I thought of this after a recent trip with some friends. We shared the photos when we were still in person. But sometimes we need to share a lot of photos over the internet. In the past, we have used a shared google drive directory for this. But I’d prefer a self-hosted option. There should be some sort of password protection as well (ideally per share, and no need for accounts). One should be able to both access the current files and upload new ones, just like google drive or dropbox.
I currently have FileShelter, which works for 1-to-1 sharing but not for groups. I guess something like ProjectSend would work, but it’s too complex for my usecase. I’d prefer something more lightweight since I’ll maybe use it once every few months. Also, it should be noob-friendly, and accessible using a browser.
Update: I’m very happy with copyparty. It does what I want, and much much more. I even replaced my older webdav server with it since it provides more granular control over share locations and permissions. Kudos to the developer @tripflag@lemmy.world!
I use https://filebrowser.org/ for this.
Nice lightweight filebrowsing/sharing with user management. Users can have their own dedicated directories, or collaborate.
You can also create share links that allow anyone with the link to view/download files. Optionally password protected.
Here’s a demo you can mess with: https://demo.filebrowser.org/ User: demo Pass: demo
I use nextcloud for this. It’s a bit much for just simple file share, but it works for me.
Mind if I suggest my own software, copyparty?
Regarding authentication, someone who has an account (in this case just yourself) can create password-protected shares which other people can browse, or upload, or browse+upload to (configurable when creating the share).
There is WebDAV support, and it should integrate well enough with shares, but I haven’t tested that specifically.
It has photo and video thumbnails, and a basic image-viewer, and with some elbow-grease it can also show exif-tags (gps-coordinates etc).
There is also optional file dedup, so if two people upload the same file, it’ll detect and skip that during the 2nd upload (doesn’t waste any bandwidth) and swap out the new file with a symlink to the existing one. Default disabled to avoid surprising someone with symlinks.
I think the following command would be enough to get you started:
wget https://github.com/9001/copyparty/releases/latest/download/copyparty-sfx.py python3 copyparty-sfx.py -a sintan:yourpassword -v .::A,sintan --shr=/shr -e2dsa -e2tsbut since that’s entirely unreadable, you can do it with a config file instead,
[global] e2dsa # enable filesystem indexing e2ts # enable media indexing (music tags) shr: /shr # enable shares under this url [accounts] sintan: yourpassword [/] # create a volume at this url /srv/share/partypics # the filesystem path to share accs: sintan: A # give sintan read-write-move-delete-adminand use it like this:
python3 copyparty-sfx.py -c the.confHey, that looks awesome. I’ll try it out when I get back from work.
Edit: This is awesome! It satisfies my requirements and goes beyond. Great app!
You’re kind of asking the wrong question.
Are there ways to share stuff with a group of people that are self-hosted? Absolutely.
Can you get security through those means? Not without some unified authentication.
Maybe back up a few steps and figure out specifically how much trouble you’re willing to go through for this. There’s a reason these photo sharing platforms exist with sharing and permissions.
I don’t care too much about security, since I’ll delete everything in a few days after copying them to my gallery. Then, I usually share a link with them to an album on my PhotoPrism instance. So, per share password is fine by me.
Then just start an Immich instance and share them that way. Easiest route if you want to make them browsable first.
