Memories

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.