Boomer me: get a 10TB drive and leave cloud services out of it

Otherwise Filen

I used Google photos just to have my pictures and videos automatically uploaded from my phone when I took them and to the cloud, with the added perk that they could be viewed and shared online if I felt like it. I'm not sure if there's anything more to it?

If not, I recomend Nextcloud managed by some hosting provider. Hetzner is German and probably the cheapest option out there. I use Murena from France, as I'm fine paying a little more because they develop my phone OS. It's still a lot cheaper for me than my Dropbox subscription was, and I couldn't be happier with how Nextcloud works.

The fact that it's the same apps and functionality between different providers also makes it easier to switch down the road if necessary, whereas other providers might try to lock you into their app ecosystems in order to make you stick with them even as they increase prices or make their services worse.

Check immich for self hosted and proton drive for cloud storage

I'm using nextcloud hosted by adminforge.de with the nextcloud memories app on android they also host ente photos and they are located in germany they host for free but also accept donations to keep the services running.

Proton drive or pcloud are two european options. Also E2E

If it is storage you are looking for; Drime. Their mobile app will be updated later this month to allow for photo sync

I've seen good feedback about Jottacloud.

I personally use Ente as there is E2EE, waiting for a European entity to start their own service with the Ente software.

Im using synology nas

There's also pixelunion.eu

Basically a hosted version of Immich. Since they offer ML models for face recognition etc., your files are not end-to-end encrypted. Though they are very transparent about this and apparently make sure nobody has access, and data is encrypted at rest.

If you're not bothered by this, it might be a good option

Are you familiar with alternativeto.net? One of the most useful sites out there.

Filen has photos support and is E2EE

kDrive - infomaniak - Swiss.

Nextcloud memories.

@florge DigiKam and Jottacloud. The facial recognition is local only, and pretty damn good.