Apple and Google make it easy to upload your photos — and painful to get them back. Capped downloads, stripped metadata, broken exports. Just enough friction that paying $14.99/month feels easier than leaving. privcloud runs a full photo server on your machine with one command. Face recognition, smart search, duplicate detection, albums — all local. Built-in Google Photos migration fixes their broken metadata export. Phone apps auto-backup over WiFi. No cloud. Your photos stay on your drive.