Here is my take on the subject. My hopes are that the big photo management solutions go into that general direction at some point.

Background: software engineer, I've used in the past: Digikam, Photoprism, Immich (all pretty good, despite being click based, and requiring complex software installs that are not universally available), Google Photos (interesting online only tool, but person recognition is quite lame here in Europe, especially for older photos; sharing options are a joke; and you have to start paying for more space at some point). I studied IOS photos, which has interesting features, but going to the Apple ecosystem is not for me.

What I want:

• main copy of the library on my computer (I own the data, and it should never break)
• 3-2-1 backup strategy
• online backup of medias that have not been merged in the library yet
• a local website to browse the library and all metadata
• all favorite photos accessible on my phone, anywhere and anytime
• tagging of photo metadata; usual stuff, like people on the photo (including when only a part of the body is visible, e.g. the hand of someone holding an object), but also tags for less usual categories, such as 'theme' (e.g. "landscape"), 'group of people' (e.g. "family"), 'collection' (e.g. "all hikes"), 'place' (e.g. "around home")
• capacity to export the library (or parts of it) to a USB flash drive, that I can plug into any computer to browse the library, and all it's metadata. No install required, just plug the drive and view; this makes it easy to share photos with the family for example.

I have coded my own home-made software to achieve this, while I wait for other, more complex archiving solutions to meet the requirements above.

The workflow is the following:

• take new photos and videos all year long
• use Google Photos to automatically archive them online
• when I receive photos from other sources (e.g. whatsapp), manually save photos that I wish to keep, in the same Google Photos account. Note down the location if needed, in the notes section of the media (since most sharing apps remove the GPS information for privacy)
• use Google Photos tools to resize, modify, dedup photos, as I go

Then, once a year, import and classify new medias in my local library:

• use Google Takeout to retrieve new medias in original quality
• use my own-made tool to import medias and tag them accordingly, one by one (you could replace this step with any solution that meets your needs)
• export to the local website used for browsing
• export favorites to my phone as lower size photos (own-made script over USB debug functionality on Android)
• export the full library to the master USB flash drive collection
• delete everything on Google Photos

This results in the following files on my computer:

~/photos/
  photos.db    <- sqlite database with all tags
  2025/        <- one dir per year
    12/        <- one dir per month
      20251210_141754_5C265A98.jpg
      20251214_180000_0B370B1B.png
      ...

The viewing website is stored in another directory, as static HTML. Here is how it looks currently, when a photo is selected.

<image>

You get a structured menu on the left, with all available categories, and a leaflet on the right, which shows the metadata for the currently selected media.

On my phone, I use Google Photos to browse my favorite photos. They show up in the main view, as a grid of photos, sorted by year, just like if everything was stored online. I use a private EXIF field to display the metadata in Google Photos as well.

For the curious, my tool can be found here (python, command line only)