iCloud Photos
View, organize, and share photos and videos with iCloud Photos on the web. Changes will sync across your devices with iCloud.
iCloud Photos is commercial photo management software made by Apple Inc. It was first released in 2011. Its English Wikipedia article has about 19k readers a month on phones.
- Made by
- Apple Inc.
- Since
- 2011
- Wikipedia readers on phones
- 19k a month
- Source code
- Closed
Judgement
- What it is
- Complete system
- What it does
- Syncs your photo library across iPhone, iPad and Mac through iCloud, with shared libraries and optional end-to-end encryption.
- Adopt it when
- Your household uses Apple devices and wants photos synced everywhere without extra apps.
- Watch out
- Awkward on Windows and Android, and exporting a large library out of iCloud is slow.
- Ready for
- Production-ready
- Runs as
- Cloud service, mobile app and desktop app
- What the license allows
- Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
Judged on 2026-11-03 from the maker's description and Wikipedia. The license and age lines are worked out directly.
Compare iCloud Photos
Open-source alternatives to iCloud Photos
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1
Immich immich-app
High performance self-hosted photo and video management solution.
Complete system Production-ready You want Google Photos-style backup and search on your own server for a household or small group.
★ 118k AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today -
2
Ente ente
💚 End-to-end encrypted cloud for everything.
Complete system Production-ready You want a Google Photos alternative where the provider cannot see your photos.
★ 30k AGPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed today -
3
LibrePhotos LibrePhotos
A self-hosted open source photo management service.
Complete system Usable You want a private Google Photos alternative and have hardware for the machine learning jobs.
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4
Lychee LycheeOrg
A great looking and easy-to-use photo-management-system you can run on your server, to manage and share photos.
Complete system Production-ready You want a clean web gallery to share albums from your own hosting, such as a photographer's portfolio.
★ 4.3k MIT PHP Active, pushed today -
5
Lap julyx10
An offline-first photo manager for large local libraries
Complete system Usable You keep a large photo library on disk and want private organisation without a server or cloud.
★ 4.2k GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed today -
6
Pho fregie
A serverless application for viewing and synchronizing photos to cloud storage
Complete system Usable You have a NAS and want simple phone photo backup without hosting Immich.
★ 1.2k GPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed 14 days ago -
7
FerrumPix Bitpainter75
FerrumPix is a desktop photo management and editing application for Linux, Windows and macOS.
Complete system Experimental You self-host photos on Immich or Nextcloud and want a desktop app to manage and edit them.
★ 745 GPL-3.0 Visual Basic .NET Active, pushed today -
8
AfterFrame YIWANG3
Local-first photo library for Mac and Windows. Browse, cull and search thousands of photos and RAWs, find people and places on-device, and edit with LUTs, text, stickers, camera frames and collages. Agent-ready over MCP.
Complete system Experimental A photographer wants fast culling and light editing of large exports without a cloud service.
★ 260 MIT JavaScript Active, pushed today -
9
CalibRaw Duecki1
Free, open-source RAW editor for Linux, Android, Windows and macOS. GPU-accelerated, non-destructive, with masks, HDR merge and local AI.
Complete system Experimental You want a free RAW developer that also runs on Android.
★ 258 GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed today -
10
Pictaria Server pictaria-ai
Self-hosted photo intelligence, enrichment, curation, and automation for your Immich library. Pictaria Server helps you explore and understand your collection, optionally enrich it with AI, review your best photos, and build Smart Albums that stay up to date—all through a private web dashboard running on your hardware.
Integration Experimental You run Immich and want smarter curation and albums on top of it.
★ 197 AGPL-3.0 JavaScript Active, pushed 12 days ago
Other commercial photo management apps
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1
Google Photos Google
Edit and enhance photos with AI-powered features like Magic Eraser and Unblur on Google Photos. Store, organize & search your memories.
Complete system Production-ready You want automatic phone backup with strong search, especially on Android.
32k readers a month Commercial -
2
Amazon Photos Amazon
Amazon Photos offers free online photo storage to Prime members, who can save and share unlimited photos on desktop, mobile, and tablet.
Complete system Production-ready You already pay for Prime and want a free backup of your photo library alongside another service.
Commercial
Under it
Every program, iCloud Photos included, runs on a microchip.
The description is the maker's own, quoted as written. Facts come from Wikipedia and refresh weekly. Readers are counted on Wikipedia's mobile site only, because automated traffic that Wikimedia does not flag inflates desktop counts.