MT Photos: A Recommended Private Photo App for NAS Deployment

MT PhotosNAS photo managementprivate photo albumDocker deploymentself-hosted gallery

Published·Jan 2, 2024Modified·Jan 2, 2024

MT Photos is a photo management system developed by Hangzhou Photo Home Technology Co., Ltd., specifically designed for NAS enthusiasts. It supports automatic organization and classification of your photos by time, location, people, and photo type. This article shares the installation and usage of MT Photos.

Key Features

Supports Docker deployment
Supports multiple users
Displays photos via timeline
Displays photos via folders
Supports face classification
Supports location classification
Supports lossless backup, download, and display of Live Photos
Supports scene classification (e.g., screenshots, animals, landscapes)
Easily share photos with family via albums
Supports iOS and Android apps

Pricing

MT Photos is a paid software with a 1-month trial period and no free version. Pricing (as of January 2024) is:

3 CNY/month
25 CNY/year
99 CNY/lifetime

Personally, I find the pricing quite reasonable. If you prefer open-source options, you can check immich, though deployment and maintenance are relatively more complex.

Why Choose a Self-Hosted Photo Album?

Initially, the author used Google Photos. Google Photos is incredibly powerful and offers the best experience among photo apps, but it has limited storage capacity, requiring additional purchases once exceeded, and there are potential privacy risks.

Later, the author purchased a QNAP NAS and used the built-in "Q-Photo" management software to achieve private photo storage. However, "Q-Photo" has slow recognition speeds, an outdated app interface, and often encounters mysterious issues after NAS system updates. The app is difficult to use and unstable. After trying it for a while, the author gave up.

PhotoPrism was also tried, but it does not support multiple users or an app, so it was abandoned. Until MT Photos appeared, the author realized this was the private photo management software they were looking for.

The author chose a self-hosted private album mainly for the following reasons:

Privacy and Security
Automatic backup of phone photos
Automatic classification, organization, and retrieval of photos
Ability to share photos with family

Installing MT Photos

The official MT Photos help documentation provides detailed instructions. The official website offers installation methods for Synology, QNAP, and others. The core method is Docker installation. The author uses Docker Compose to install MT Photos. The detailed docker-compose.yaml content is as follows:

version: "3"

services:
  mtphotos:
    image: mtphotos/mt-photos:1.24.2
    container_name: mtphotos
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8063:8063
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./mt_photos_upload:/upload
      - ./photos/zhansan:/photos/zhansan
      - ./photos/lisi:/photos/lisi
    environment:
      - TZ=Asia/Shanghai
  mtphotos_ai:
    image: mtphotos/mt-photos-ai:latest
    container_name: mtphotos_ai
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    environment:
      - API_AUTH_KEY=xxx

1.24.2 refers to the MT Photos version. The latest version can be checked at https://hub.docker.com/r/mtphotos/mt-photos/tags.
The first 8063 refers to the external access port, and the second 8063 is the internal container port; keep them fixed and do not modify them.
./photos/zhansan:/photos/zhansan: Here, a separate directory is mounted to save the album for the user zhansan.
./photos/lisi:/photos/lisi: A separate directory is mounted to save the album for the user lisi.
The mtphotos_ai service is used for scene recognition and is optional.
When using mtphotos_ai, you need to define a character string for API_AUTH_KEY to configure it in MT Photos.

Finally, do not forget to use the command docker-compose up -d to start the service.

For more detailed installation instructions, please refer to the official help documentation: https://mtmt.tech/docs/example/intro

Using MT Photos

After installation, access the web service by entering http://IP:8063, and then proceed with the following steps:

Installation Wizard
User Management
Gallery Management (I assigned a separate folder for each user, such as zhansan/lisi as shown above)
GPS API Configuration (Used to identify photo shooting locations; you need to apply for an Amap/Gaode Map API)
Add Smart Recognition API (Depends on the mtphotos_ai service for scene recognition)

A special note on the "Add Smart Recognition API" step: Since the author used Docker Compose for installation, the MT Photos and mtphotos_ai services are on the same network. The address for scene recognition should be filled as http://mtphotos_ai:8000.

Using the App

MT Photos provides iOS and Android apps, which can be searched and installed in app stores, or you can visit the official website to scan the QR code for download.

The app is simple and easy to use, supporting automatic backup and filtering of albums, and fits the usage habits of Chinese users. The only thing to note is the "Backup Destination". By default, it will create a default directory for you. The author suggests using a separate directory for each user to facilitate maintenance and distinction.

Conclusion

MT Photos is very suitable for building your own private photo album and is much better to use than the built-in "Q-Photo" on QNAP. Although MT Photos is not perfect, it is currently one of the very good private photo management software options. If you do not want to spend too much time tinkering, MT Photos is definitely a good choice.

MT Photos Official Website: https://mtmt.tech/