
One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don’t know.
Hmm. While I applaud Immich for existing at all, it kind of feels developed with not me as a user in mind. I have Terabytes of pictures I have taken over the couple of decades of my adult life. They are all neatly organized in folders on my NAS. There is no easy way to just tell Immich “oy, that folder structure? Turn it into albums” I am never going to manually put my 400k+ images into albums. And the folder view in the Android app is behind too many clicks to make it any fun using it.
I guess I have to wrangle with the CLI or something to turn my folders into albums.
But… why??? People use existing file structures. Make it easy for those to integrate into your app.
Nothing of the sort on the roadmap either. Unless integrating folder structures into Immich albums gets more user friendly, I am reluctant to support the devs.
I’ll probably do it anyway because as I said, I’m glad the project exists.
Thanks.
Sounds exactly like what I need. I’ll give it a try. Thanks a lot!
Yeah, ideally something like Immich is just some metadata pointing at existing files. An album should be some combination of synced directories (i.e. new files added outside Immich should be detected and added, if selected) and individual files.
That doesn’t sound that complex. Maybe I’ll look into Immich and see about adding that. I don’t currently use it, but I don’t have an image solution, so I’ll give it a shot.
I really want to use (and support) this, but my case would be the server running on a windows pc with great hardware for all the ML/AI stuff and SSD database storage, but all my media on a NAS. (I’m a flight sim addict, Linux isn’t an option or I’d do it in a heartbeat) Last time I tried, I got the server running in docker pretty easily, but could not for the life of me get my media connected. Any chance that process has improved?
FWIW you’re probably looking for https://docs.immich.app/guides/remote-machine-learning namely removing the demanding tasks from the NAS.
I know it’s not really adding anything to the conversation but I can’t not say thank you that’s dope.
Gratitude always adds to anything! Take care
Ooh, that’s really cool
I’m running it on in docker and I’ve connected it to my NAS mounted as a network drive. I set it up a few months ago, do it’s better since then.
Don’t even worry about the hardware, I’ve got it set up on a raspberry Pi 5. It’ll take a while to do all the classification on your existing library, but new photos get classified fast enough. You’re unlikely to need to do a smart search immediately after you’ve taken the pic.
For clarity, I’m not on Windows (obv, raspberry Pi), and I’m not using docker directly; I’m running HAOS on my pi, and I’m using the immich add-on. I know it uses docker, but I can’t tell you the exact command to run.
That’s amazing. I have a Pi 4 currently running home assistant and pihole. Sounds like my pi family might be growing soon. Had no idea the 5 could run those features. Appreciate you
One thing I don’t get, if someone could explain it to me, is what’s the point of immich over e.g. Nextcloud? Immich is just for photo and video, right? Why not just have a cloud file drive instead? To me, I feel like it’s a waste to have both, since I use Nextcloud to both sync my PC and as a secondary backup, in which case I’d have two copies of my photos on my home server if I wanted to use Immich as well. Am I missing something or is it for people with different workflows?
Nextcloud is like Google drive, immich is like Google photos.
You’d typically prefer to look at your photo albums in Google photos instead of Google drive.
I’m still disappointed that tags are absent from the mobile app.
I am a supporter and ordered the retro demo disk. Itll be here soon :)
If it weren’t Docker-dependant, I’d imagine this would be a good FreedomBox app.
im like maybe one of few people who barely take photos. its great because i dont need to worry about the costs of cloud storage
I mostly set it up for a few major albums like my wedding album. Other than that it’s like 90% dog pictures lmao
Buying my copy soon!
Thanks for the reminder, done as well :)
How does it compare to Photoprism? Been on that solution for a while and I really like it, but have seen lots of people suggest Immich as well.
I dearly wish to use and support this app.
But here’s the thing: containers - like so many other mechanisms - suffer from supply-chain risks due to reduced validation to the degree assumed and required compared to, say, good packaging that integrates with the resident source of truth on a given system. Containers, like so many other risky mechanisms that dates back to CPAN or earlier, cannot exist in a secure environment.
For those of us working where we can to minimize repair/recovery work through best practice, Immich cannot be run.
I know there’s a homebrew workaround, but given it’s external to the dev effort it’s a risk that it won’t suddenly work as a reliable update resource; and that risk stymies uptake for us.
Now, I know I’ve suggested there’s imperfection in a number of favourite technologies and methods, and that’s fine. If downvotes is how you defend these sacred cows, I understand.
Sure supply chain attacks are a thing, but containers aren’t the issue. Any package delivery mechanism can suffer from it. Its up to you to verify those containers and/or build it yourself
Couldn’t you just lazy build your own images if you don’t trust the source?
Even then most of these containerized apps can be run perfectly fine as a host binary, you just have to make your own start script and a systemd unit which isn’t that bad.
You could then build a completely custom image if you’d like, or move it into a VM if you don’t like the idea of running it baremetal.
Seriously everyone pushes Immich so hard I’m a little suspicious of it now :D
Edit: all right, all right, I installed it. It has a thing about not uploading all the pictures I give it, some error out. I have a feeling it is due to the library being on a NAS share.
Shhhh! No one can no we are all being played by the immich overlords.
As a newbie in selfhosting, Immich is what I use almost every day. And it is so good. A literal Google Photos but it’s my own. Snappy web app and android app. Has epic face recognition, contextual search and now even text recognition. All that on an efficient and not so powerful N100 cpu. I can totally see why community loves it.
I found it a couple of months ago without hearing about it before. I was in an ideal place for a Google Photos replacement.
There’s a couple of rough edges but it is, indeed, best-of-class.
The fediverse is small and the Immich dev is one of our own, not surprising that it’s super popular
83k Github stars in under 4 years is definitely indicative of an excellent project
It’s crazy good for something FREE. Like infinitely better than any major crop google apple etc because you KEEP your photos. Anything you upload to the cloud is being mined by them.
The only thing I tell people is that you need a cloud backup.
I have an automated nightly worker that zips all my photos encrypts them with a 32 character password and then uploads it to a bulk storage facility.
I do something similar using restic to encrypt, deduplicate, and backup my photos to backblaze every now and then. Out of curiosity, any particular reason you choose zip over something like restic?
I use restic too, just said zip since more people might understand it easier
Ah, got you!
and then uploads it to a bulk storage facility.
Any suggestions and estimate pricing?
I use backblaze it’s like $3 a month or something
Agree, backblaze has been great
I use backblaze, $6/TB/mo. i set it up with restic backups to get my storage usage so low, that I’ve used it for 4 months and haven’t paid yet.
Yeah :) Maybe give lychee a try :) it’s minimalistes and does one thing, but it does it well !!!
So wait, we hate FUTO but love Immich?
I don’t hate FUTO, but I distrust them.
On one hand, their operation is creepy and suspicious.
The extent of the FUTO “grant program”, at least in the case of musl libc, involved ignoring musl’s established process for institutional sponsors, quietly sending a modest one-time donation to one maintainer, and then plastering the logo of a well-respected open source project on a list of “grant recipients” on their home page. Rich eventually posted on Mastodon to clarify that the use of the musl name and logo here was unauthorized.
On the other, I like the idea of licenses that allow unrestricted private use and modification but forbid commercial exploitation. Those two situations are not equivalent. I realize this is an unpopular opinion in many FOSS circles, but we are already being exploited to death by the rich and powerful and they must not be entitled to the value of our collective free and voluntary labor. If we ever realize a society in which wealth and power is effectively capped for such entities, then I would change my tune. Until then, fuck them. Our collective software is for the collective, not for wealth hoarders and despots.
The duality of man.
What is it and what does it do?
Immich: Image Backup* solution — like Google Photos or Ente Photos but self-hosted.
*Backup in the sense of uploading your photos to a server you own. You should backup the database as well as your library with 3-2-1 method.
What 2 different media types are you using for the “2” part?
Spinning and flash.


The world needs those two gifs combined so we can more easily (and awesomely!) answer this question in the future.
Why does it need to be two types? Can’t I have 2 spinning?
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Short: It is a second Hardrive using borg that backs up the primary Hardrive.
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Long: My Backup strategy:-
Databases and other imp files:
For databases the backup happens every night that gets saved on the server itself. Then when my laptop connects either to the home network or to the Internet, the backup zip files on my server syncs to my laptop via syncthing. Then my laptop’s data is backed up to OneDrive (encrypted) — this includes the immich database backups. I usually keep 7 days worth of backup files just incase some get corrupted and I can just go back to the previous day.
Library
Since my Immich Library is big, daily borg backups are not possible for 200 gigs. So I have scheduled them every Sunday morning when I rarely use the server. The hardrive is exclusively used only for Immich. That hardrive is then backed up to another hardrive using borg and also to my OneDrive using rclone. (All encrypted). So 3 copies of the data, 2 on 2 different hardives (1 is primary) and 1 offsite.
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I second this?
Immich
Google photo self hosted alternative
Immich! Photo management: https://immich.app/
Does it support multi-tenancy?
For instance, being a backup and media manager solution for multiple people in my family hosted on one server.
The same with a few friends that want to get out from under Google’s thumb.
It does, but it doesn’t handle encryption at rest. Everyone needs to be aware that the immich admin can see their photos on the disk.
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