Top all-time · #699
ente
Company blog · ente.io/blog · on HN as mnvrthsecurityprogramming
ente is the company blog at ente.io, writing about security and programming. Since 2020, 89 different Hacker News readers have linked it 201 times, most often “Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link ente.io as an end-to-end encrypted Google Photos alternative. The linked pages cover its architecture, transparency, open-sourcing of the server and on-device image search.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ente Photos is the private, secure photo storage app with end-to-end encryption. Cross-platform, open source, and self-hostable. Start with 10GB free.
Most-linked posts?
- Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative30 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2020-09-13
- Ente, a cloud based photos app, open sources their server code7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-03-01
- /5 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2020-08-01
- /architecture5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-08-29
- Clip with GGML on the Edge5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-18
- Ente Auth4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-12-10
- Ente Auth: open-source Authy alternative for 2FA4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-05-25
- /reliability3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-01-27
- /ml3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-05
- Ente Photos v13 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-28
What Hacker News says?
Very disappointed with this, but I think will be finding alternatives. Family sharing especially of Reminders is a hard one - we use lists for grocery shopping and it is extremely convenient. Has anyone tried out Ente https://ente.io/ for photos?
Comment linking /
on “Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row”Submitted Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative as a story · 964 points
HN discussion> But personally - I don't really find your point sensible. You have no use-case, you have no threat model [...] My point is very clear and simple: all private communication on the internet should be E2E encrypted by default, unless there is a good reason not to. > [...] say "if they are doing it, it must be easy" - Ignoring that they are literally using the difficulty of doing it as the distinguishing factor for th…
Comment linking /
on “Ntfy.sh – Send push notifications to your phone via PUT/POST”Submitted Ente Auth: open-source Authy alternative for 2FA as a story · 406 points
HN discussionYou may want to take a look at Ente for photos, too :) https://ente.io/ I am a happy self-hosting user.
Comment linking /
on “Apple Photos app corrupts images”Submitted Monorepo – Our Experience as a story · 250 points
HN discussion1. A user can change their password without re-encrypting any of the uploaded files. Changing the password only changes the encryptedMasterKey that is stored on the server. 2. Hashes of passwords are not stored at our server, and email addresses are stored encrypted. You can read more about our key-encryption flow here: https://ente.io/architecture#key-encryption
Comment linking /architecture
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted How to Preserve Physical Photos as a story · 79 points
HN discussionWe have outlined this within our architecture[1], but I left out Poly1305 in my previous comment in the context of the original question comparing XChaCha20 with AES256. The devil truly is in the details. :) [1]: https://ente.io/architecture#implementation-details
Comment linking /architecture
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Mozilla grants Ente- a private Google Photos alternative- $100k as a story · 78 points
HN discussion> How does one migrate to this from Google photos? You can export your data from takeout.google.com, and drag and drop the output folder into web.ente.io. > How does one share across the family? Currently we don't have family plans yet. Existing customers are sharing the same account with their partners. This is on our roadmap and we will ship it soon. > Is it possible to have a local backup? Our desktop app[1] has…
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Go nulls and SQL as a story · 67 points
HN discussionI think the correct link is: https://ente.io/architecture
Comment linking /architecture
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Self Hosting 101 – A Beginner's Guide as a story · 65 points
HN discussionHey, we do need some information to get the product to work well. You can see the bits of information we collect, along with the reasoning here: https://ente.io/privacy/#account-data
Comment linking /privacy/
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted SQLite vs. ObjectBox vs. Isar as a story · 46 points
HN discussionThe architecture of Ente ( https://ente.io/architecture ) prevents your unencrypted master key from being exposed to the server. The password authentication appears to be client-side, which means that the data could not be compromised solely by a malicious server-side change. Now, Ente could still change its web application to somehow leak the master key and not disclose the changes in the source repo. One solution…
Comment linking /architecture
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Ente Photos v1 as a story · 36 points
HN discussionhttps://ente.io/transparency/
Comment linking /transparency/
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Ente – Privacy friendly alternative to Google Photos as a story · 27 points
HN discussionthe answer is right here https://ente.io/transparency
Comment linking /transparency
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Estoppel as a story · 22 points
HN discussionYes, we have both a 100GB and a 1000GB plans, you can check them on https://ente.io/#pricing
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Ente, a cloud based photos app, open sources their server code as a story · 20 points
HN discussionClickable links! [1]: https://ente.io [2]: https://ente.io/apk [3]: https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=io.ente.photos [4]: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/ente-photos/id1542026904 [5]: https://web.ente.io [6]: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest [7]: https://libsodium.gitbook.io [8]: https://ente.io/architecture [9]: https://github.com/ente-io [10]: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comm…
Comment linking /architecture
on “Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos”Submitted Machine Learning at Ente – On-Device, E2EE as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI haven't tried it, but Piwigo[0] looks promising for photo albums & management. That or Ente[1] although Ente doesn't have a self-hosting option like Piwigo. If you really want true self hosting you would run it off your own on-prem machine and use your ISP to push & pull content. Putting things on a VPS is not really 'self' hosting as you're entrusting a third party to not get their datacenter burned down, or the…
Comment linking /
on “Start Self Hosting”Submitted Ente Photos v1 as a story · 11 points
HN discussionBetter source: https://ente.io/blog/open-sourcing-our-server/ Repo here: https://github.com/ente-io/ente
Comment linking /blog/open-sourcing-our-server/
on “Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative”Submitted Ente is now open source as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
