Thanks for this project. Our family generates about 2TB of media a year, and it’s been like that for a while, so we’re sitting at roughly 12TB total. That’s very much the long tail of personal media.

I’m not ready to pay $60/month, but I do like iCloud’s memories and other photo features. My compromise is simple:

- I use docker-icloudpd to download our iCloud Photos to local storage over time. It’s been the most practical way I’ve found to back up multiple accounts into one place, though it does require occasional re-auth every so often. - I keep only the last ~2 years of media in iCloud and delete older ones after they’re archived locally. - For browsing and searching the older archive, I use Immich, which has been a great self-hosted personal photo cloud experience with a modern app feel.

For storage, I’ve found fast local disk matters a lot once you’re digging up photos from 5+ years ago. Something like an OWC 4M2 with M.2 drives keeps the experience snappy; a typical HDD-based NAS can feel sluggish when you just want to quickly pull up an old memory.

https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd

Does Photos have features you use that Immich doesn't? I've switched to the latter fully and love it (though I have an Android).