I have 113k images going back two decades. The screenshot above doesn’t include RAW files, with those included I’m around 2 terabytes of total storage.

• Immich is in fact a photo album, and a damn good one at that.
• Immich keeps google’s grubby paws off my photos. I don’t need or want anyone datamining every precious memory I have in order to modify my behavior to their benefit.
• Immich shares photos between my wife and my phones.
• Immich ensures that if I lose my phone, my photos aren’t lost.
• Immich lets me easily re edit and re-export RAW files without creating duplicates or losing metadata
• Immich lets me conveniently share photos with friends and family without requiring them to have an account anywhere.

Mostly I self-host things when I want data synchronized between multiple devices, or I don’t want to lose it in the event I lose the device it was created on.

Also, like, phone screens are tiny and typing on them is terrible? Why would you want to do everything on your phone?

If encryption is enabled, don’t worry about it. Otherwise ‘dd if=/dev/zero of=definitely-the-bad-drive-do-not-fuck-this-up bs=4M’