PicFolio 📷

PicFolio is a self-hosted, privacy-first photo management app — a local Google Photos alternative. It runs entirely on your own machine, giving you AI-powered photo organization, face grouping, smart search, duplicate detection, and a clean web UI, without paying for cloud storage or sharing your photos with anyone.

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Screenshots

• Desktop💻

• Web 🌐

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Features

• Multi-user support — Separate photo libraries per user, each with their own login

• AI Auto-tagging — Every photo is tagged automatically using the Recognize Anything Model (RAM)

• Face Grouping — Detects and clusters people across your library using DeepFace; name them for easy browsing

• Natural Language Search — Search photos by description ("dog at beach") powered by Gemini Pro + semantic embeddings

• Auto Albums — Photos grouped automatically by scene and content

• Places / GPS Map — Browse photos by location using EXIF GPS data on an interactive map

• Duplicate Detection — Find and remove duplicate photos

• Blur Detection — Surface and clean up low-quality, blurry shots

• Favorites & Bin — Like photos, delete to bin, restore anytime

• Upload — Drag and drop upload from browser (works on mobile too)

• Statistics — View storage usage and library stats

• 100% Local — Nothing leaves your machine (except an optional Gemini API key for search)

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Python, Flask, SQLite, Waitress
AI / ML	RAM (Recognize Anything Model), DeepFace, Gemini Pro, SentenceTransformers
Frontend	Next.js 15, React 19, Tailwind CSS
Maps	Leaflet, React Leaflet
Media	Pillow, MoviePy, OpenCV

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Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+

• Node.js 18+

• A Gemini API key (free, optional — only needed for AI search)

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Backend Setup

1. Create and activate a virtual environment

# Windows

python  -m  venv  venv

venv\Scripts\activate

  

# macOS / Linux

python  -m  venv  venv

source  venv/bin/activate

2. Install Python dependencies

pip  install  -r  Backend/requirements.txt

3. Configure environment variables

Create a .env file inside the Backend/ folder:

Gemini=your_gemini_api_key_here

4. Run the backend

python  backend/start.py

The backend server will start on http://localhost:5000.

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Frontend Setup

1. Navigate to the frontend directory

cd  Frontend

2. Install dependencies

npm  i

3. Run the development server

npm  run  dev

The frontend will be available at http://localhost:3000.

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First-Time Setup

1. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser

2. Go to the Setup page and enter your backend server URL (http://localhost:5000)

3. Create your first user

4. Start uploading photos

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Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's bug fixes, feature enhancements, or documentation improvements, feel free to submit a pull request.

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