I’ve been using Immich for a couple of years now, and I really like. Nextcloud is good, too.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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PiGallery/PiGallery2 , Photoview, HomeGallery, lychee, or thumbsup might be up your alley.
Personally I use Immich and ImmichFrame.
I have a use case where I use Next Explorer to share some directories with photos in them for others to see online. Clean, simple UI and no database, it just indexes your directories. PWA works well on phones.
It does run on docker though (like many, many foss apps). 🤷
Here to suggest piwigo. Use it with docker, zero hassle but I think it does depend on a database, so it might be too heavy for your use case. Supports tags & galleries.
Immich works really well. Don’t fear the database. Docker makes it all super easy too.
Alternatively, Plex manages photos ok-ish.
I really don't want another complex service i have to manage. ideally i want something that's a simple python/perl/php script or something like that.
forgot to mention in OP but I run freebsd on my server and it's possible to run docker(podman) with linux emulation if it's very necessary, but i prefer not to use it
Immich isn't complex, and I don't think it requires a separate database.
Edit: just checked and technically it does, but if you use the docker compose then it deploys it automatically and you don't have to think about it at all.
I hear you, I went through the same journey. After getting Immich set up, I haven’t had to do a single thing to it. There are scripts that can turn your folders into Immich albums, so I just set up the docker containers, ran the script, and watched as everything was created for me without more labor on my part.
I hope somebody else has the solution you’re looking for, but if you don’t find it, I really think you should give it a whirl because it turned out to be way easier than I expected it to be.
You're likely not going to find something so simple and lightweight. Immich has some setup, but if you want a good gallery that's the way to go. Don't be afraid of the learning.
It does nothing but serve photo. Background tasks are minimal and many of them only run once on new photos.
I've been using PiGallery2 for this https://github.com/bpatrik/pigallery2
But I do deploy via docker.
It looks like every reply in this is a near miss so I'll add another one to the pile: I've been working on a hosted immich platform for people who want privacy from big tech and don't want to / can't self host it at https://photos.minpin.me/
I have no experience with it, but my questions along a similar vein point to DigiKam.
i have used DigiKam in the past, it's more of an alternative to XnView not a selfhosted gallery.. it doesn't even support mobile phones or web