Damselfly
Fast server-based photo management system for large collections of images. Includes face detection, face & object recognition, powerful search, and EXIF Keyword tagging. Runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Little to no recent activity. Treat as unmaintained until proven otherwise.
Commit activity more than 21% of tracked projects; popularity more than 46%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 1.8k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 4.5.3 · 14 Jan 2026 |
| Repo updated | 14 Jan 2026 |
| Licence | GPL-3.0 |
| Built with | Docker, C#, .NET |
Is Damselfly actively maintained?
Damselfly logged 60 commits over the last 11 months, but none in the most recent quarter. Development has paused rather than stopped outright — worth watching before a production deployment.
The most recent tagged release, 4.5.3, is about 9 months old.
Damselfly ranks #19 of 25 tracked photo galleries projects. Several better-maintained options exist in the same category — they are listed below.
What Damselfly actually does
Damselfly is a self-hosted photo management service designed to handle large image libraries across Linux, macOS, and Windows. It indexes your collection while providing metadata tagging, facial detection, and object recognition capabilities to help you search through extensive archives.
Best fit: It is well-suited for users with massive local image collections who require rapid search functionality and EXIF keyword management without relying on cloud services.
Worth knowing: The project's low maintenance health score indicates that you may encounter unpatched bugs, slow issue resolution, or a lack of modern feature updates.
Deployment notes
As a containerised .NET application, you will typically need to configure persistent volumes for your image library and database storage, alongside a reverse proxy for HTTPS termination.
Links
Alternatives to Damselfly
Projects in the same categories, ordered by health score.
An end-to-end encrypted photo-sharing platform (alternative to Google Photos, Apple Photos).
Personal photo management powered by Go and Google TensorFlow. Browse, organize, and share your personal photo collection, using the latest technologies to automatically tag and find pictures.
Photo and video backup solution directly from your mobile phone (alternative to Google Photos).
Grid and album based photo-management-system.
Lightweight slideshow for running on kiosk devices and browsers that uses Immich as a data source.
Fast, modern and advanced photo management suite. Runs as a Nextcloud app.