ArkCentral vs Noodle Gallery
ArkCentral
arkcentral.com
Noodle Gallery
opennoodle.deSide by side
| Figure | ArkCentral | Noodle Gallery |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Photo Storage Services | 8.4 (#12) | 7.8 (#50) |
| Privacy | The maker says family data is held on the home device rather than a third-party server, and ArkCentral does not hold messages, files, contacts, or history. | Photos, videos, metadata, face-recognition data, and user accounts are stored on the user's server, which the developers say they cannot access. |
| Product | The Ark is a private home device for storing family photos, videos, files, and messages on hardware the buyer owns. | Noodle Gallery is a self-hosted photo and video app with smart search, face recognition, Shared Spaces, and S3 storage. |
| Support | The company lists [email protected] as its support contact. | The maker directs users to its official documentation, Discord, and GitHub issues for help. |
Plans
In their own words
ArkCentral
ArkCentral has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Noodle Gallery
Noodle Gallery is a self-hosted photo and video app for storing and organizing media on a server you provide. Its Shared Spaces let several people contribute to one chronological timeline while keeping their personal libraries separate. A Cmd/Ctrl+K palette searches photos, people, places, tags, albums, Spaces, commands, and settings. The server supports S3-compatible storage, including AWS S3, MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi. A browser import wizard reads Google Takeout archives while retaining dates, GPS coordinates, descriptions, favorites, and album structure. Native iOS and Android apps include background camera backup, CLIP search, a map, and Shared Spaces. The developers say media, metadata, face-recognition data, and accounts stay on the user’s server, which they cannot access. Noodle Gallery is open source under AGPL-3.0, and each instance provides REST API documentation and Swagger UI at /doc. The free self-hosted plan has no subscription or storage cap, but runs on user-provided hardware.