Lychee

A great looking and easy-to-use photo-management-system you can run on your server, to manage and share photos.

6,323

672

6,323

View on GitHub

Top Related Projects

Lychee

3,459

A great looking and easy-to-use photo-management-system you can run on your server, to manage and share photos.

photoprism

35,780

AI-Powered Photos App for the Decentralized Web 🌈💎✨

pigallery2

1,824

A fast directory-first photo gallery website, with rich UI, optimized for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi)

Quick Overview

Lychee is a self-hosted photo-management system that allows users to upload, manage, and share their photos. It provides a sleek, modern interface for organizing and viewing images, with support for various file formats and tagging capabilities.

Pros

Easy to install and set up, with support for various hosting environments
Clean and intuitive user interface for managing and viewing photos
Supports multiple users and sharing options for collaborative use
Responsive design that works well on both desktop and mobile devices

Cons

Limited advanced editing features compared to some commercial photo management solutions
Requires self-hosting, which may be challenging for less tech-savvy users
Performance may degrade with very large photo libraries
Lacks some features found in more comprehensive photo management systems, such as facial recognition

Getting Started

To get started with Lychee, follow these steps:

Ensure your server meets the requirements (PHP 7.4+, MySQL 5.7+)
Download the latest Lychee release from GitHub
Upload the files to your web server
Navigate to the Lychee directory in your browser
Follow the installation wizard to set up your database and admin account

# Example installation using Docker
docker run -d \
  --name=lychee \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Europe/London \
  -p 80:80 \
  -v /path/to/config:/config \
  -v /path/to/pictures:/pictures \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lycheeorg/lychee

After installation, you can start uploading and managing your photos through the web interface.

Competitor Comparisons

Lychee

3,459

A great looking and easy-to-use photo-management-system you can run on your server, to manage and share photos.

Pros of Lychee (LycheeOrg)

More active development with frequent updates and bug fixes
Broader community support and contributions
Enhanced features, including improved album management and sharing options

Cons of Lychee (LycheeOrg)

Potentially more complex setup due to additional features
May require more system resources compared to the original version

Code Comparison

Lychee (electerious):

public function add(Request $request)
{
    if (!Auth::check()) {
        return redirect('login');
    }
    // ... rest of the code
}

Lychee (LycheeOrg):

public function add(AddAlbumRequest $request)
{
    $parentId = $request->has('parent_id') ? $request['parent_id'] : null;

    return Response::json(
        AlbumFactory::create($request['title'], $parentId, $request['user_id'])
    );
}

The LycheeOrg version demonstrates more modern PHP practices, including type hinting and dedicated request classes for validation. It also shows a more streamlined approach to album creation, utilizing factory patterns and JSON responses.

photoprism

35,780

AI-Powered Photos App for the Decentralized Web 🌈💎✨

Pros of PhotoPrism

More advanced AI-powered features, including facial recognition and object detection
Supports a wider range of file formats, including RAW images and videos
Offers a more comprehensive search functionality with metadata indexing

Cons of PhotoPrism

Higher system requirements and more complex setup process
Steeper learning curve due to more advanced features
May be overkill for users with simpler photo management needs

Code Comparison

PhotoPrism (Go):

func (m *Search) Photos(f form.SearchPhotos) (results PhotoResults, err error) {
    if err := f.ParseQueryString(); err != nil {
        return results, err
    }

    s := UnscopedDb().Table("photos").Select("photos.*")
    s = s.Joins("JOIN cameras ON cameras.id = photos.camera_id")

Lychee (PHP):

public function recent(Request $request)
{
    $photos = Photo::recent()->get();

    return PhotoResource::collection($photos);
}

PhotoPrism's code snippet showcases its more complex search functionality, while Lychee's code demonstrates a simpler approach to retrieving recent photos.

pigallery2

1,824

A fast directory-first photo gallery website, with rich UI, optimized for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi)

Pros of PiGallery2

More advanced search capabilities, including face recognition and GPS-based search
Better performance with large photo libraries due to optimized indexing
Supports video playback and management

Cons of PiGallery2

More complex setup and configuration process
Requires more system resources to run effectively
Less polished user interface compared to Lychee

Code Comparison

Lychee (PHP):

public function add(Request $request)
{
    $request->validate([
        'url' => 'required|url',
        'albumID' => 'nullable|string'
    ]);

    return Response::json(Import::url($request['url'], $request['albumID']));
}

PiGallery2 (TypeScript):

public async addPhotos(req: express.Request, res: express.Response): Promise<void> {
    const files = req.files as Express.Multer.File[];
    const albumId = req.body.albumId;

    const result = await this.galleryManager.addPhotos(files, albumId);
    res.json(result);
}

Both repositories provide self-hosted photo gallery solutions, but PiGallery2 offers more advanced features at the cost of increased complexity. Lychee focuses on simplicity and ease of use, while PiGallery2 provides more powerful management tools for larger photo collections.

Convert designs to code with AI

Introducing Visual Copilot: A new AI model to turn Figma designs to high quality code using your components.

Try Visual Copilot

README

Lychee

A great looking and easy-to-use photo-management-system.

Since the 1st of April 2018 this project has moved to it's own Organisation (https://github.com/LycheeOrg) where people are able to submit their fixes to it. We, the Organisation owners, want to thank electerious (Tobias Reich) for the opportunity to make this project live on.

Lychee Lychee

Lychee is a free photo-management tool, which runs on your server or web-space. Installing is a matter of seconds. Upload, manage and share photos like from a native application. Lychee comes with everything you need and all your photos are stored securely. Read more on our website.

Installation

To run Lychee, everything you need is a web-server with PHP 5.5 or later and a MySQL-Database. Follow the instructions to install Lychee on your server. Installation »

How to use

You can use Lychee right after the installation. Here are some advanced features to get the most out of it.

Settings

Sign in and click the gear in the top left corner to change your settings. If you want to edit them manually: MySQL details are stored in data/config.php. Other options and hidden settings are stored directly in the database. Settings »

Update

Updating is as easy as it should be. Update »

Build

Lychee is ready to use, right out of the box. If you want to contribute and edit CSS or JS files, you need to rebuild Lychee. Build »

Keyboard Shortcuts

These shortcuts will help you to use Lychee even faster. Keyboard Shortcuts »

Dropbox import

In order to use the Dropbox import from your server, you need a valid drop-ins app key from their website. Lychee will ask you for this key, the first time you try to use the import. Want to change your code? Take a look at the settings of Lychee.

Twitter Cards

Lychee supports Twitter Cards and Open Graph for shared images (not albums). In order to use Twitter Cards you need to request an approval for your domain. Simply share an image with Lychee, copy its link and paste it in Twitters Card Validator.

Imagick

Lychee uses Imagick when installed on your server. In this case you will benefit from a faster processing of your uploads, better looking thumbnails and intermediate sized images for small screen devices. You can disable the usage of Imagick in the settings.

Docker

Browse the Docker Hub Registry for various automated Lychee-Docker builds. We recommend using lychee-docker by kdelfour.

Plugins and Extensions

The plugin-system of Lychee allows you to execute scripts when a certain action fires. Plugins are hooks, which are injected directly into Lychee. Plugin documentation »

It's also possible to build extensions upon Lychee. The way to do so isn't documented and can change every time. We recommend using the plugin-system, when possible.

Here's a list of all available Plugins and Extensions:

Name	Description
lycheesync	Sync Lychee with any directory containing photos	More »
lycheeupload	Upload photos to Lychee via SSH	More »
Jekyll	Liquid tag for Jekyll sites that allows embedding Lychee albums	More »
lychee-redirect	Redirect from an album-name to a Lychee-album	More »
lychee-watermark	Adds a second watermarked photo when uploading images	More »
lychee-rss	Creates a RSS-Feed out of your photos	More »
lychee-FlashAir	Import from a Toshiba FlashAir WiFi SD card	More »
lychee-webroot	Controls photos accessibility and keeps Lychee files hidden	More »
lychee-create-medium	Generate missing medium size photos	More »

Troubleshooting

Take a look at the FAQ if you have problems. Discovered a bug? Please create an issue here on GitHub!

Top Related Projects

Convert designs to code with AI

Introducing Visual Copilot: A new AI model to turn Figma designs to high quality code using your components.

Try Visual Copilot