My family relies heavily on Google One to sync our Google Photos. We have 4 iOS and 5 Android devices. Originally the iOS folks would pay and sync through iCloud. But to simplify the billing process and easy sharing, we switched all to Google Photos. Lets just say there is almost 2TB of photos/videos.
We want to move away from this to a more controlled (self host) and non Google solution. We looked at Proton, their emails and vpns are great. However we dont want to move to a different cloud for photos and videos.
We are not very tech savy to set things up. Can we just buy a big hard drive and somehow hook it to our wifi? This is consider self hosted right? Does that mean medias will only get synced when we are within the house’s wifi?
Appreciate any inputs
Download all of your Google Photos data from Google Takeout. Then, upload said data either to something like Ente Photos with a subscription, or an immich server if you’re willing to self-host.
An Immich server isn’t too overly complicated to set up. You just need a big hard drive, and either an old computer that’s just lying around or a cheap and small new computer. It may still take you some headaches and a period of time to properly set up, switch to and get accustomed to but the Immich documentation is pretty good and easy to follow. That plus a bit of googling should be enough of a guide to get properly set up. Beware though, self hosting is something you need take continuous care of and there may be a lot to learn. If that sounds scary I would just say go with Ente. You can still self host Ente, but you can also just pay a subscription and it would be no different or more complicated than switching from iCloud to Google Photos plus you wouldnt have to worry about actually doing the work and maintenance of running a server.