Recall — Open-source alternative to Google Photos 📸

Love this project! I'd love to see a video upload section as well. I miss the facial recognition of Google Photos that groups my photos by people. I'd love to see that somewhere too.

This is awesome, photos are people's most private asset and they should have 100% control over their memories. Looks promising, really good.

Hi all 👋 We want to try to explain what Recall and Blockstack are in more detail, so we thought of answering a few questions that we have previously received. Feel free to ask us more! 🤔 What it is Recall is your new personal photo vault. A completely free, encrypted and open-source solution to store and organize your photos with no restrictions while retaining full ownership and privacy. We believe that photos are a true reflection of your life so you’ll want to keep them safe and private. Recall is the most secure alternative to Google Photos. There are no file size restrictions and you can rest assured that no one but you can access your photos. By using Blockstack’s technology (read more about it below) you can choose your own storage provider and rely on high encryption standards to make sure your memories stay close to you. 🔍 What it does By encrypting your photos with a key that only belongs to you and is never shared with Recall, you can then store them on the provider of your choice or directly on Blockstack’s default storage called Gaia. You can access your photos from anywhere and they are automatically organised by the time you’ve shot them giving you a clear timeline of your life’s most important moments. 👨🏾‍💻 Why we developed it We were tired of constantly having to worry about data breaches, privacy, security and compromises on photo quality. Are you sure that at the end of the day no one else is looking at your photos? That is why we’ve decided to build Recall, a tool that we will use for years to come that will allow us to reach peace of mind on such issues. A platform that we know we can trust, open-source and secure. You can access the source code at GitHub (https://github.com/recall-photos). 🚫 Current issues We’re currently working towards fixing some issues and improving the entire experience on Recall. Some of them are: - Improving upload and read speed; - Multiple photos upload; - UX and UI enhancements; Do have a look at our roadmap (https://trello.com/b/EMKJ0T7f/re...) for more information on these. 🔮 Plans for the future We want to invite everyone to collaborate and build Recall. We’ve created the first layer but there is so much more that can be done. Some of those features are already on our public roadmap: ability to share folders with your friends and family, professional tools for photographers, mobile applications, integrations with other applications and even support for other media types. Come join us on Github and shape a world of memories. --- ⛓️ What is Blockstack Blockstack is a collection of different tools that allow you to access applications that work in a different way than traditional ones. With Blockstack users manage their own identity across the entire ecosystem and store information in their provider of choice. This is very different from traditional applications where the information and authentication system is closed behind the companies’ servers. This opens a whole new breed of applications and possibilities. Blockstack is backed by prominent names in the industry such as USV, Lux Capital, Naval Ravikant, Compound, YC and many more. 🔗 What it does With its set of tools, Blockstack main appeals are the identity and storage capabilities that work unlike any other platform. Identities are registered directly on bitcoin’s blockchain and are therefore available to be verified by anyone. However, every other information is stored on the provider of your choice and Blockstack even offers its own storage, named Gaia, that allows you to start using Blockstack very fast. 🖼️ How it stores your photos To ensure maximum security, all files on Blockstack by default are stored encrypted with your unique identity key. No one else has access to this key and therefore it is impossible to decrypt the information stored in each file. This is exactly how we make sure that Recall photos are not accessible to anyone else but you. Hope you guys enjoy Recall! Let us know in the comments below if you’d like to help us continue building it! 😊

Once the development gets a little further on, this product will be a must try for everyone! Once it gets a mobile app and a larger user base, we will finally have a true alternative to Google Photos for normal people!

Pros:

Simple, easy, secure, Google free!

Cons:

No mobile app yet (emphasis on the yet!)

Looks interesting, but there's a lack of clarity on the website, and in the maker comment, about where exactly the storage is, and who manages it: "store them on the provider of your choice or directly on Blockstack’s default storage called Gaia" What providers are available? Do I have to set up and provision an AWS S3 account if I want to use AWS? Or is hosting provided, and I simply get to choose which cloud service I want Recall to put my photos onto? If I choose to use Gaia, are there storage limits? I can understand that makers often don't see the wood for the trees, but most users will just think "how much will it cost to store gigabytes of photos" and "how much hassle will it be to set up"

idk if anybody else has asked this, or if it's on the roadmap, are there any plans to bring this to android ?

@jackveiga I find it ironic that actually storing the data is just relying on another centralized provider such as Dropbox / S3 / your own VPS (even for Gaia which is just proxying). Sure you get to say where you store the data but this is not decentralized imo. I have not studied IPFS, maybe that's something truly decentralized. Also , write / read speed could be really slow if you think of it, what are the nodes incentives to have proper upload and access to your data? And while browsing ProductHunt I've seen other similar products built on BlockStack, but what do you do to make it a fast real project?

Hi, this is a service I can support. I like the mission. However, I just joined and uploaded 2 images. I'm a bit confused. It states here that I can choose my own cloud provider. But I was able to upload two images, so, where are these two images now being stored? I understand this is still under development but I'm curious to know how I can choose my own provider, and who I can choose?

This looks great for storage but have a few questions/concerns: What encryption method is used to secure data? How will this service comply with Australia's recent anti-encryption bill?

Worked really nice for me on mobile as well. I was thinking that you might want to define a new icon for storing because it is not upload, but saving to my "other" storage. Looking forward to the writable file API that will makes the UX for Web apps like recall much better.

Signing up for blockstack seems to be a trip I wasn't planning to take.

Love this project and would love to quit using Google photos. Any plans for an Android app?