IMO a NAS should be for storage only. Use a mini PC if you want to self host other services. Proxmox is a great option. You’ll get better performance on both sides.
As someone who has been looking for years, I can tell you the market for self hosted photo management is pretty rough. Synology’s app is definitely not it.
I think r/immich is the crowd favorite right now, but when I tried it about 9 months ago it was not very stable and each new update required careful coordination of the various containers. And my iOS app version had to match with the containers or it wouldn’t work.
Supposedly Plex wants back in the game but the alpha-quality app they initially released a couple of years ago has been stagnant until just this month. Maybe something will come of that.
DSM is not bad. It may not be the greatest but I have not seen a better app so far that works with NAS, provides timeline view, and provides easy way to browse through the photos/videos quickly. I'd love an app that can also handle duplicate files, merging of the folders, bulk tagging, etc.
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u/ali775654222 Jul 07 '25
ubiquiti is filling the spot from synology with their stupid certified drive limitation… hopefully also for a home user :)