I am still holding onto my S22 for a while yet, but I am looking for something non-Samsung as my next device (probably Fairphone).

Whilst I think I can do without most of Samsung’s features, I do really like the gallery app and what it offers. Background OCR so I can search for text in an image, and manual as well as automatic tags. The built-in editor is also nice, but there are alternatives for that.
The main reason I like using manual tags and OCR is for quickly sharing memes I’ve saved over the years.

I have resigned myself to losing the tags I’ve already created, as it doesn’t seem those can be exported. But I have yet to find a gallery app in which I can slowly start rebuilding my set.

Here’s some of what I’ve come across:

  • Google’s gallery is not an option for me. I want to move away from big tech.
  • Aves supports tags, but is very laggy to use and has no automatic OCR/tags.
  • PhotoPrism doesn’t support OCR.
  • Ente doesn’t do OCR or manual tags.
  • “Gallery” looks promising, but does not yet have the feature set I’m looking for.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

  • stewie410English
    2·
    7 days ago

    I no longer have access to a Samsung device, but found an old reddit thread recommending “Smart Switch to PC”. At a minimum, may make it possible to convert the tags to exif tags directly?

    Might be worth a shot, anyway.

    • tb_@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      That does actually export all my tags. To some sort of weird csv-like format, but they sure are exported. Will have to look into the import format if/when I decide on a new service. Thanks again for the tip.

      Samsung has a Smart Switch client which you can just install on your PC, so that’s convenient.

  • Kyle@lemmy.caEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    Immich is not stable yet. But as soon as it is, I’m using it to replace all of my galleries.

    It doesn’t use OCR but it uses CLIP which accidentally unreliably does tag text like you would want once the images are server side.

    There is discussion on GitHub about adding OCR so I imagine sometime after a stable it could be a feature.

    Immich appears to have the most active development of all the FOSS gallery and backup apps.

    So don’t use it now, but keep an eye on it for the future.

    • tb_@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      I’d be fine with that.

      Though I can’t find any mention of OCR on the website.

      • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        There’s some discussion about it here. It’s “quasi OCR” using CLIP. You can also replace it with different models, maybe one of those will work better.

        • tb_@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          That doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence, though Immich does look better as a whole than most of the other offerings I’ve seen.