Lychee at a glance
Checked 16 Oct 2026Lychee (4.3k stars, v7.11.1 Oct 2026) is a PHP photo gallery you run with Docker Compose (FrankenPHP plus MariaDB) or on a PHP web server. You upload photos into nested and smart albums, view them in justified or masonry layouts, a timeline and slideshows, and share albums by link or embed them on websites. MIT licence. The paid Supporter Edition adds extras such as user groups, upload quotas, secured links and statistics. It is a gallery, not a backup tool: no automatic phone backup or face recognition is documented.
RepoQuarry. “Lychee.” Checked 16 Oct 2026. https://repoquarry.dev/projects/lycheeHow much of Google Photos does it replace?
1 of 4 jobs. Album sharing and browsing only; no automatic phone backup or face search.
For automatic phone photo and video backup, search photos by faces, timeline and map browsing, see other Google Photos alternatives. You may also need to build an interface, an API server and hosting yourself.
Facts, with sources
Every answer links to where we found it. We read the documentation; we did not install it.
Lychee is a free, open-source photo-management tool that runs on your server or web space.github.com · Lychee#readme ↗ today
User groups & upload quotas.lycheeorg.dev · get-supporter-edition ↗ today
If you cannot use Docker, Lychee can be installed manually on a server with PHP, a web server, and a database.lycheeorg.dev · installation ↗ today
A single command gets you a fully working gallery with a database, ready to use.lycheeorg.dev · installation ↗ today