Quick Answer
- Ente Photos is a privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted photo storage app — a genuine Google Photos alternative.
- All encryption happens on your device — even Ente cannot see your photos.
- It’s fully open source, cross-platform, and starts free at 10 GB.
- App Store rating: 4.6★ — Google Play: 4.6★ from 1,380 reviews.
What Is Ente Photos?
Most photo apps — Google Photos, iCloud, Amazon Photos — store your data on servers where the company can access them. Ente Photos takes a different approach: every photo and video is encrypted on your device before it ever leaves it, so only you can see what you store.
End-to-End Encryption, Done Right
Ente’s cryptographic implementation has been independently audited by reputed cryptographers, and both the client and server code are fully open source on GitHub. Your photos are replicated across three copies in three European data centers — one of which is inside a decommissioned underground fallout shelter in Paris.
Smart Features That Stay Private
The AI runs entirely on-device, which means no decryption happens on Ente’s servers. That makes these features meaningfully private:
- Face recognition — tag and group people across your entire library
- Magic search — natural language queries like “birthday at the beach”
- Memories — “On this day” recaps, shareable with family
- Collaborative albums — invite others to add photos, all encrypted
- Hidden albums — password-locked vault for sensitive photos
- Legacy contacts — designate someone to access your photos if anything happens to you
Cross-Platform and Self-Hostable
Ente is available on iOS, Android, F-Droid, macOS, Windows, Linux, and web. If you’d rather not rely on any third-party cloud, you can self-host the entire Ente stack by cloning the GitHub repository.
