Noodle Gallery vs Stingle Photos

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.

Stingle Photos is a gallery and camera app for backing up and syncing photos and videos across devices using the same account. It backs up files in the background and supports video recording and playback. Files are encrypted locally before they are sent to cloud storage. Stingle names XChaCha20 with Poly1305 for file data, X25519 for public-key cryptography and Argon2 for key derivation; it says sensitive photo and video metadata is encrypted in the file header. Albums can be shared with other Stingle users using encrypted album keys. The product is open source under GPLv3, and listed platforms include Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, API access and self-hosting. The free plan includes 1 GB. Paid storage starts at $2.99 a month for 100 GB; other listed plans include monthly and yearly capacities up to multiple terabytes. Users can host their own API server, with Linux, S3-compatible storage, a domain name and Git among the prerequisites. The hosted service uses DigitalOcean and Wasabi hot cloud storage. The provider cannot recover or change a forgotten password, so users should save the recovery phrase. The maker’s August 2026 post says the iOS app is available on the App Store and includes a built-in camera; a web version is planned.