Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Lychee Cloud

PhotoPrism is a self-hosted photo management application that helps you organize, browse, and search large photo and video libraries. It uses machine learning to automatically classify content and make your media easier to find while keeping control of your data.

Key Features

• Automatic labeling and categorization using machine learning
• Face recognition to group photos of people
• Powerful search with combinable filters (labels, places, colors, quality, and more)
• Map-based browsing and location features with geocoding support
• Metadata extraction and merging (e.g., Exif and XMP)
• Web interface optimized for desktop and mobile (PWA-style experience)
• WebDAV support for managing files from compatible clients

Use Cases

• Replace or complement cloud photo services with a private photo library
• Organize multi-device family photo collections with search, labels, and people
• Manage and curate photo/video archives on a home server or NAS

PhotoPrism combines a modern web UI with AI-assisted organization to make personal media libraries searchable and enjoyable to browse. It is well-suited for users who want fast search, automatic tagging, and flexible access to their photo collection.

Photoview is a self-hosted photo and video gallery designed for personal servers and photographer-friendly workflows. It scans media from directories on your server, maps folders to albums, and builds thumbnails for fast browsing while keeping files under your control.

Key Features

• Filesystem-based library scanning with folders mapped to albums
• Automatic thumbnail generation and lazy-loading for performant browsing
• Multi-user accounts with per-user library paths and access controls
• Share albums or individual media via public links, optionally password-protected
• RAW photo support (using Darktable for conversion)
• EXIF metadata extraction and display, including map view when GPS data is present
• Video support with web-optimized transcoding (using FFmpeg)
• Face detection and grouping of photos by person

Use Cases

• Personal or family photo library hosted on a home server or NAS
• Photographer archive browsing with RAW and EXIF-focused workflows
• Private sharing of selected albums with friends/clients via protected links

Limitations and Considerations

• The official iOS app is no longer maintained or available in the App Store
• Requires an initial scan and thumbnail generation that can be time-consuming on very large libraries

Photoview is a good fit if you want a fast, web-based gallery that mirrors your existing folder organization. It focuses on performance, privacy, and photographer-oriented features like RAW, EXIF, and mapping.

Lychee is a free, open-source photo management system that runs on your own server. It lets you upload, organize, browse, and share photos and albums from a fast, app-like web interface.

Key Features

• Photo and album management (create albums, move, rename, describe, delete)
• Fast browsing and full-screen viewing with keyboard navigation
• Search, tags, and “star/important” marking for organization
• Share photos/albums publicly and optionally protect albums with passwords
• Metadata support including EXIF and IPTC display
• Multiple import options (local upload, server-side import, and URL-based import)

Use Cases

• Personal or family photo library with full control over storage and access
• Photographer portfolio delivery via shareable albums
• Small team photo repository for events and documentation

Lychee is a solid choice for users who want an attractive, straightforward photo gallery and management workflow without relying on third-party cloud photo services. It combines practical organization tools with simple sharing controls in a clean web UI.

Memories is a photo and video management application implemented as a Nextcloud app. It provides timeline-first browsing, AI-assisted tagging integration, albums and sharing, map views, bulk metadata editing, and on-demand video transcoding for web-friendly playback.

Key Features

• Timeline view that sorts media by date taken (Exif) and supports fast "rewind" navigation through large libraries.
• AI-assisted automatic tagging via integration with Recognize and Face Recognition Nextcloud apps to group by people and objects.
• Albums and external sharing, including collaborative album editing for multiple Nextcloud users.
• Bulk metadata editing (title, description, GPS, date/time, tags) with most metadata preserved in file Exif headers.
• On-demand video transcoding and HLS packaging for adaptive streaming; supports hardware acceleration (VA-API, NVENC) where available.
• Map view with automatic GPS extraction and reverse geocoding to locate photos on a map.
• Migration helpers for importing from Nextcloud Photos and Google Takeout; optimized for large libraries (tested at high photo counts).

Use Cases

• Personal self-hosted photo library on a Nextcloud instance with privacy-first storage and searchable timelines.
• Small teams or families that want shared, collaborative albums and controlled external sharing without third-party hosting.
• Migrating and organizing large collections (including video) while retaining Exif metadata and enabling web playback via HLS.

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires a Nextcloud instance and recent platform stack (Nextcloud 26+, PHP 8.0+); several features require external system binaries and services (ffmpeg/ffprobe, Imagick) which must be installed and configured.
• AI tagging is provided via external Nextcloud apps and models; enabling full face/object recognition may require separate setup and resources.
• Video transcoding can be resource intensive; hardware acceleration is recommended for performance on large libraries.
• Android client is described as early access; mobile upload relies primarily on Nextcloud mobile apps.

In summary, Memories is a focused, performance-oriented photo gallery app for Nextcloud that emphasizes privacy, metadata preservation, timeline navigation, AI-assisted tagging, and web-friendly video playback. It is designed for users and organizations who want a feature-rich, self-hosted alternative for managing large photo and video collections.

Memories is a fast, modern photo and video management application that runs as a Nextcloud app. It provides a responsive web interface to browse large libraries, organize albums, edit metadata, and stream videos efficiently while keeping files in your existing Nextcloud storage.

Key Features

• Timeline-based browsing using extracted EXIF date/time metadata
• Albums with collaborative organization and sharing (including external sharing)
• Bulk metadata editing (titles, descriptions, dates, GPS, tags)
• Map view using GPS EXIF data, including reverse geocoding for locations
• Video playback with on-demand transcoding and adaptive streaming (HLS)
• Archive workflow to hide selected items from the main timeline
• Integrations for automatic tagging and face/object grouping via Nextcloud AI-related apps
• Performance-oriented indexing designed for very large libraries

Use Cases

• Replace or enhance Nextcloud Photos with a faster, feature-rich gallery experience
• Organize and share family or team media libraries through Nextcloud accounts and public links
• Browse and stream mixed photo/video collections on mobile and desktop with efficient transcoding

Limitations and Considerations

• Some advanced features (for example AI tagging) depend on installing and configuring compatible Nextcloud apps
• Video transcoding can be resource-intensive and may require additional configuration for hardware acceleration

Memories is well-suited for users who already rely on Nextcloud and want a dedicated, high-performance media library experience. It emphasizes retaining your existing folder structure and storing key metadata in standard formats to reduce lock-in and ease migration.

PiGallery2 is a fast, directory-first web photo gallery that renders your existing folder structure as a read-only gallery. It is optimized for low-resource servers and focuses on quick browsing, searching, and viewing photos and videos without modifying your originals.

Key Features

• Directory-first browsing that mirrors your on-disk folder structure
• Fast indexing to a database for responsive browsing (SQLite or MySQL)
• Advanced search with boolean logic, negation, range queries, and autocomplete suggestions
• Photo viewer with optional info panel (including EXIF metadata)
• Map view from GPS photo metadata, with GPX track display and activity visualization
• Sharing links for folders with optional password protection
• On-the-fly thumbnail generation in multiple sizes with caching to a temp folder
• Video playback support and optional transcoding with thumbnail generation
• Markdown files in folders for simple blogging/notes and date attachment
• Logical albums based on saved searches and per-user allow/block filters

Use Cases

• Self-host a lightweight family photo archive that keeps your existing folder layout
• Quickly search large photo collections by date, rating, people metadata, and location
• Share selected folders externally via password-protected links

Limitations and Considerations

• The gallery is intentionally read-only and does not support organizing, editing, or tagging photos within the app
• Face features rely on existing metadata (no built-in ML-based automatic face detection)

PiGallery2 is best suited for users who want a fast, minimal-maintenance photo gallery that reflects their filesystem as-is. It provides powerful search and viewing features while keeping photo management in your regular file workflow.

HomeGallery is a self-hosted, open-source web gallery for browsing and exploring personal photo and video archives. It focuses on fast, mobile-friendly navigation, tagging, and AI-assisted discovery such as similar-image search and face search.

Key Features

• Timeline view and similarity-based browsing for rediscovering related photos
• Reverse image lookup (similar image search) to find visually related content
• Face detection and finding similar faces
• Video preview generation and transcoding
• Tagging with single and multi-selection
• Boolean search/query language with and/or/not operators
• Reverse geocoding (geo coordinates to human-readable locations)
• Static site export to run as a standalone gallery without a backend service
• Supports offline/read-only media sources after previews and metadata are generated

Use Cases

• Create a private, searchable family photo and video archive on a NAS or home server
• Explore large media collections using similarity browsing to surface forgotten memories
• Generate a static web gallery export for sharing a curated collection internally

Limitations and Considerations

• The full media index is loaded into the browser, which can become large for very big libraries
• Some AI capabilities may rely on an API server that can be self-hosted if you want to avoid external calls

HomeGallery is well-suited for individuals who want a privacy-preserving alternative to cloud photo services while keeping a responsive experience on mobile devices. Its similarity-based exploration and client-side searching make it especially useful for large, long-lived media archives.

Sigal is a simple static gallery generator written in Python. It processes image directories, creates resized images and thumbnails, and generates HTML pages using Jinja2 templates so galleries can be served as portable static sites.

Key Features

• Command-line interface with commands to initialize, build and serve galleries (init, build, serve).
• Generates HTML pages from Jinja2 templates with bundled themes and relative links for portable output.
• Image processing: resize, create thumbnails, preserve or extract EXIF metadata, and optional video handling.
• Multiple bundled themes (Colorbox / Galleria / PhotoSwipe-style frontends) and themeable templates.
• Parallel processing for faster builds, plus ZIP export and feed/plugin support in templates.
• Designed to work with common Python image libraries and toolchains; configurable JPEG options and thumbnail settings.

Use Cases

• Create static photo galleries for personal portfolios, events, or project showcases that can be deployed to static hosts.
• Generate optimized image sets (resized versions and thumbnails) for use in web projects or CDNs.
• Build reproducible demo galleries for testing frontend gallery libraries or theme development.

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires Python and a Python image library (Pillow); some image formats and full-featured EXIF handling depend on system image libraries being available. Autorotate and EXIF copy options have compatibility nuances because some image libraries cannot rewrite EXIF tags.
• Produces static output only (no built-in user authentication, dynamic backend, or hosted service features).
• Theme appearance and interactive features depend on included JavaScript libraries in the themes; advanced interactive features require those frontend libraries to be supported in the user's environment.

In summary, Sigal is a focused, CLI-driven tool for producing static image galleries from directories of media. It emphasizes configurable templates, image resizing/thumbnailing, and simple theme-based presentation for static deployments.

Omoide is a self-hosted, offline-first photo and video library that organizes media locally using on-device AI models. It focuses on privacy and longevity by keeping all processing and search on the user’s machine, and can be run as a desktop app or in Docker for servers and NAS devices. (github.com)

Key Features

• 100% local / offline-first media management (no cloud required). (github.com)
• Face detection, embedding and clustering with review/merge tools for people management. (github.com)
• Semantic (natural-language) image search powered by OpenCLIP embeddings. (github.com)
• Auto-tagging, perceptual duplicate detection, and video scene extraction for faster curation. (github.com)
• Map view with EXIF extraction and GPS editing; co-appearance graph to visualize relationships between people. (github.com)
• Multiple profiles, read-only mode for sharing, and background task management for large libraries. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Personal archival and private photo/video libraries where users want local AI-powered search and face grouping. (github.com)
• Photographers or hobbyists organizing large collections on a NAS or local server (Docker support). (github.com)
• Small galleries or archivists needing an offline, searchable presentation/preview of media with privacy controls. (proxmox.orasoft.net.pl)

Limitations and Considerations

• License: distributed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0, which restricts commercial use; review the license before deploying in commercial contexts. (github.com)
• Resource & setup: initial model downloads and AI processing can require significant CPU/GPU resources; FFmpeg and Python toolchain are required for desktop builds and media processing. Performance and required hardware depend on chosen models (CPU-only runs will be slower). (github.com)
• Community & support: actively maintained as a passion project; community discussion and feedback appear on self-hosting forums and social channels rather than a dedicated commercial support portal. (reddit.com)

Omoide provides a privacy-focused, local-first alternative for people who want Google/Apple Photos–like discovery features without cloud dependencies. It is suited for users who can accommodate model downloads and local compute demands and who accept the project’s noncommercial license terms. (github.com)

SPIS is a Simple Private Image Server that provides a minimal, fast web gallery for images and videos stored on a filesystem. It is designed for low-resource hosts and mobile use, exposing a progressive web app frontend while delegating media serving to a separate webserver.

Key Features

• Progressive Web App (PWA) frontend optimized for mobile and desktop
• Endless scrolling gallery with thumbnail generation and fast pagination
• Favorites, archive, slideshow playback, and basic filtering by year/month/subdirectory
• Video support with processing using external tools (transcoding/metadata via ffmpeg/ffprobe)
• Custom commands configurable in the UI to run scripts on selected media files
• Configuration via CLI, environment variables, or TOML file with templating for nginx, systemd, and docker-compose
• Docker image and prebuilt binaries for easy deployment
• Filesystem-first design: no database required, multi-threaded Rust backend for indexing and metadata processing

Use Cases

• Personal photo and video galleries hosted on a NAS or single-board computer
• Lightweight media viewer for private collections with PWA installability on phones
• Embeddable admin/viewer for shared media directories with custom command hooks

Limitations and Considerations

• SPIS does not serve raw media files directly; a separate webserver must be configured to serve media and thumbnails
• No built-in user authentication or access control; protection should be implemented at the webserver or reverse-proxy layer
• Video features require ffmpeg/ffprobe on the host for processing and metadata extraction

SPIS is focused on simplicity, performance, and low operational overhead, making it a practical choice for self-hosted personal galleries and lightweight media browsing on modest hardware.

Imagor Studio is a self-hosted image gallery and live editing web application designed for creators. It provides a high-performance gallery plus professional, non-destructive image editing with instant preview and URL-based transforms.

Key Features

• High-performance virtual-scrolling gallery for fast browsing of large photo collections
• Live, non-destructive image editing with real-time preview, color adjustments, effects, and cropping
• Instant URL generation for transformed images to enable on-the-fly delivery and embedding
• Universal storage support: local filesystems and S3-compatible object stores
• Zero-configuration quick start with SQLite by default and Docker images for easy deployment
• Touch-optimized, responsive React-based interface with EXIF metadata display
• Built on a performant image processing stack (libvips/imagor) for efficient transforms and streaming

Use Cases

• Photographers and hobbyists managing large local photo libraries with fast browsing and edits
• Designers and content creators applying quick non-destructive transforms and producing shareable image URLs
• Teams or websites that need on-the-fly optimized images via generated URLs backed by an image processing server

Limitations and Considerations

• Intended primarily for single-site or small-team use; large-scale, multi-tenant deployments may require separate imagor scaling, caching, and storage tuning
• Feature set assumes an external imagor processing backend for heavy production workloads; performance depends on that infrastructure

Imagor Studio combines a modern, touch-friendly UI with a high-performance image processing ecosystem to provide fast browsing and professional live editing for creators. It is suited for local and S3-backed collections and is deployable via Docker for quick setup.