Photoview
Simple and user‑friendly self‑hosted photo gallery for photographers. Automatically indexes directories, generates thumbnails, supports RAW and EXIF, and includes face recognition.
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Self‑hosted photo gallery for photographers, with RAW support, face recognition, and easy Docker deployment.
Core Features
- Closely tied to the filesystem: directories map directly to albums
- User management: each user can be assigned a separate media path
- Sharing: albums and individual media can be shared via public links with optional password protection
- Supports RAW image formats and EXIF parsing
- Video support: common formats automatically optimized for web playback
What It Can't Do
- •Docker registry has migrated; update image references in your compose file. PostgreSQL on the master branch has been updated to version 18 — back up your database before upgrading. Portainer and similar abstraction layers are not officially supported; please reproduce issues with plain Docker Compose.
Use Cases
- Photographers managing and showcasing high‑resolution portfolios
- Families building a private cloud photo album to replace Google Photos
- Media enthusiasts organizing and sharing large collections of photos and videos by folder structure
Detailed Introduction
Photoview is a self‑hosted photo and video gallery designed specifically for photographers. It works by scanning a directory on your filesystem and presenting the media on a clean web interface, organised exactly as the folders on disk. Key strengths include raw support (CR2, NEF, ARW, etc.) and EXIF metadata parsing, automatic thumbnail generation for fast browsing, video transcoding for web playback, and built‑in face recognition that groups photos of the same person. User management allows each user to be assigned a separate media path, and albums or individual media can be shared publicly with optional password protection. Photoview can be deployed via Docker, Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, NixOS, Unraid, YunoHost, and TrueNAS. It supports SQLite, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL as the database backend. The project is actively maintained with a responsive community on Discord.
Troubleshooting & FAQ (1)
TroubleshootingHow to fix 'unsupported media type' error when adding CR3 files to Photoview?
Photoview currently does not display CR3 files. As a workaround, extract the embedded full-size JPEG using exiftool: exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw IMAGE.CR3 > IMAGE.JPG. Then add the resulting JPG to your library. A future update will automate this extraction natively.
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Getting Started
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Install the software
Double-click the downloaded installer and follow the prompts
Step 1: Ensure Docker and Docker Compose are installed
Step 2: Download the official docker-compose.example.yml and save as docker-compose.yml
Step 3: Edit environment variables to set admin password and media directory path
- Step 1: Ensure Docker and Docker Compose are installed
- Step 2: Download the official docker-compose.example.yml and save as docker-compose.yml
- Step 3: Edit environment variables to set admin password and media directory path
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View GitHub SourceUninstall Info
In the directory containing docker-compose.yml, run `docker compose down -v` to remove containers and volumes. For full cleanup, delete the persistent data directories manually.
No Extra Dependencies
Ready to use after download. No additional runtime required.
Having issues? Check the FAQ below
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