LibrePhotos

<sub>Mockup designed by rawpixel.com / Freepik</sub>

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

Stable demo is available here: https://demo1.librephotos.com/ . User is demo, password is demo1234 (with sample images).
Latest development demo is available here: https://demo2.librephotos.com/ (same user/password)
You can watch development videos on Niaz Faridani-Rad's channel
You can join our Discord.

Repository layout

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

Path	What it is	Previous repo
`apps/backend/`	Django 5 API, machine-learning pipelines, background jobs	`librephotos`
`apps/frontend/`	React 18 + Vite web client, i18next localization	`librephotos-frontend`
`apps/mobile/`	React Native mobile client (Android)	`librephotos-mobile`
`apps/docs/`	Docusaurus site published to https://docs.librephotos.com	`librephotos.docs`
`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

Step-by-step installation instructions are available in our documentation.

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	Linux

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

Features

Support for all types of photos including raw photos
Support for videos
Timeline view
Scans pictures on the file system
Multiuser support
Generate albums based on events like "Thursday in Berlin"
Face recognition / Face classification
Reverse geocoding
Object / Scene detection
Semantic image search
Search by metadata

Tech Stack

Backend

Framework: Django 5 with Django REST Framework
Database: PostgreSQL
Task Queue: Django-Q2
Image Conversion: ImageMagick
Video Conversion: FFmpeg
Exif Support: ExifTool

Frontend

UI: React 18 with TypeScript
Build Tool: Vite
Component Library: Mantine
Routing: TanStack Router
Data Fetching: TanStack Query
Maps: MapLibre GL
Internationalization: i18next

Machine Learning

Face detection: face_recognition
Face classification/clustering: scikit-learn and hdbscan
Image captioning: im2txt
Scene classification: places365
Reverse geocoding: geopy

Infrastructure

Deployment: Docker & Docker Compose
Reverse Proxy: Nginx

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 and the per-app READMEs:

The Docker Compose-based dev environment lives in deploy/compose/ and is described in the development install guide.

How to help out

⭐ Star this repository if you like this project!
🚀 Developing: Get started in less than 30 minutes by following this guide. Also see our 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
🧪 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.
💸 Donate to the developers of LibrePhotos