{"slug": "apple-photos", "name": "Apple Photos", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 9, "warners": 3, "score": 0.999, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2025-11-21", "latest": "2026-10-16", "why": "I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 3}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Apple Photos"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801841105, "item_id": 50115069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115069", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Photos a lot on iOS. Both work very well for me", "excerpt": "You mean Music/Photos on iOS or macOS? I mostly use Music on macOS. I use Photos a lot on iOS. Both work very well for me, and I've been through the iterations all the way since the early 2000s iTunes. What I don't like about Photos is that it's confusing to use sometimes (scroll up/down to find the buttons, the albums etc).", "context": "long-time Apple user", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple routed a graphite pipe through the iPhone Duo's hinge to dissipate heat"}, {"id": 801426625, "item_id": 50089164, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50089164", "by": "dofm", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "why Capture One or even Apple Photos feel nicer and more gentle to use than Lightroom or even DxO PhotoLab", "excerpt": "> Maybe the agents know this so don't bother putting too much effort in? Perhaps it is much more basic: the words to describe really good user interfaces are inadequate to the task, and they are often emotional/psychological in nature. For example, look at how Mac enthusiasts talk about interfaces, talking about \"delight\", \"surprise\", \"subtlety\" on the positive side, \"janky\", \"crass\", etc. on the negative. Even if an", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software"}, {"id": 792645153, "item_id": 49540322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540322", "by": "inventor7777", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff", "excerpt": "I gave Immich a fair try, but it could not replace Apple Photos for my use case. YMMV, but my favorite Photos app features simply weren't available. I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff - RAW images, videos, basic enhancements, etc. When I tested, Immich didn't have very good, if any, editing features. I also love Apple's search functions, and it Just Works\u2122. I'm sure Immich has similar, but I know ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing and search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 799139522, "item_id": 49946220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946220", "by": "dreamcompiler", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Nor do I use Photos or whatever iTunes is called now.", "excerpt": "> My notes in Apple Notes belong to Apple Notes, not my filesystem. My texts live in iMessage's database, not my Documents folder. This is why as a Mac user I don't use those apps. Nor do I use Photos or whatever iTunes is called now. I've been burned too many times by having my work locked away in some kind of proprietary Apple database. Yes, you can usually export stuff but that's not a solution. You export your li", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}, {"id": 783241699, "item_id": 48952606, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48952606", "by": "sillysideprojs", "date": "2026-07-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm not fond of Lightroom Cloud, Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc", "excerpt": "I'm building a self hosted photo gallery with lots of features minus having to share your photos with Google/Apple. I'm a photographer and I find myself often wanting to show someone a photo but then spend minutes trying to browse all my 30,000 photos to find it. I'm not fond of Lightroom Cloud, Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc, so I built my own, Your Own Gallery (Own Your Gallery). It can tag images for textual sea", "context": "photographer", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 736081809, "item_id": 46005113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005113", "by": "postalcoder", "date": "2025-11-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "papercut bugs that you know will never be fixed", "excerpt": "As a former metadata completionist, my mind starts to dissociate when I think about my battles with EXIF metadata, vendor-specific metadata, and the way different software supports, or refuses to support, any of it. It gets even worse when ingesting images into Apple Photos, where you have to confront papercut bugs that you know will never be fixed. I love ExifTool. It\u2019s one of the great utilities. It works for almos", "context": "former metadata completionist", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "EXIF orientation info in PNGs isn't used for image-orientation: from-image"}]}], "who": [{"by": "sgt", "context": "long-time Apple user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115069", "date": "2026-10-16"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["photo management", "photo library", "shared family photo library", "shared photo album", "photo editing and search"], "compared": [{"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "ente", "name": "Ente", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "google-photos", "name": "Google Photos", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50068203", "title": "Apple routed a graphite pipe through the iPhone Duo's hinge to dissipate heat", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059523", "title": "AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937540", "title": "Make Tmux the OS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732513", "title": "Backups Aren't Simple", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686380", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49696453", "title": "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-10": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801841105, "item_id": 50115069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115069", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Photos a lot on iOS. Both work very well for me", "excerpt": "You mean Music/Photos on iOS or macOS? I mostly use Music on macOS. I use Photos a lot on iOS. Both work very well for me, and I've been through the iterations all the way since the early 2000s iTunes. What I don't like about Photos is that it's confusing to use sometimes (scroll up/down to find the buttons, the albums etc).", "context": "long-time Apple user", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple routed a graphite pipe through the iPhone Duo's hinge to dissipate heat"}, {"id": 801426625, "item_id": 50089164, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50089164", "by": "dofm", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "why Capture One or even Apple Photos feel nicer and more gentle to use than Lightroom or even DxO PhotoLab", "excerpt": "> Maybe the agents know this so don't bother putting too much effort in? Perhaps it is much more basic: the words to describe really good user interfaces are inadequate to the task, and they are often emotional/psychological in nature. For example, look at how Mac enthusiasts talk about interfaces, talking about \"delight\", \"surprise\", \"subtlety\" on the positive side, \"janky\", \"crass\", etc. on the negative. Even if an", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software"}, {"id": 799139522, "item_id": 49946220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946220", "by": "dreamcompiler", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Nor do I use Photos or whatever iTunes is called now.", "excerpt": "> My notes in Apple Notes belong to Apple Notes, not my filesystem. My texts live in iMessage's database, not my Documents folder. This is why as a Mac user I don't use those apps. Nor do I use Photos or whatever iTunes is called now. I've been burned too many times by having my work locked away in some kind of proprietary Apple database. Yes, you can usually export stuff but that's not a solution. You export your li", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make Tmux the OS"}, {"id": 795787363, "item_id": 49736710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736710", "by": "mmazzarolo", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a shared photos library with my partner", "excerpt": "I have a weird setup lol. I use a shared photos library with my partner (so that we have all family photos together) and have a MacBook Air that has Photos being download in raw quality and backups then via Time Machine on a Synology NAS. Plus, Synology photo sync on my iPhone (backing up on my NAS separately from Time Machine) AND Google Photos on my partner\u2019s (syncing on Google Photos). Yes it\u2019s horrible, just neve", "context": "", "use_case": "shared family photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795376753, "item_id": 49711047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711047", "by": "yokuze", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we uploaded them to a shared Apple Photos album", "excerpt": "I just got back from a vacation with family. My sister had this idea to assign everyone a color to take pictures of as we walked around. Not everyone was enthused about the itinerary for the day, and this turned out to be a brilliant way to keep everyone engaged, and to feel like we were all contributing to something fun together. At the end, we uploaded them to a shared Apple Photos album and she\u2019s going to arrange ", "context": "", "use_case": "shared photo album", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 795330241, "item_id": 49708140, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708140", "by": "j_bum", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Maybe they could find something similar (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Immich, etc.)!", "excerpt": "Yes. It\u2019s called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM). I suffer from it quite badly. I can remember broad and important details, but struggle to remember even moderate details from anything beyond the past 2-3 months, with sharp falloff after that. Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood (I used to just dump them onto HDDs), I experienced a sharp ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination"}, {"id": 792645153, "item_id": 49540322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540322", "by": "inventor7777", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff", "excerpt": "I gave Immich a fair try, but it could not replace Apple Photos for my use case. YMMV, but my favorite Photos app features simply weren't available. I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff - RAW images, videos, basic enhancements, etc. When I tested, Immich didn't have very good, if any, editing features. I also love Apple's search functions, and it Just Works\u2122. I'm sure Immich has similar, but I know ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing and search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 783241699, "item_id": 48952606, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48952606", "by": "sillysideprojs", "date": "2026-07-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm not fond of Lightroom Cloud, Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc", "excerpt": "I'm building a self hosted photo gallery with lots of features minus having to share your photos with Google/Apple. I'm a photographer and I find myself often wanting to show someone a photo but then spend minutes trying to browse all my 30,000 photos to find it. I'm not fond of Lightroom Cloud, Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc, so I built my own, Your Own Gallery (Own Your Gallery). It can tag images for textual sea", "context": "photographer", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 736081809, "item_id": 46005113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005113", "by": "postalcoder", "date": "2025-11-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "papercut bugs that you know will never be fixed", "excerpt": "As a former metadata completionist, my mind starts to dissociate when I think about my battles with EXIF metadata, vendor-specific metadata, and the way different software supports, or refuses to support, any of it. It gets even worse when ingesting images into Apple Photos, where you have to confront papercut bugs that you know will never be fixed. I love ExifTool. It\u2019s one of the great utilities. It works for almos", "context": "former metadata completionist", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "EXIF orientation info in PNGs isn't used for image-orientation: from-image"}]}