LibrePhotos

LibrePhotos/librephotos

A self-hosted open source photo management service.

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README.md

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# LibrePhotos

<picture>
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="apps/docs/static/img/shots/timeline-dark.webp">
  <img alt="The LibrePhotos timeline, with photos grouped by day and place" src="apps/docs/static/img/shots/timeline-light.webp">
</picture>
<sub>Sample photos from Pexels, see the <a href="apps/docs/static/img/shots/CREDITS.md">credits</a>.</sub>

A self-hosted, open-source photo management service with automatic face recognition, object detection, and semantic search — powered by modern machine learning.

## Repository layout

This is a monorepo that consolidates what was previously five separate repositories.

| Path | What it is | Previous repo |
|---|---|---|
| [`apps/backend/`](apps/backend/) | Django 5 API, machine-learning pipelines, background jobs | `librephotos` |
| [`apps/frontend/`](apps/frontend/) | React 19 + Vite web client, i18next localization | `librephotos-frontend` |
| [`apps/mobile/`](apps/mobile/) | Expo mobile app (Android and iOS), offline-first | `librephotos-mobile` |
| [`apps/docs/`](apps/docs/) | Docusaurus site published to https://docs.librephotos.com | `librephotos.docs` |
| [`deploy/`](deploy/) | Dockerfiles, Compose configs, proxy, Kubernetes manifests | `librephotos-docker` |

Commit history from all five repositories is preserved — `git log --follow apps/<app>/<file>` works across the move.

## Installation

Pick the deployment that fits your setup. Step-by-step guides are in the [documentation](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/installation/).

- [Single container](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/installation/unified-deployment): one image serves the API and the web app, recommended for most people
- [Docker Compose](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/installation/standard-install): separate backend, frontend and proxy containers, with optional NVIDIA GPU acceleration
- [Kubernetes](deploy/k8s/): Kustomize manifests in `deploy/k8s`
- [Unraid](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/installation/unraid)
- [Windows standalone](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/installation/windows-standalone): one folder with `librephotos.exe`, no Docker or Python

### System Requirements

| Resource | Minimum | Recommended |
|----------|---------|-------------|
| RAM      | 4 GB    | 8 GB+       |
| Storage  | 10 GB (plus your photo library) | SSD recommended |
| CPU      | 2 cores | 4+ cores    |
| OS       | Any Docker-compatible OS, or Windows | Linux |

> **Note:** Machine learning features (face recognition, scene classification, image captioning) are memory-intensive. 8 GB+ RAM is strongly recommended for smooth operation.

## Features

- Photos in all common formats, including RAW, HEIC and JPEG XL
  - Videos and live photos
  - Timeline grouped by day and place, plus favorites, recent additions and memories
  - Scans your existing folders and accepts uploads from the web and mobile apps
  - Multiple users, shared albums and public links
  - Albums generated from events, like "Saturday in Lisbon"
  - Face detection and clustering: name a person once and the rest is suggested
  - Places and a map from reverse geocoding
  - Tags and generated captions for every photo
  - Semantic search ("dog on a beach") and search by metadata
  - RAW+JPEG pairs kept as one photo, burst and bracket stacks, and duplicate detection
  - Single sign-on through OpenID Connect
  - Expo mobile app for Android and iOS

## Tech Stack

### Backend

- **Framework:** [Django 5](https://www.djangoproject.com/) with [Django REST Framework](https://www.django-rest-framework.org/)
- **Database:** [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/)
- **Task Queue:** [Django-Q2](https://github.com/django-q2/django-q2)
- **RAW Conversion:** [LibRaw](https://www.libraw.org/) via [rawpy](https://github.com/letmaik/rawpy)
- **Video Conversion:** [FFmpeg](https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg)
- **Exif Support:** [ExifTool](https://github.com/exiftool/exiftool)

### Frontend

- **UI:** [React 19](https://react.dev/) with [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/)
- **Build Tool:** [Vite](https://vite.dev/)
- **Component Library:** [Mantine](https://mantine.dev/)
- **Routing:** [TanStack Router](https://tanstack.com/router)
- **Data Fetching:** [TanStack Query](https://tanstack.com/query)
- **Maps:** [MapLibre GL](https://maplibre.org/)
- **Internationalization:** [i18next](https://www.i18next.com/)

### Machine Learning

- **Face detection:** [InsightFace](https://github.com/deepinsight/insightface)
- **Face classification/clustering:** [scikit-learn](https://scikit-learn.org/) and [hdbscan](https://github.com/scikit-learn-contrib/hdbscan)
- **Image captioning:** [LFM2.5-VL](https://huggingface.co/onnx-community/LFM2.5-VL-450M-ONNX), prompted with the recognised people and the place
- **Tagging, semantic search and similar photos:** [OpenCLIP ViT-B/32](https://huggingface.co/laion/CLIP-ViT-B-32-DataComp.XL-s13B-b90K) (DataComp-XL, MIT licence)
- **Semantic search:** [CLIP ViT-B/32](https://huggingface.co/Xenova/clip-vit-base-patch32) with [FAISS](https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss)
- **ML runtime:** [ONNX Runtime](https://onnxruntime.ai/) for every model, no PyTorch
- **Reverse geocoding:** [geopy](https://github.com/geopy/geopy)

### Infrastructure

- **Deployment:** [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) & [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/)
- **Reverse Proxy:** [Nginx](https://nginx.org/)

### API Documentation

After starting LibrePhotos, interactive API docs are available at:

- **Swagger UI:** `http://localhost:3000/api/swagger`
- **ReDoc:** `http://localhost:3000/api/redoc`

## Development

See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) and the per-app READMEs:
- [Backend](apps/backend/README.md)
- [Frontend](apps/frontend/README.md)
- [Mobile](apps/mobile/README.md)
- [Docs site](apps/docs/README.md)

The Docker Compose-based dev environment lives in [`deploy/compose/`](deploy/compose/) and is described in the [development install guide](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/development/dev-install).

## How to help out

- ⭐ **Star** this repository if you like this project!
- 🚀 **Developing**: Get started in less than 30 minutes by following [this guide](https://docs.librephotos.com/docs/development/dev-install). Also see our [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for detailed development setup, code quality standards, and PR guidelines.
- 🗒️ **Documentation**: Improving the documentation is as simple as submitting a pull request [here](https://github.com/LibrePhotos/librephotos/tree/dev/apps/docs)
- 🧪 **Testing**: If you want to help find bugs, use the ```dev``` tag and update it regularly. If you find a bug, open an issue.
- 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 **Outreach**: Talk about this project with other people and help them to get started too!
- 🌐 **Translations**: Make LibrePhotos accessible to more people with [weblate](https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/librephotos/).
- 💸 [**Donate**](https://github.com/sponsors/derneuere) to the developers of LibrePhotos

## License

This project is licensed under the [MIT License](LICENSE).

[discord]: https://discord.gg/xwRvtSDGWb

Repository info

Default branch: dev
Latest version: 1.3.0
Created: 2020-11-12
Last activity: 2026-10-13
License: MIT
Open issues: 232
Watchers: 53

Topics

django exif hacktoberfest machine-learning photo python selfhosted

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