Lychee

Beautiful self-hosted photo management tool with a stunning web interface.

Open source alternative to:

Lychee is a beautiful, self-hosted photo management application that puts emphasis on a clean, modern user interface. It makes managing and sharing photos feel effortless, with a drag-and-drop album interface, full-screen viewer, and support for EXIF data display, GPS map integration, and smart albums.

Lychee supports multiple user accounts with role-based access control, password-protected albums, and public sharing links. It handles a wide range of image formats and provides automatic thumbnail generation. The application has a mobile-friendly responsive design, making it convenient to browse and manage photos from any device.

Licensed under MIT, Lychee is self-hostable on any PHP-capable web server and can be deployed via Docker. With over 4,000 GitHub stars and active development, it is a popular choice for photographers and individuals who want a beautiful, self-hosted alternative to Google Photos with a focus on simplicity and aesthetics.

Categories:

Cloud Storage Productivity & Utilities

Tags:

# self hosted # privacy # cloud storage

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Lychee replace Google Photos as a self-hosted photo library?

Yes. Lychee is a self-hosted photo management app built specifically as a simpler, more aesthetic alternative to Google Photos, licensed under MIT. Because all photos live on your own server, you are not limited by Google's storage quotas, and originals are never compressed or processed by a third party. It handles a wide range of image formats, auto-generates thumbnails, and displays EXIF data with GPS map integration in the full-screen viewer.

Does Lychee support multiple users and private sharing?

Lychee supports multiple user accounts with role-based access control, so you can decide who can view or manage which albums. Albums can be password-protected and shared via public links, which is handy for sharing galleries with friends or clients. Sharing links are easy to revoke, giving you control over who keeps access.

What do I need to run Lychee, and can it run on low-power hardware?

Lychee is written in PHP and runs on any PHP-capable web server, with an official Docker image that makes deployment straightforward. It is lightweight enough to run on a NAS or a Raspberry Pi for a personal photo library. The project is actively maintained with over 4,000 GitHub stars and documentation at lycheeorg.github.io.

Looking for contributors

This project is actively seeking help, join the community!

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