In simple English
This is a private photo gallery you run on your own computer or server. You upload your pictures through a web browser and organise them into albums. You can share albums with friends using a link or keep them locked behind a password. You stay in full control of your files without paying a monthly fee to a big company. Setup takes some technical knowledge, and you need a server or a computer that stays turned on.
What it is
Lychee is an open-source photo management application written in PHP and Vue.js. It stores your original images on disk and organises them in a relational database.
What it is good for
Anyone who wants to cancel their paid cloud photo storage and host their own image library on private hardware.
- Keeps all your original image files on your own server.
- Creates shareable links with optional password protection.
- Includes a minimal Docker setup for quick testing.
- Requires Docker (a way to run a program inside its own sealed box, so it cannot break anything else on your server) or manual PHP configuration to run.
- Needs a separate database container like MariaDB to store album data.
- Uses about 1 GB of memory for the web server and database combined.
Google Photos or iCloud
MariaDB
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curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/master/docker-compose.minimal.yaml docker compose -f docker-compose.minimal.yaml up -d