The latest articles on DEV Community by Robbie (@robbiee). https://dev.to/robbiee https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4172877%2Fd5934896-22dd-4b49-bdf0-d9a09f693743.png https://dev.to/robbiee en Robbie Sun, 11 Oct 2026 10:39:01 +0000 https://dev.to/robbiee/i-spent-2-years-building-an-offline-removebg-alternative-531e https://dev.to/robbiee/i-spent-2-years-building-an-offline-removebg-alternative-531e <p>With remove.bg shutting down as a standalone service on December 1st and its background removal moving into Canva, this felt like a good moment to share something I've been building solo for almost 2 years.</p> <p>It's called <strong>LocalBG</strong>. It removes backgrounds from images, videos and GIFs, and everything runs on your own machine. No uploads, no account, no credits, no processing limits.</p> <p>I started building it after seeing how quickly per-image cloud pricing adds up on batches of photos during my internship.</p> <h2> What you get for free </h2> <ul> <li>Unlimited images, no file size limits, no quality loss</li> <li>JPG, PNG, JPEG and WEBP support</li> <li>Custom backgrounds and sticker export</li> <li>CLI support</li> <li>GPU acceleration on Windows</li> </ul> <h2> What Pro adds (€8/month) </h2> <p>Bulk processing, video and GIF removal, shadows and reflections, PSD export with layers, auto-centering, edge despill, presets, and importing your own ONNX models next to the built-in one.</p> <h2> For the devs </h2> <p>The CLI is the part I think this crowd will like. You can call it from scripts, cron or CI, or wrap it in Flask, Express or FastAPI and have a private background removal endpoint with no per-image fees and no images leaving your network.<br> </p> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight shell"><code><span class="c"># single image (free)</span> LocalBG photo.jpg <span class="nt">-o</span> ./output <span class="c"># whole folder with a custom background (bulk is Pro)</span> LocalBG ./photos <span class="nt">-o</span> ./output <span class="nt">--background</span> image <span class="nt">--bg-image</span> bg.jpg </code></pre> </div> <p>A few honest notes: it's closed source, the installer is on the big side (around 400 MB at the moment) because the models and video support ship with it, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.</p> <p>I'm one person maintaining this, so if something is broken or missing, tell me and I'll look at it right away.</p> <p><strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://localbg.app" rel="noopener noreferrer">localbg.app</a></p> showdev python ai cli