I have used Google Photos for years now, backing up decades of photos and videos to its servers. But with my ever-growing library, my desire to have more control over it increased.
So, I installed a Google Photos alternative and painfully transferred all my photos, fully prepared to leave Google’s service behind.
A few weeks later, I realized Google Photos is so deeply integrated with Android that leaving it changed how I accessed my pictures.
I thought I was replacing a backup service
Immich stored all my photos, but Android could no longer see them
I had a straightforward plan. I would replace Google Photos with Immich, host it on my NAS, and move my entire library there. That way, I would have complete control over my photos and videos, while ending my dependence on Google’s servers.
Initially, I was happy with the switch. I could easily access my library through the Immich app, and a recent update fixed many of the issues that bothered me.
For the first few weeks, it seemed like I had successfully replaced Google Photos.
Then, I tried uploading an old photo to another app. That’s when I discovered the mistake I had made by leaving Google Photos.
Android Photo Picker makes it easy to select and upload pictures inside supported apps. It provides a single unified view of all the photos and videos stored locally on your phone alongside the cloud.
Google Photos was my primary photo backup service for years, so decades of memories appeared alongside recent snaps. I never had to remember whether an image was stored locally or only in the cloud.
More importantly, the Photos integration provided more than access to my photos and videos. I could search my Google Photos library using people’s faces and browse my existing albums. That made finding a photo or video much easier.
When I needed several pictures of the same person, I could surface them within seconds instead of scrolling through decades of photos.
After I left the Google Photos ecosystem, I lost that unified library.
Immich could back up every photo and video to my NAS, but it could not surface them in Android’s Photo Picker. So, if I did not store old photos on my phone, they would not appear in the picker.
Google allows qualifying third-party apps to act as cloud media providers. So, Google Photos is not the only service that can appear there. However, this integration is not automatic.
A photo-backup app must support Android’s CloudMediaProvider framework and complete Google’s qualification process before it can appear as an available provider.
While Immich could safely store decades of photos and videos, it could not surface them whenever I needed to select an image inside an Android app.
This left me with a cumbersome workaround. Every time I needed an older photo, I had to leave the app, open Immich, find and download the image, and then return to upload it.
This may not seem like a big deal. But I am planning a small party for my son’s first birthday. As part of that, I am getting older photos printed and framed from different stages of his first year. These pictures are no longer stored locally on my phone.
Instead of selecting those images through the print service’s photo picker, I have to open Immich, search for each image, download it, and then switch back to Chrome to upload it.
Now repeat that for dozens of photos and multiple people.
With Google Photos, my entire cloud library would have appeared inside the picker alongside the photos stored on my phone. I would not have needed to think about where each image was stored.
Leaving Google Photos technically gave me more control over my library, but it also made that library harder to use.
Google Photos extends far beyond its own app
I missed the Gemini and Messages integration, too
The Photo Picker was the first place I noticed the problem. But it’s not the only part of Android built around Google Photos.
I faced the same problem with Google Messages. When inserting an image in a conversation, tapping the media button opens an inline photo picker. From there, I can click a picture or scroll through my Photos library to select one.
This integration does not work with Immich, making a convenient feature almost impossible to use.
Gemini makes leaving Google Photos even harder. Thanks to the deep integration, I can use Gemini to pull up specific photos from my library, all without opening the Google Photos app.
Earlier this year, I used this integration to quickly find an ice cream parlor in Barcelona I visited in 2022.
Immich offers its own search and organization features, including facial recognition and intelligent search. However, they are limited within the app.
I cannot use Gemini to find photos stored on my NAS. Likewise, Android’s Photo Picker cannot surface my Immich library inside apps.
I left Google Photos, but I could not replace it
Moving my 1TB+ photo library to Immich was not a mistake. It gave me the ownership and control I wanted.
It also made me realize that Google Photos acted as more than a photo backup service, at least within the Android ecosystem. If anything, it acts as a system-wide photo library, and the convenience this offers is too useful to ignore.
While I am still backing up my photos and videos to Immich, I have not given up on Google Photos. Keeping both was not on my mind, but it gives me the control of self-hosting without sacrificing the convenience that the deep integration offers.