We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
Hello HN, Over the last year we've been building ente[1], a privacy-friendly, easy-to-use alternative to Google Photos. We've so far built Android[2][3], iOS[4], web[5] apps that encrypt your files and back them up in the background. You can access these across your devices, and share them with other ente users, end-to-end encrypted. You can also use our electron app[6] to maintain a local copy of your backed up files. We've built a fault-tolerant data replication layer that replicates your data to two different storage providers in the EU. We will be providing additional replicas as an…
In plain words
Ente is an end-to-end encrypted photo backup service that works across Android, iOS, web, and desktop apps. It automatically backs up and encrypts files, replicating data across multiple EU storage providers. Users can access photos on any device and share them with other ente users while maintaining encryption. The service includes a local copy option via an Electron app and uses standard cryptographic protocols for security. It is designed for people seeking a privacy-focused alternative to Google Photos.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN, Over the last year we've been building ente[1], a privacy-friendly, easy-to-use alternative to Google Photos. We've so far built Android[2][3], iOS[4], web[5] apps that encrypt your files and back them up in the background. You can access these across your devices, and share them with other ente users, end-to-end encrypted. You can also use our electron app[6] to maintain a local copy of your backed up files. We've built a fault-tolerant data replication layer that replicates your data to two different storage providers in the EU. We will be providing additional replicas as an addon in the future. We're relying on libsodium[7] for performing all cryptographic operations. Under the hood it uses XChaCha20 and XSalsa20 for encryption and Argon2 for key derivation. We have documented our architecture[8] and open-sourced our clients[9]. We did a soft-launch on r/degoogle[10] sometime ago, and have since then ironed out issues and polished the product. But we are far from where we want to be in terms of features (object and face detection, location clustering, image filters, ...) and user experience. We are hoping to use this post as an opportunity to collect feedback from fellow hackers. If there's anything we can do better, please let us know, we would like to. Best, - Vishnu, Neeraj, Abhinav [1]: https://ente.io [2]: https://ente.io/apk [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.ente.photos [4]: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/ente-photos/id1542026904 [5]: https://web.ente.io [6]: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest [7]: https://libsodium.gitbook.io [8]: https://ente.io/architecture [9]: https://github.com/ente-io [10]: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/njatok/we_built_a...
More life & fun this month
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Launched alongside, August 2021
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Hey all My name is Sindre, and I am the CTO of Scrimba (YC S20). For the last 7 years, I have written all my web apps in a full-stack programming language called Imba. It compiles to JavaScript and its main goal is to make web developers more productive. I just launched a major overhaul of Imba, so I wanted to share it here on HN, in case anyone are interested in learning more about it. It is very opinionated, so some of you might not like it, but I would love to hear anyones feedback regardless. Constructive criticism appreciated! The backstory: Imba initially started in 2012 as an effort…
Life & fun · 2021
