Nextcloud is something I have a somewhat love-hate relationship with. On one hand, I've used Nextcloud for ~7 years to backup and provide access to all of my family's photos. We can look at our family pictures and memories from any computer, and it's all private and runs mostly without any headaches.
On the other hand, Nextcloud is so far from being something like Google Docs, and I would never recommend it as a general replacement to someone who can't tolerate "jank", for lack of a better word. There are so many small papercuts you'll notice when using it as a power user. Right off the top of my head, uploading large files is finicky, and no amount of web server config tinkering gets it to always work; thumbnail loading is always spotty, and it's significantly slower than it needs to be (I'm talking orders of magnitude).
With all that said, I'm so grateful for Nextcloud since I don't have a replacement, and I would prefer not having all our baby and vacation pictures feeding some big corporation's AI. We really ought to have a safe, private place to store files in 2025 that the average person can wrap their head around. I only wish my family took better advantage of it, since I'm essentially providing them with unlimited storage.
is Immich that thing? I've played with it, but didn't really dig deeper
they claim they can do it all when it comes to pictures and videos etc
Immich is actually usable, thumbnail previews work without any previous setup, and the mobile app is pretty responsive
Unlike Nextcloud, I feel I can rely on it and feel I can upgrade without issues
That sounds really promising, maybe my family would be better suited to something like that.
I will say though, Nextcloud is almost painless when it comes to management. I’ve had one or two issues in the past, but their “all in one” docker setup is pretty solid, I think. It’s what I’ve been using for the last year or so.
I use my Nextcloud as a general file storage thing, I just emphasized the photo aspect because that’s my family’s main use case.
I have heard of Immich though, perhaps I owe it an honest try someday.
Immich is way better if all you need is photo storage. It's Google photos level.