Nice! Are you aware of https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos? No affiliation, I'm just interested in using something like this, I'm not sure how actively it's being worked on (it was sort of a 'functional demo' last I saw, but not quite usable).

Yes, but it seems like the project was abandoned[1] and the community fork has not had any activity either[2].

More importantly, the lack of a mobile-first experience was a deal breaker for me and my family.

[1] https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos/issues/137

[2] https://github.com/Ownphotos/ownphotos

Ah that's a shame, I hadn't seen that, thanks. I'll look forward to trying out yours!

Server side there's already NextCloud, which is pretty mature. https://github.com/nextcloud/photos

I found the generic approach NextCloud takes towards file-storage to yield underwhelming results when it comes to photos. Features like searching for photos by faces, locations, intelligent sorting are all lacking and making their mobile merely a file browser.

Building on top of NextCloud was an option I had considered, but understanding their abstractions was painful, and I did not want to tie myself down to their ecosystem.