Memories

What Memories does

Memories is a photo app for Nextcloud. If you already run Nextcloud for files, it adds a timeline sorted by the date each photo was taken, a rewind control to jump to any point in the past, albums, a map with reverse geocoding, an archive for photos you want out of the timeline, and quick bulk editing of dates and other metadata. The README says it has been tested on instances with more than a million photos.

Albums can be shared with other Nextcloud users or with people outside the instance through links. People and object tagging come from separate Nextcloud apps: Recognize, the official AI tagging app, or Face Recognition, which offers more fine-tuning and is integrated at an alpha stage.

Phones and backup

Phone backup uses Nextcloud’s own infrastructure. The official Nextcloud apps for Android and iOS can upload new photos automatically, and Memories indexes them as they arrive through Nextcloud hooks. There is also a Memories Android app in early access on Google Play, F-Droid and GitHub. There is no dedicated iOS app; on iPhone you browse through the web interface.

For migrations, the project documents moves from Nextcloud Photos and from Google Takeout.

Self-hosting Memories

You install Memories from the Nextcloud app store, so you need a working Nextcloud first. The install page lists MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL 15+, the Imagick PHP extension, ffmpeg and ffprobe, and a distributed memcache such as Redis. The app manifest on the main branch targets recent Nextcloud releases (34 and 35) and PHP 8.3 or newer. The project suggests Nextcloud AIO or the community Nextcloud Docker image with a custom Dockerfile, and the repository includes a Compose example.

After installing, occ memories:index indexes existing files and occ memories:places-setup prepares reverse geocoding. New uploads are indexed automatically. Preview Generator is recommended for performance, and the Nextcloud Photos app is needed for albums.

Video playback needs transcoding to be set up. Memories bundles its own transcoder (go-vod) with HLS adaptive streaming and supports hardware acceleration, but the docs warn that transcoding is compute-intensive and will not work on a Raspberry Pi. Indexing photos on external storage can be slow because every file must be downloaded.

Hosted version

The developer does not offer hosting. Memories runs on any Nextcloud server where you can install apps.

Limitations

You take on Nextcloud’s maintenance as well as Memories’. AI features depend on other apps, video needs extra configuration, and the dedicated mobile app is Android-only and in early access.

Who it suits

Memories is the natural choice for people who already use Nextcloud and want a Google Photos-style library without adding another server. If you do not run Nextcloud, a standalone app such as Immich is simpler to set up.