Free alternatives to Google Photos

Google Photos is Google's online service for backing up, organizing and sharing photos and videos, most often straight from a phone. Almost anyone with a smartphone can use it, from families keeping albums to people who simply want their pictures off a full device. Because it is a cloud service tied to your Google account, your whole library is stored with the vendor.

What to check before you switch:

• Use Google's export tool to download your library, then test a small batch first. Dates, places and album information may arrive in separate files.
• Whether your phone can keep backing up automatically to the new place, as it does now.
• Search by faces, places or objects, which you may use without noticing. Check what the replacement offers.
• Whether family or friends who share albums with you can still see them.
• If the replacement runs on your own computer or server, you become responsible for storage space and for keeping extra copies.

Immich is the open-source option in the list below.