Moving from Ente Photos to Nextcloud
So begins the move to European providers. Ente is the easiest of the bunch to move since nothing depends on it. I already have a NextCloud instance running with spare capacity, so in this instance I'm also saving money. I'm not a photography enthusiast, so my requirements for a photo app are simple - a safe backup and a simple, efficient viewer with folder organization (which Ente still lacks), with the possibility to share and collaborate with friends. NC should match those well enough.
Download the collection
The Ente photo collection can only be exported by using the desktop app, which I installed from Flathub. The export process is easy enough by just following the guidance - pick export from the menu, choose the destination and wait for your download to complete.
Ente Albums will be downloaded as folders. The export also includes your hidden albums, which you might want to keep in mind. The export also includes a lot of .json files for metadata, thankfully in a subfolder for each album, describing their Ente information like import/modification dates. I haven't removed mine just yet, but don't see them serving any purpose anymore, so they'll probably go soon.
Note: If downloading from Flathub, you'll probably find that the app by default has no read/write permissions anywhere in your user directory. In that case I can recommend FlatSeal to easily tweak the app permissions.
Upload the collection
To upload the files as they come in I used the NextCloud Files desktop app. Once you've logged in, you can set up automatic file sync, so you can upload the files as they are downloaded.
The NextCloud photo galleries
There are two apps providing photo gallery integration. Photos is the built-in option and Memories gives a competing implementation. As Memories basically provides a superset of features of the stock Photos app and is a lot faster, I decided to go with it.
There's some quirks that may turn off some of the more demanding audience. First is the album mechanism that overlaps folders. Automatic creation seems to only be possible based on the EXIF location tags, so not directly from folders. Only roughly 5% of my photos have location tags and it's not a grouping I'm interested in anyway, so I found no use for these. Memories and Photos share the same album functionality, so by disabling the Photos app the Albums menu disappeared from Memories. A win for me, but YMMV.
Second is the load behavior. On the desktop (there is a mobile app too) I was scared when all of my photos looked like porridge when opened from the preview. Turns out there's a setting to only load the full res image when zoomed in, but luckily it could be turned off, making it actually usable. To do this go to settings -> Memories -> Photo Viewer -> Always load high resolution image (not recommended if using HEIC/TIFF).
I haven't used the mobile app too much yet but it seems to offer the basic functionality with no nonsense. Good enough for me 👌
Sharing and such
Getting my own Ente collection, including a slice of the family photos, synced and shared in NC was painless as it uses the same mechanisms as for other files. A 'collaborative album' was easy to set up with a public link, similar to how Ente does it, so my friend group can keep sharing our photos in a very familiar way without needing to register to another service.
Worth it
All in all, the move was very easy and painless, of course greatly due to my existing NC setup and very lax demands for a photo app. If you're an enthusiast, I'd recommend taking a deeper look into what the NC apps offer and if they're for you. Immich is a highly praised self hosted option, and for SaaS there is the European Zeitkapsl that seems very good.
So that's the easy bit done. Next up - email migration from Fastmail.
Thoughts, comments? Send me an email!