It’s been almost another full year since the last part, and (naturally) the setup has switched dramatically: I’ve ditched LibrePhotos and ResilioSync for an app that does it all: Immich. The biggest pro of Immich is that it has its own iOS app, and background backups work (most of the time) – so no need for a complicated multi-app scaffolding setup like before. The biggest downside: it is very actively developed, and there are breaking changes all the time – so you should only consider it if you are okay with the occasional white screen and/or rebuilding your thumbnails. For example, if this was written a month ago, I would have said that importing your existing gallery through the CLI is confusing and cumbersome; however, that’s no longer necessary – you can now easily add your existing gallery in the web interface, and it will be scanned. Speaking of that, scanning of existing resources is quick and does not take the server down. Transcoded videos play well in browsers. Facial recognition works great, but you still can’t untag a person if they were scanned incorrectly (or if you manually merged them with another person) – so there’s obviously more work to be done.
If there’s one thing to dislike, it’s the logo and the font used for the app title for me, but this is probably a comment on how polished the thing is otherwise.