photo-ingest VS photoview

exiftool is awesome and the author is very responsive and helpful. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in various applications like GeoSetter. It is also very powerful. It is well worth the time and effort to get to know the tool and it's options. I used to use a few different incantations of exiftool by copy pasting them from notes. I got tired of doing that and eventually wrapped it up in some helper scripts I now use routinely on both Windows and Linux. The sources are on GitHub - photo-ingest - in case you're interested.

Most lightweight one I've found so far: https://photoview.github.io/

I looked at a bunch of these 2 years ago and ended up using PhotoView for a private gallery. It had the right mix of simplicity and features, and I was actually able to get it running.

https://github.com/photoview/photoview

Take a look at Photoview: https://photoview.github.io/ . I think that it will fit all your needs (or at least, most all of them)

I use Photoview with Nextcloud, because I like its UI more than Nextcloud.

I can suggest 3 options. * Photoview - It is like a gallery with recursive folder structure (folders inside folders) support. You can create shareable links for the folders, with password protection. The UI is great. And your clients will be able to download the complete folder, also individual images at either full resolution or reduced. The issue is you cannot use the UI to add or delete photos, but it can be a great thing for security and stability. * Chevereto - It is more like imgur. You upload all the files using the UI and create albums and their sharable links. I do not think if it supports videos at all. * Nextcloud - Another great option if you want to give your clients a Google Drive or a Dropbox like experience. You can create custom links, like example .com/client-name, which can look more professional. For better videos experience you'll need hardware acceleration.

I have tried A LOT of solutions and I finally stopped after using Nextcloud and Photoview. I synchronise files from my computer to Nextcloud using rclone and view them on Photoview whenever I need. You can sync to you nextcloud using their official app on phone. I use Photoview because I have not found a single self-hosted solution that keeps the folder structure and lets me view them as both, in folder structures as well as in a chronological timeline.

Bl4ckB1s3ct0r gave the right answer - Photoprism and Immich can be considered as open-source alternatives of Google Photos. Another one is Photoview.

PhotoView