There's nothing stopping either Apple or Google from giving users an option to just disable these connected features, globally or per-app. Just allow a "no cloud services" toggle switch in the Photos app, get the warning that $FEATURES will stop working, and be done.
I know why Google isn't doing this, they're definitely monetizing every bit of that analyzed content. Not really sure about Apple though, might be that they consider their setup with HE as being on par with no cloud connectivity privacy wise.
It’s more. It also can create memories “trip to New York in 2020”, “Cityscapes in New York over the years”, or “Peter over the years” (with Peter being a person added to Photos)
Granted they require you to opt-in in order for the photos app to be usable & if you go out of your way to avoid opting in they make your photo-browsing life miserable with prompts & notifications. But you do still have to opt-in.
If you dare turn off Play Protect for example, you will be asked to turn it on every time you install or update anything. Never mind that you said no the last thousand times it asked.
Tech companies love doing this. Apple does the same, so does Microsoft.
If you know some choice isn't right for you (now or forever), the company is feeling extra beautiful today, and you're in luck, you'll get a "Do this now, or I'll remind you later" choice. But then sometimes they just decide that "This is how things are now".
I've had this happen in every environment except Linux, where I get to shoot myself in the foot whenever I want, and sometimes a bit more.
I've used Simple Gallery Pro before but it's not very good.
Currently using Immich but that's not really a general photo app - it's got a narrow use case - so I still use the Google Photos app alongside it quite often.
Specific alternative recommendations that aren't malware welcome.
If (like me) you don't need e2e I can highly recommend Immich for its use-case though.
It's rock solid for me. you can browse folders move, copy, hide small edits. you can't search 'dog' which is a plus, it doesn't scan faces.
see: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issu...
Unfortunately google's camera app will only open google photos if you click the image preview after taking one. Just doesn't respect the default gallery app setting at all.
This feature is some new "landmark" detection and it feels like it's a trial balloon or something as it simply makes zero sense unless what they are categorizing as landmarks is enormous. The example is always the Eiffel tower, but the data to identify most of the world's major landmarks is small relative to what the device can already detect, not to mention that such lookups don't even need photo identification and could instead (and actually already do and long have) use simple location data and nearby POIs for such metadata tagging.
The landmarks thing is the beginning, but I feel like they want it to be much more detailed. Like every piece of art, model of car, etc, including as they change with new releases, etc.
That's the problem with all those implementations: no feedback of any kind. No list of recognized tags. No information of what is or is to be processed. No nothing. Just magic that doesn't work.
https://github.com/pythongosssss/ComfyUI-WD14-Tagger
which uses specific models to generate proper booru tags out of any image you pass to it.
More importantly, I know for sure they have this capability in practice, because if you tap the right way in the right app, when the Moon is in just the right phase, both Samsung Gallery and OneDrive Photos does (or in case of OneDrive, used to):
- Provide occasional completions and suggestions for predefined categories, like "sunset" or "outwear" or "people", etc.;
- Auto-tag photos with some subset of those (OneDrive, which also sometimes records it in metadata), or if you use "edit tag" options, suggest best fitting tags (Samsung);
- Have a semi-random list of "Things" to choose from to categorize your photos, such as "Sunsets", "City", "Outdoors", "Room", etc. Google Photos does that one too.
This shows they do maintain a list of correct and recommended classifications. They just choose to keep it hidden.
With regards to face recognition, it's even worse. There's zero controls and zero information other than occasionally matched (and often mismatched) face under photo properties, that you can sometimes delete.