are not the product, but 3 euros a month is too much? No wonder big tech gets bigger and the rich get richer. The silicon valley VC funded feifdoms become more entrenched and, in the end, we all suffer for it
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  I agree. Over a 10 year horizon, the difference between 1€/m and 3€/m is a mere 240€. That's like 2-5 extra work hours over the course of 10 years! I seriously don't get how someone working in tech would fear bankruptcy over this.
- jacques-noris 3y ago
  There are much cheaper alternatives to Ente. Filen.io, which is also E2E encrypted, for example costs 200 GB montly for 1.99 Euro. Its difficult to compete with iCloud if your service costs three times as much.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Filen is perhaps cheaper because they are storing lesser replicas. It is not financially feasible to provide 3 replicas at their price points, unless they're running their own storage infrastructure, which doesn't seem to be the case. Now Ente could of course choose to keep lesser replicas and offer "lite" plans that are more affordable. But we would rather not complicate our pricing structure right now. Understanding buckets of GBs is hard enough, and adding tiers on top would worsen the experience for most. All of that said, Filen does seem like a really cool project for storing files.

bovem 3y ago

The UI looks great. Couldn't find any info about self hosting but I did find a feature request in GitHub Issues [1]. I guess I'll stick with Immich [2] for now. Edit: Found a Reddit AMA [3] from the CEO and I'm happy to know that self hosting is a goal in the long run. [1] https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/141 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/141 [2] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/116fx9v/ama_im_vishnu_ceo_of_enteio_e2ee_alternative_to/j96yu1p/ https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/116fx9v/ama_im_vi...

mavamaarten 3y ago
I'm really happy with immich. It's amazing how well everything works and how feature-complete it is given how relatively young the project is and fast-moving development is going. I self-host an instance and do a nightly backup with duplicati to cloud storage. The only downside for me is that there's a new release almost every couple of days, with a message that the backend is out of date. Which is both a pro and a con, but for me it's anxiety inducing because there's breaking changes sometimes and you can't just auto-update. A pace like Home Assistant feels more comfortable.
- dspillett 3y ago
  I've been looking at immich and seen similar concerns about the update regularity, but that is due to it being a relatively young project. That it has come so far quickly is a good sign, as long as the release cycle becomes slower and more regimented as it approaches a certain level of maturity.
- xrd 3y ago
  Me too. It is frustrating to see an update to the app and then have the app indicate it is out of date. But generally it still works, and upgrading the server has always been nothing more than changing the docker image tag and restarting. It's an incredible project.
  - f3d46600-b66e 3y ago

bobek 3y ago

Uh, never came across them. Though Immich and damselfly were the only really usable.

vishnumohandas 3y ago
For self-hosting, there's Photoprism[1] as well. Ente's strength lies in end-to-end encryption[2] and its cloud[3] offering so you don't have to worry about reliability. So if self-hosting is what you're after, Immich, Photoprism and Damselfly (TIL!) are perhaps better designed to serve your needs. [1]: https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism [2]: https://ente.io/architecture https://ente.io/architecture [3]: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

I want a self hosted photo backup service for family that doesn't need 4gb ram. I do not need heavy transcoding or stuff. Just a place for people to dump their photos on. I have looked at some alternatives but they are all resource hungry from respective docs. If pixelfed can run on php and limited resources , why not some google photos alternative? Is there something lightweight that let's multiple people to share their photos together. I have attempted to use pixelfed but that's stupid as it only let's 4 photos per post. Urrgh.

globular-toast 3y ago
Syncthing? I just have my photos folder synced to my NAS.
izacus 3y ago
Grab a Synology NAS and run their Synology Photos software? It has almost all the features of Google Photos, self hosted and very little maintenance.
eklavya 3y ago
What exactly would you want? Would you be willing to pay for it? How much?
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  Set up a software on a vps that uses s3 backend. People would upload, backup, share their photos and media. Its not in a single place so I can't use local sync and stuff.
  - eklavya 3y ago
    Ok, the reason I asked is that I have been searching for a photos solution myself. I am not sure if it's a god idea to pursue and if there is actually a market for it. If there is, maybe not a bad idea to explore a bit.
bo0tzz 3y ago

SillyUsername 3y ago

End to end encrypted AND encrypted at rest? Otherwise all the staff can see your photos too...

lojewalo 3y ago
It appears so (using libsodium primitives): https://ente.io/architecture/ https://ente.io/architecture/
shawnz 3y ago
End to end encrypted implies encrypted at rest. Maybe you're thinking they meant "encrypted in transit"?
- SillyUsername 3y ago
  I did, thanks.

robertwt7 3y ago

The best decision for me is still to buy synology and store everything locally on Synology photos. No subscription, expandable storage, and full privacy. It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway

flakeoil 3y ago
> It is 100% worth the extra $ if you plan on subscribing for a loong time anyway I think many people forget about this. They pay for a monthly or yearly cloud storage subscription, but forget they have to pay this amount every year for the rest of their lifes if they want to keep their data. That's why I also use a Synology disk. I also have an additional lifetime subscription at a cloud storage provider (which pays back within 3.5 years). Sure they can disappear after say 10 years, but at least I have the Synology and I got a much better deal during those 10 years and can look for something else. Another thing, don't upload all pics you take immediately, only sync after you have cleaned out all the bad photos and near duplicates.
- yau8edq12i 3y ago
  To be fair, the underlying storage of the synology won't last forever. A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. You also need to pay for the electricity necessary to keep your server running 24/7, if you want a service level equivalent to a cloud storage service. All this adds up. The scales will probably stay in favor of the self-hosting options, but you have to take all this into account for a fair comparison.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Plus time spent upgrading, every so often.
  - diggan 3y ago
    > A cheap SSD might reliably last five years, a nice one, about ten years, as far as I know. It's unlikely that people are using SSDs for the main storage on a NAS though, commonly just used for smaller parts (think metadata in ZFS-land for example), not for the main storage. Precisely for that reason.

reacharavindh 3y ago

Does it do background sync on iOS?. There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. “Leave the app open for it to sync” Photos are the only reason I pay for the 2 TB plan on iCloud. I don’t need all the photos on device all the time. If I can _reliably_ stash them in remote servers and have a way to access them on-demand on the phone, I can take the money I give Apple and pay for the app that enables me. But only if I don’t have to remember to open the app every now and then and watch it sync my photos. It needs to be as easy to use as Apple Photos..

soziawa 3y ago
> There are so many alternatives to Apple Photos, all with this handicap. Apple doesn't allow background execution for third party apps. Can't increase service revenue if you allow competition.
- qweqwe14 3y ago
  They don't "allow" it, but most apps that need background execution just ask permission for geolocation tracking and pretend to use it, for example iSH[1]. There are a few activities that the app can do to prevent itself from being suspended when it goes out of focus, like playing sound, geolocation etc. [1] https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-544338096 https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/249#issuecomment-54433...
  - stavros 3y ago
    And you're at the mercy of Apple deciding to remove your app for violation of the terms when it gets more popular. This is what the EU wants to fix with its new directives that level the anticompetitive playing field.
    - qweqwe14 3y ago
      Apple can remove your app for whatever reason anyway, pretty sure every single company has that clause buried in their ToS somewhere. It's not like they constantly exercise it, but it's more for "just in case we really want to"

vishnumohandas 3y ago

Hey, Ente's CEO here. We had opensourced our server[1] yesterday, which is perhaps why we are on the front page. Stoked to be here Ente had launched on HN[2] a while ago and has been sustainably growing since. We took the feedback from our Show HN seriously and have since - undergone a cryptography audit [3] - published our replication strategy [4] - added requested features (family plans, collaborative albums and links, ...) [5][6][7] - made progress with Edge ML [8][9] - built a CLI for incremental data exports (our desktop app supports this as well) [10] - and in general matured as a company [11] Also, apart from our source code, our Figma[12] is public as well. If you've feedback on what we could do better, please do share, it'd be very helpful. And if you've any questions, do ask, I'd love to make myself useful. [1]: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28347439 [3]: https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/ https://ente.io/blog/cryptography-audit/ [4]: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability [5]: https://ente.io/blog/family-plans https://ente.io/blog/family-plans [6]: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ [7]: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ [8]: https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ https://ente.io/blog/image-search-with-clip-ggml/ [9]: https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/ https://ente.io/blog/desktop-ml-beta/ [10]: https://github.com/ente-io/cli https://github.com/ente-io/cli [11]: https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/ https://ente.io/blog/reflections-on-trusting-trust/ [12]: https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visual-Design https://www.figma.com/file/SYtMyLBs5SAOkTbfMMzhqt/ente-Visua...

bo0tzz 3y ago
This is awesome to see, congratulations from the Immich team on building an amazing app!
- vishnumohandas 3y ago
  Thank you! We're fans of Immich!
  - 3y ago

Daviey 3y ago

I'm looking forward to trying our the self-hosted option, but I will say the transparency they've provided to their reliability model for hosted is awesome. https://ente.io/reliability/ https://ente.io/reliability/ Compare this to the approach of CSP's, their model is mostly around "trust me bro", and even on enterprise/commercial terms the transparency they provide is poor. I would love to see this sort of transparency by service providers in the future.

hum3hum3 3y ago

I have just been working with photoprism. Ente looks nice but going to stay with photoprism as I like the go binary and can build features I want.

pierrelf 3y ago

How does this compare to Nextcloud photos? Looking forward to running this at home in the future :)

daeros 3y ago

NAS is so damn expensive, I'm still planning on building a PLEX media server myself and using it was way. Those QNAP things pushing 2500 for the 4k transcode things it's like OK at that point I can build something myself that has way more of the features I'd want and have way more customizability.

notum 3y ago
Buy a Mac Mini (older generations work well) for the actual transcoding, and use NAS as a, well, NAS.
haunter 3y ago
Yeah, I went with mini PCs myself. Have a Lenovo M720 Tiny and a Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro (they are virtually almost the same). You can change parts, there are ample ports available and you can pretty much run any OS you want. In the Dell you can even put 3 storage drives (1x 2.5" and 2x M2) so perfect for an SSD NAS.
Timber-6539 3y ago
Pretty sure the Intel NUCS(now manufactured by ASUS)/other mini PCs with Intel chips can do 4k transcodes easy.
- diggan 3y ago
  This. My 4K 10-bit HDR viewing is served from a Intel Celeron N4505 dual-core processor (2.0 GHz/2.9 GHz) + integrated GPU that is running TrueNAS and a bunch of other services + Jellyfin for the actual media. Works perfectly fine.
layer8 3y ago
The sensible thing is to separate NAS from transcoding. Use NAS only for storage, and solve your computational needs with a mini PC or even just a RasPi.
brnt 3y ago
NAS's aren't expensive, 4K@10bit is.

ulrischa 3y ago

Price is too high

terseryedu 3y ago

I typically self-host but I'm happy to outsource if the service is end-to-end encrypted and has no lock-in. Now that Ente has open source server, and incremental backup, I'm in! etesync is the other service I'm happy to pay for.

therealmarv 3y ago

Ente Auth https://auth.ente.io/ https://auth.ente.io/ was my go to choice for migrating from Authy. It supports importing and exporting (so no dead end unlike Authy) and I can see the second factor on my desktop without reaching my phone (through Ente Auth website). I've exported from a rooted phone from Authy->Aegis->Ente Auth. I have no need for their main product but they are building amazing software!

dabeeeenster 3y ago
oooh this is interesting - I'd like to self host this...
- ffpip 3y ago
  It is e2ee, so using their server would be the same (unless you are hosting just cuz you want to :) )
- therealmarv 3y ago
  probably better to look into this project? https://github.com/Bubka/2FAuth https://github.com/Bubka/2FAuth
physicles 3y ago
Thanks, this looks fantastic. I just installed the mobile app and will be migrating off Authy as well. Don’t have a lot of faith in Authy’s longevity after they discontinued the desktop apps, and the dead end is an issue too.
archon810 3y ago
There's no landing page to describe what the heck I'm signing up for. This company makes some weird UX decisions.
- mortos 3y ago
  From the response I got from the CEO, I'm assuming the expected discovery process is for users to start with the phone app.

albertzeyer 3y ago

Hm, maybe I make too much photos/videos, but my current collection already has more than 2TB, and 20$/month/2TB seems a bit too high. Btw, in contrast, Google has 100$/year/2TB, so a bit less. (https://one.google.com/about/plans https://one.google.com/about/plans) However, I am lucky that almost all my photos/videos at Google Photos were either uploaded when it was still not counted towards the storage (and that did not change for the previously uploaded media) or made with some older Pixel phone, where photos/videos in high quality were also not counted, i.e. unlimited storage. My current phone is a Pixel 5, which still has this feature, but it's unfortunately the last Pixel phone where they had this, and support of this phone ended September 2023. I'm not sure what to do when I cannot use this phone anymore. Change my habit to make less photos/videos? Or just self-host. I could maybe also filter the media a bit, but I'm somewhat too lazy to do that, and I hope that some AI could maybe anyway do this automatically for me, and I don't really like to delete things, even if they seem maybe not so great quality right now, but it seems like they still might have some value, and storage is cheap.

melicerte 3y ago

Ente verification code email is considered dangerous by Google mail. "Similar messages were used to steal people's personal information. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information." So you know

vishnumohandas 3y ago
We've spend time debugging this and talking to our service provider's[1] support, but haven't been able to figure out the root cause. If there are any experts reading this, we'd be grateful if you could let us know what we're doing wrong here. We're in the middle of switching over to SES because they are landing flawlessly into Gmail inboxes, but it would still be good to understand what we could have done better. [1]: https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail
- acejam 3y ago
  The problem is your service provider, Zoho. Zoho is used by a massive amount of spammers. As a result, many email blocking and verification services will flag any MX records that lead back to Zoho.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Thanks for the information. This is sad if true. In my limited experience Zoho been an honest business to deal with.
- ZohoMailSupport 3y ago
  Hello Vishnu, Truly sorry that you are facing this trouble and we are here to help. Please do share your Zoho account details and an elaborate description of the issue you are facing here - https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/contact.html?src=pd-menu https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/contact.html?src=pd-menu. Or you may also write an email to support@zeptomail.com. Rest assured, we will get to the bottom of it and help in resolving the same. Looking forward to your email. - Regards, Zoho Cares.

Faizan711 3y ago

Isn't the pricing a bit on the upper side, It could have been lower like similar to google one

teekert 3y ago
You mean where part is paid for with your data? ;) (sorry low hanging fruit)
vishnumohandas 3y ago
Google has ways to monetize your data. If I were them, I would be attaching a price tag to cloud storage simply to not seem suspicious :) Most of our costs come from keeping 3 replicas of your data: https://ente.io/reliability https://ente.io/reliability We could perhaps reduce the replicas from 3 (2 hot, 1 cold) to 2 (1 hot, 1 cold), and lower our costs, but it's not something we've actively thought about. Also, our prices are designed such that the business can run sustainably, and we believe that's the best way to build Ente, where the expectation is for the company to outlive its customers.

adithyassekhar 3y ago

Why is local on device ml a pro when compared to google photos? Part of the value for photos for me is the fact that they do all the ml work ahead of time on their servers and not my tiny battery powered gadget. I can open it in on any device and search any photo instantly.

lakpan 3y ago
You plug your phone in at night, so it probably has 7 hours a day to do that work. iOS does the same. They cannot do it on the server because they don’t have access to them.
- adithyassekhar 3y ago
  I am aware of the why, it's claimed to be e2e. But then it shouldn't be touted as a "pro" when compared to Google Photos which the site's home page is asking me to do. Hence the question. As for iOS, Apple controls the whole stack. Whatever ML they do, they do it only on devices capable of that level of ML. I can buy the cheapest android I can find with a 10 year old mediatek processor and search for pictures of my dog and it'll show it. There is a value to doing the heavy things on a heavy hitting server.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    Hey, one of the folks building Ente here. We have to pick our battles, and we currently aren't looking at serving customers on low-end devices. But if they access Ente on a laptop, the indexing will run there, and the computed indexes will sync to their low-end devices, e2ee. Also, given that compute on smart phones is getting better and cheaper with every iteration, we believe it's best to bet on Edge ML for the long term.
    - adithyassekhar 3y ago
      Thanks for clarifying; you guys have built something amazing and also made it open source, which you didn't have to. Please don't take my comments as an attack or as demotivating. I wanted to share my view as a regular person, sadly for whom absolute privacy is a feature and not a necessity, which I think is the vast majority. Good luck; hope you guys figure this out. A fellow Malayali :)

prmoustache 3y ago

I don't think this service is End-to-End encrypted the way we would like to think it is. If you can share pictures with friends by just giving them a link to a page, the server app has the encryption keys too.

icar 3y ago
The link contains the needed keys. It's explained in their FAQ.
- thisgoodlife 3y ago
  If the link contains the keys, does that mean the server can also see these keys?
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Nope, the secret is in the url fragment. Of course this means you need to trust that they do not change the JS code so that it steaks your keys.
vishnumohandas 3y ago
Hey, details on how we're providing E2EE with links has been documented here: https://ente.io/blog/building-shareable-links/ https://ente.io/blog/building-shareable-links/ Some bits of the blog post are outdated, since the feature has matured since then. But the implementation details are roughly the same. TL;DR: The keys are added to the URL fragment (the part that follows the #), and these fragments are not accessible to the server.
upofadown 3y ago
I think a better term for what is happening here is "client side encryption". That reduces the chances of getting things confused with messaging, which is a different sort of a problem. This at least has a user accessible cryptographic identity, so end to end secure key exchange is possible. So if you really wanted to call it end to end encrypted, it would be legitimate to do so. I suspect that the motivation here is still mostly marketing driven.

stockhorn 3y ago

I gave the webapp and android app a quick test. It looks nice, but it is still not as smooth as google photos or similar. E.g. the photos are not preloaded fully and I still need to wait a few milliseconds to get a photo fully rendered. (Also there is some white flickering when swiping through the photos on android) I wonder how the big players do it. Of course they have a lot more manpower, but maybe the also have some clever caching/rendering lib..? Kudos for doing this and opensourcing everything. I really appreciate this and I might stick around.

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Thanks for checking us out! We currently keep 2 versions of a photo - one the original, and the other a downscaled copy to be rendered as the thumbnail. Unlike non-e2ee providers, we cannot transcode and serve optimised images on the fly, when it's faster to downscale than serve the original image over network. What we could do is 1. Intelligently preload original photos when their thumbnails are in scope 2. Store an extra version of the photo, whose resolution is between that of the thumbnail and the original, and perform #1 over those Sorry about the flicker, will fix it.
- stockhorn 3y ago
  Ah this totally makes sense! Do you use progressive JPEGs already when opening the full image? If only there was a progressive encoding which lets you get a perfectly downscaled (not blurry) version of an image by just reading parts of the file.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    TIL about progressive JPEGs, will check it out, thanks! We currently render the thumbnail first (in most cases it's available locally) and then replace it with the original image once fetched from remote, while replicating the zoom and pan operations (if any) performed by the user. So it is "progressive" in some sense, but goes from something like 20% to 100% in one shot. ("20%" is a simplification, the actual value will depend on the resolution of the original image and that of the generated thumbnail, the latter is fixed)

tjoff 3y ago

New to me, looks nice. But I'm a bit perplexed by the lack of functionality regarding group access. You typically want to have a place for your family to manage your photos. A completely separate one for friends etc. Yet I don't see that usecase represented in software such like this (thinking of apps such as Immich, Ente seems quite similar). Managing your own photos is rather trivial in comparison, just need to sync your folder and 90% of the functionality is done. And that is before the usecase of collaborating between participants on a trip. Or letting guests upload pictures for an event (such as a wedding). Such a hassle. From the site: "Sync your library with your partner, and even designate them as an heir to your account." Nice, but not exactly it. > "Can I share my subscription with family and friends? You can add up to 5 family members and share your available storage space with them at no extra cost. Each member will get their own private space, and can only access their own photos." Almost like it goes out of their way to not support this. Seems like such low-hanging fruit. I get that storage costs could become an issue, but in a self-hosting scenario that is not a problem.

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Hey, we do support the use cases you mentioned! 1. Album collaboration: https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ https://ente.io/blog/collaborative-albums/ 2. Photo collection: https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ https://ente.io/blog/collect-photos/ Please let me know if I missed something. Sharing is an important feature for all of us, and we would love to get it right.
- tjoff 3y ago
  That is great :) I will look into it, from a first glance collaboration seems to only be on a per album basis? Can you have nested albums? For a group of friends / family you'd probably want many tens of albums tracking different trips/events etc.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    We don't support nested albums, yet. Thanks for sharing your use case, will figure out how to best solve for it. (Right now a "stream" of photos within a feed sounds like simpler UX than nested-albums, but will think more)

quicon 3y ago

I'm a customer of Ente since more than a year ago. I transferred my 30K photos from Google Photos without a problem. Very happy with this product. While some functionalities where missing at the beginning (powerful editor, sharing, collaborating, search) the Mobile and desktop apps have improved a lot, and continue to do so. Today, I do not miss Google Photos.

eurekin 3y ago

Does it handle iPhone hdr photos?

contrarian1234 3y ago

I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers. Out of curiosity I checked Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage https://www.dropbox.com/plans/storage 9 USD per month gives you 2TB storage (vs. 500GB here) I don't really get what justifies the 4x price (some of the features look like what you can get from a Gallery app like Aves) So it's looking kinda DOA to me. The intersection of people that care about open source and people that want to backup their photos also seems really minuscule. If Dropbox goes rogue and you need to switch providers.. that doesn't seem like a big deal? It's nice here that you can in theory selfhost and keep using it.. but that doesn't seem like "a big win" either. Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host EDIT: There is a comparison: https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/ https://ente.io/compare/ente-vs-dropbox/ It seems like the added feature boils down to automatically encrypting files. With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price

sofixa 3y ago
> Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host And that's probably better for them, because it's much easier to lose data from your own NAS than it is for a cloud storage provider to do so.
Sayrus 3y ago
> I don't really get the business model. An open source stack makes sense for products targeted towards programmers. > Most people that back up their pics in ~the cloud~ won't have the technical skills to do self-host Which is why they are offering a managed service as well. Even people with the technical skills are not always inclined to selfhost. > With Dropbox I guess you could accomplish the same, but you'd need to encrypt manually. Maybe for people with a lot of dick pics or illegal material this product is worth the 4x price Privacy is for criminals and storing CSAM, right? Why would you even want Dropbox at this point, Google Drive is all you need. Unless you wanted to help diagnose your child[1] and unfortunately the photo was synchronized to Drive and flagged. You have every right to expect your photos to stay private. Even if those are just a landscape. Why should you be obligated to have an AI scan them for offending content or scan them to detect who you met and when (surely so they can build a yearly recap for you, how kind!)? Did you ever get consent from everyone on your photos for this sharing and processing? You may not be interested in E2EE or open source, and that's absolutely fine. But you shouldn't actively undermine it by associating encryption and privacy with crimes. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-csam-scanning-account-deletion-investigation https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/21/23315513/google-photos-cs...

j1nd4L 3y ago

I have been using it for last 1 year. I have been amazed by the fast pace of the development, not many features lacking now compared to Google Photos despite being E2E. Kudos on the Ente team!!

pppoe 3y ago

This looks great. I have been using self hosted next cloud for a while and it is pretty slow in loading image thumbnails under a large folder. I am curious about Ente’s performance.

pard68 3y ago

I had ente for about a year. Does what the label says, but then Proton Drive released support for auto backup of pictures and I switched since pay for Proton and have a few terabytes of space with them.

afh1 3y ago
The thing I miss in Proton Drive is being able to move the photos from the sync folder to somewhere else, or otherwise organize them into folders. Not sure if Ente delivers on it, but for now I'm sticking with Proton since I already have a plan that gives me other services. Nice to know about this alternative, though.

esafak 3y ago

I think you would find more success, and ultimately serve your mission better, if you leaned on qualities other than privacy, which consumers unfortunately don't value as much as we might like.

sagz 3y ago

Hi, your plans are capped at 2TB ($200/yr). Any chance to get higher tiers? Looking for 15tb...

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Sorry, we don't support use cases above 6TB right now. This is an arbitrary limitation, it is just that we haven't figured out a sensible price point for larger tiers.

ValentineC 3y ago

The sad thing about seeing new hosted photo services (like what we see when we click into the linked Ente site) is how I think they'll eventually fail the same way Picturelife did [1], or how they'll eventually get acquired, and their services/features nerfed by the whims of their new overlord. I guess it's a good thing Ente might become a viable self-hosted option in the future. I haven't tried the hosted service, but a metadata export guarantee could be huge in attracting paying users for which this is a concern. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12587656/picturelife-shutdown-streamnation-jonathan-benassaya https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12587656/picturelife-shut...

vishnumohandas 3y ago
I believe that we can build an incredibly profitable business by serving photos well. SmugMug has proven this. But their audience is Pro while ours is consumers. ARPU and TAM are different for both, but I think the product will favor us (once we are about more than just e2ee). That said, I understand your concern. Open-sourcing the server was a step towards ensuring posterity. Pricing ourself sustainably from day #1 was another. We'll have to do a lot more work on this front over the next few decades and eventually find someone aligned with our ethos to pass the baton to. I find this to be a very interesting problem to work on :)

EchoReflection 3y ago

i have been using Ente for a few years now and totally love/recommend it

firstrowraver 3y ago

Registration does not work with Hide My Email (input fields stay empty)

vishnumohandas 3y ago
That's odd, thanks for the report, will look into this!

rishikeshs 3y ago

Does the name signify ‘Ente’/‘എന്റെ’ - my in Malayalam language?

coldtrait 3y ago
I'm curious too. Fellow malayali here.

whatscooking 3y ago

Prices are way too high compared to competitors

devaiops9001 3y ago

https://Syncthing.net https://Syncthing.net

FloatArtifact 3y ago

I can not overstate how much value your email conveys. It's because of our culture that and users can't communicate with a human. Thank you for valuing human contact at human@ente.io

fifafu 3y ago

On the website Ente mentions the AI features are not yet ready and can not be used on phones yet. Is there an approximate timeframe on when they will be usable (on Desktop & Phone and if possible even shared in a family)? I use the search & face recognition on Google Photos a lot. Once that works on Ente, I‘ll try to switch :-) I‘m absolutely fine with having the ML run on my Desktop as long as it syncs to the phone as well.

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Semantic search is ready. Face recognition should be ready by Q3 2024.
- fifafu 3y ago
  great, thank you!
- megak1d 3y ago
  I would love this paired with sharing photos of certain faces in (eg our children with my wife). Perhaps a dynamic album (with a list of faces) that I could then share.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    This is on the cards. Thanks for reinforcing the importance :)

f3d46600-b66e 3y ago

How does it compare to immich?

willwade 3y ago

I was so close to buying this. But dang. Im nearly 300Gb of photos. Thats pretty pricey for me since job security right now isnt great. Man the big guys have this sewn up. Here's wishing you guys the best of luck. I'll keep an eye on it

anarcat 3y ago

I just tried the free trial (1GB, 1 year, nice and thanks!) and this is pretty impressive software. I like the mobile app: it's snappy, and Just Works. Obviously, I couldn't fully test it because I have many gigabytes of photos on my phone (which is a problem I'm trying to fix!), at least not without going out of the free trial range. Also, uploading all that stuff takes time, and I'm not sure I want to share all that personal stuff with you fine folks, even though you seem to have your house in order. Which brings us to self-hosting, of course: really nice that the server is open source! I found ente first through f-droid when the app landed there but put it aside because the server was closed-source then. But wow, really nice design! I like the docker-compose just shoves a minio in there, really neat and probably how I would build something like that myself if i would start from scratch. Compared to photoprism and immich, for sure server-side machine-learning is missing, but then that's obviously a tradeoff you must live with if you want E2EE. As I mentioned in the goodbye note, I won't be using this short term because I do need to have something on my desktop I sync photos with that's not a bulging pile of Chrome (AKA "electron"). I really appreciate you spent all that energy writing those apps, but I really need something more lightweight on the desktop. Right now I'm syncing photos with git-annex, and I wonder if ente could be a "special remote" there, even, but for now this is not really compatible with my workflow. But congrats on this tool, it looks really nice and I'm likely going to recommend this to friends and family as a hosted solution.

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Thank you, you're very kind! :)

CaptainFever 3y ago

Hey I use this! Thank you for building such good UX with E2EE! Photos are really private to me and I'm paying for the convenience on the cloud. I'm happy with it.

krick 3y ago

Seriously, 500 GB is "most users"? I never actually measured how much space my photos take (I put the off the phone onto a NAS), but I would guess it must easily fit under 50 GB, or I should reconsider how I store them. And I don't consider myself as somebody who barely takes photos. Granted, I have no idea how those people who have instagram actually think, but I don't imagine I might need that much of photos to be constantly accessible on my phone (I mean, the point of these apps is to have them actually accessible on demand on your device, right?) For a "professional" 2TB is probably not quite enough as well, but then, why would a "professional" store their photos as JPEGs on a Google Photos alternative? But otherwise, I might dump all my photos from Ente on a drive just in case, but to store in the cloud just actually nice photos, all dups removed. How would I ever exceed 50 GB this way? So, what's the catch? Is 500 GB photos on Google Drive actually "most users"? Is there something with that service that would prevent me from staying within 50 GB? Like, maybe it's impossible to delete a photo later on? This is a serious question, 500 GB of photos for "most users" seems absolutely nuts to me.

draven 3y ago
The page says "Every plan can be shared with your family." In that case I guess 500GB make sense.

davidmurdoch 3y ago

> Now to run algorithms over your photos, all the computation must be done on the edge. Edge is an overloaded and fuzzy term [0]. It just means "on device" here, right? [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/glossary/what-is-edge-computing/ https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/glossary/what...

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Yes, it means on device.
- ignoramous 3y ago
  Might want to s/edge/device/g in your docs.
  - vishnumohandas 3y ago
    "Edge" unfortunately is a broad term whose definition depends on the scope of the system. But "Edge ML" is the precise way to communicate what we're doing. I agree that "on device ML" is less ambiguous, so will give this some more thought. Thanks for the suggestion!
    - davidmurdoch 3y ago
      Your can probably communicate both without consequence. A change as simple as: > all the computation must be done on the edge: your own device. Might do the trick.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

Immich is agpl and fully open, in case you are looking for that

egberts1 3y ago

Too bad that ente.io app is not available on Apple App Store. Yeah, searched "ente.io": *cricket* Also no encryption-at-rest capability: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/450 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/450

vishnumohandas 3y ago
Ente is available on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1542026904 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1542026904 Looks like we've quite a bit of "ASO" work todo. Thanks for the heads up! Regarding encryption, the link you shared points to Immich. Ente uses client side encryption, so your data is encrypted before it leaves your device, and only you have the keys to decrypt it.

dylmye 3y ago

I'm very interested in Ente's thoughts on the impact of first class support for self hosting on their revenue

vishnumohandas 3y ago
We think the set is disjoint. We aren't hurting our revenue by catering to the tinkerers. They will hopefully help spread the word about Ente, and contribute to making the product better in the long run.

barbazoo 3y ago

Better source: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ Repo here: https://github.com/ente-io/ente https://github.com/ente-io/ente

internetter 3y ago

While I want to be optimistic about competitors to big tech, I always fear that if your pitch is "it's not big tech" that won't be enough. This is 3 times more expensive than similar offerings from google and apple. Obviously I understand the economics of scale. Obviously I understand there might be other factors allowing big tech to sell this for cheaper. All I'm saying is I worry this app will not survive as I don't think most consumers believe "isn't big tech" is worth 3x more.

NoNotTheDuo 3y ago
The article and the blog post is about open-sourcing their server software though... which means you will be able to run the same software at home for free, instead of paying them to host it for you.
- internetter 3y ago
  "You can host it yourself" won't help their business either

nolok 3y ago

If anyone is looking for something similar but "at home", on your own docker or vm, Photoprism and Immich are pretty nice, though both have their issues if using "for free" : Photoprism is awesome and does not require you to change your setup/paths/organisation but it has no non admin accounts (need a 2€/month subscription for that, which is quite cheap still), while Immich is not "stable" as-in it changes and break things regularly between updates (well, it's gotten better lately, but still).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]