I have terabytes of iphone photos/videos accumulated over the years. Apple Photos app is trash when it comes to handling large libraries so I’ve been splitting them by year which is fine for archiving but horrible for actually browsing photos.
Immich has been absolutely awesome for this — I can finally look at all my pictures from any year from anywhere in the world. I’m very happy and hope the creators find a way to sustainably finance the project.
The upload feature in the mobile app is not a 1 to 1 replacement of apple photos import so i still do that via apple photos, but that’s something I can live with.
I was hoping we'd have immich stable earlier in 2025, now it's starting to look like maybe 2026 but they haven't pushed it on the roadmap so I'm holding out hope.
I just started looking into Ente which works very well but I don’t like 100MB Dart chromium app (I may build my own native frontend in iced.rs).
However I’m wondering how Immich compares it seems less interested in the encryption security and sharing aspects and more heavy on the image editor aspect.
Both are selfhostable. So it maybe an effort to migrate one day.
Immich isn't an editor at all, I don't think it can even rotate an image 90 degrees. It's very focused on having multiple users upload photos and create shared albums (public or just to other users). Doesn't do any encryption at all tho.
Runs on a Pi4 in a cabinet with a lot of other self hosted stuff. Data is stored on a NAS. Performance on the Pi4 isn't the greatest, but it works without any annoyance.
It has been hosting my SO's and my photos for a few months, the transition from Google Photos was pretty easy and it is almost a drop in replacement. I love it.
How do you expose the service for your SO when away from home? Do you use tailscale/cloudflare tunnel/vpn? public port on your router? I've been trying tailscale for myself, but there's a hair more friction than my SO would accept.
Immich supports search by CLIP and I would find it highly useful to search for stuff by semantic meaning (I rely on Google Photos' ability to do that for now). How does your Pi4 handle CLIP?
I've been using it for a couple of years and I find absolutely stellar. I wrote the (quite long) of my process to find the perfect alternative (for me) to Google Photos, so in case anyone's interested
This serves as a great reminder for me to set up Immich when I get time, and a reason/excuse to purchase a better GPU. I have been uneasy with my dependence on Google for a while now.
I understand the author's point against the perceived complexity of 1-5 star rating systems, but it's worthy of note that star ratings are extremely common (ubiquitous?) in more advanced photo management/editing software such as Darktable and Lightroom. As a photographer, I see why the feature might have been included.
Any opinion on why Immich instead of Photoprism? I’m considering to pick one of them for my media library and Immich not being labeled as stable scares me a bit.
I was using PhotoPrism for a few years and switched over to Immich and am very glad I did.
- There was no good mobile backup story. State-of-the-art was WebDAV sync and import delays which would truncate files and other issues on back connections. It also made deletion risky.
- The UI had lots of things that felt very opinionated for a very specific workflow that seems niche. Things like auto-adding generated titles and other things.
- The face recognition is much worse, especially for non-white faces. Even detection didn't seem to have a good setting that would reliably identify what is a face without way too many false positives.
- Immich's semantic image search is way better than what was on PhotoPrism where it seemed to just find a few tags.
- PhotoPrism had lots of UI quirks like the persistent selection that almost never worked how I wanted it to.
Lots of other odds and ends as well. There isn't anything that I actually miss from PhotoPrism.
I would love to self-host this stuff (using Immich, or Ente) but my family's bus factor is 1 and the risk of losing all the pictures really prevents me from taking this step. Sure, maybe my wife could reach out to my techie friends but why create the problem in the first place?
Recently installed and it’s chewing through 25 years of digital photos, has been some weeks now and expecting it to take another week.
But - seems great. I was prompted to do this after the death of a friend and the subsequent hunt for photos, so I’m hoping the facial recognition lives up to its billing.
I don’t really like having the NAS on 24/7 but I do like the idea of having that local photo sync. Probably cheaper to start with iCloud given the costs of 20TB drives and energy prices, however.
I have been looking for such a thing for so long! Since this can be too much to develop from scratch I was hoping I could use Claude or something to start off on it.
I have gone for days in rage because Google photos would hog on memory and I had no folder view to know which pictures/videos were the culprit and I wouldn't get a folder view. If this works, I might spend some time working on this project, just to pay my regards.
I’ve been testing with PikaPods and costs less than $6 a month. Been happy with it; actually, pretty happy with whatever comes to PikaPods (no affiliation).
I would love to use Immich but I'm not into running a home server - electricity isn't that reliable here and putting in backup power is more expensive than I want to pay. Also I just don't want to manage the hardware.
I've looked into cloud hosting. But of course, photos and videos take up a lot of space. Object storage is cheap but not supported by Immich. Block storage is not cheap.
I did look into s3fuse but the concensus seemed to be that lots of tiny files like thumbnails wouldn't perform well.
I'm kind of surprised that using object storage wasn't a first-class concern. Though I guess if running it at home was the biggest thing, that's not the top priority, but still. Using fast, cheap object stores (often with CDNs in front) has been commonplace for images, videos, and similar content for decades now. For virtually anything that uses some dynamic amount of storage based on user actions, my expectation is that I'll be able to configure it to store and fetch from S3 (or similar).
> electricity isn't that reliable here and putting in backup power is more expensive than I want to pay
A small UPS that can communicate its power state over USB isn't too expensive. So if power goes out, it sends a message to its host that it should shutdown after a certain amount of time and then when power restores, it turns the server back on. I can understand the desire to not have to manage all that though.
"But of course, photos and videos take up a lot of space."
Videos take up a lot of space. Photos increasingly don't. 20 years of family photos for me takes up 150GB, and that's with me being very slovenly about cleaning up the "bad" photos, if I found a decent workflow for trimming photos I could probably cut that down by 75% pretty easily. Linode will attach 160GB of storage for $16/month, plus you'd need a $5/month VM to attach that to. https://www.linode.com/pricing/#block-storage
I acknowledge that you may be in a position where that is too much, but on the other hand, broadly speaking, it's not going to get much cheaper than this even in the next few years. It's not like it's $500/month anymore and there's room for it to be cut by $300/month.
Immich can also survive without necessarily being up all the time. If you have a computer of any kind and any reasonable spec that spends a reasonable amount of time being on, you can use tailscale or something to hook it to your phone and run a backup process every so often to a cloud block storage. It's OK that it isn't always up and then you get to pay object storage prices, which for 150GB now is as close to negligible as you can reasonably get.
I recently created https://immich.pro to partially address this problem. I've got spare compute and storage that I'd like to turn into MRR. While the privacy angle isn't _fantastic_ maybe some people won't care. Could be better than trusting Google/Apple.
If you want cloud hosting and fully E2E encrypted by a team that deeply cares about privacy and security, try Ente. They also have Google Authenticator alternative called Ente Auth.
I did some half ass backup solution. Bought a LifePo4 12AH battery, hooked up a compatible charger, hooked up a dc-dc converter to power up a N100 mini pc, my mikrotik router etc. Works perfectly fine as of now...
Absolutely love immich. Prior to the release of the new "Beta timeline", it was difficult to recommend without reservation, because there were a lot of performance issues on Android, and syncing was just non-functional on my wife's iPhone. However, since enabling the beta timeline, the app is basically perfect now. I've been running it for months without issue, and having a first-class CLI means I've been able to do things like automatically create albums from my Signal backup. Big thanks to the immich team!
Maybe it's because my server is still on v.1.139.4, but I have had the opposite experience with the new beta timeline on Android. I disabled it after trying it for a week because it took so long for thumbnails to load vs. the stable version. Compared to Google Photos, any version of the Immich timeline I've tried feels extremely clunky. It's a great backup alternative and I commend the team behind it, but it is far from being a product I'd recommend as an everyday photo gallery app.
> I've been able to do things like automatically create albums from my Signal backup
Interesting, would you mind elaborating on how you do that? I take it you have your backup key stored on your home server then? What tool do you use to decrypt & parse the backup?
Sure! I make Signal backups on my Android device, sync them to my home server via FolderSync, and then run a nightly script that uses signalbackup-tools[1] to extract media from my family group chats and upload them to my immich server via their CLI.
Some performance bottlenecks seem to be still in.
I added around 200 images and 10 videos of my last vacation manually via Intent to the Immich app on Android.
The startup of the Activity is VERY slow.
Images are rendered one by one in the list view (potentially in full resolution?) and the scrolling in the list is quite slow.
The upload button does not keep the "uploading" state but after some time jumps back to the initial "start upload" state.
Going into background or turning the screen off sometimes stops the upload.
This test was done on my Samsung S23 Ultra (so CPU power should not be the issue).
Nevertheless the upload works as expected if I stay in the app and keep the screen active.
Seems like this is not really the intended way of uploading things to Immich (auto upload is).
I've migrated from Synology Photos. It's pretty seamless, since Immich now supports External Library. I use Docker Compose in Synology, so basically all I have to do is just mount existing Synology Photos folders to Immich. Works fine, no issue so far.
However, I'm back to Synology Photos. I'm using Immich iOS apps. The upload/syncing is noticeably a lot slower than Synology. Gave it a few months, but it's not getting any better. Moved back to Synology Photos for now.
I have been using Nextcloud Photos because I already use Nextcloud to store all my photos. I have always been interested in Immich though. NC Photos has pretty much all the features I need (except maybe face recognition) but the performance isn't great.
Has anyone switched from NC Photos -> Immich and have any thoughts on the process (and how well Immich plays with NC if I keep my photos stored there)?
I switched from Nextcloud Photos to Nextcloud Memories to Immich. I submitted a patch [1] to Immich to make it possible to directly login via (Nextcloud) OIDC which, in combination with the Nextcloud 'External Sites' app makes it possible to integrate Immich directly into Nextcloud. I do not automatically add all photo and video material synced to Nextcloud into Immich yet, relying on a set of scripts I've been using for years to maintain all our media in a single repository. It should be possible to either use Nextcloud to sync media which is then shown in Immich through its 'External Libraries' feature (this is how I use it) as well as to use Immich to sync media and access it that way. No matter how it is used Immich can be integrated to be as easily accessible as any 'native' Nextcloud app. Performance is far better than Nextcloud Memories, this was my main reason for moving away from the latter. The search and facial recognition features in Immich do not require a server with GPU access, performance is fine on my by now rather aged DL380 G7.
79 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadImmich has been absolutely awesome for this — I can finally look at all my pictures from any year from anywhere in the world. I’m very happy and hope the creators find a way to sustainably finance the project.
The upload feature in the mobile app is not a 1 to 1 replacement of apple photos import so i still do that via apple photos, but that’s something I can live with.
[0] https://selfh.st/apps/
However I’m wondering how Immich compares it seems less interested in the encryption security and sharing aspects and more heavy on the image editor aspect.
Both are selfhostable. So it maybe an effort to migrate one day.
It has been hosting my SO's and my photos for a few months, the transition from Google Photos was pretty easy and it is almost a drop in replacement. I love it.
Make sure to checkout https://github.com/simulot/immich-go, it was a great help migrating my Google Takeout to Immich.
https://medium.com/@javipas/thats-how-i-ve-replaced-google-p...
[EDIT]: the following was intended as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45168333
I understand the author's point against the perceived complexity of 1-5 star rating systems, but it's worthy of note that star ratings are extremely common (ubiquitous?) in more advanced photo management/editing software such as Darktable and Lightroom. As a photographer, I see why the feature might have been included.
Both still feels like the sad-er side of open-source WRT polish - stability, reliability and ease-of-use.
I would be willing to pay for something great that I can self-host, but sadly nothing truly great exists.
- There was no good mobile backup story. State-of-the-art was WebDAV sync and import delays which would truncate files and other issues on back connections. It also made deletion risky.
- The UI had lots of things that felt very opinionated for a very specific workflow that seems niche. Things like auto-adding generated titles and other things.
- The face recognition is much worse, especially for non-white faces. Even detection didn't seem to have a good setting that would reliably identify what is a face without way too many false positives.
- Immich's semantic image search is way better than what was on PhotoPrism where it seemed to just find a few tags.
- PhotoPrism had lots of UI quirks like the persistent selection that almost never worked how I wanted it to.
Lots of other odds and ends as well. There isn't anything that I actually miss from PhotoPrism.
But - seems great. I was prompted to do this after the death of a friend and the subsequent hunt for photos, so I’m hoping the facial recognition lives up to its billing.
I don’t really like having the NAS on 24/7 but I do like the idea of having that local photo sync. Probably cheaper to start with iCloud given the costs of 20TB drives and energy prices, however.
I have gone for days in rage because Google photos would hog on memory and I had no folder view to know which pictures/videos were the culprit and I wouldn't get a folder view. If this works, I might spend some time working on this project, just to pay my regards.
https://www.pikapods.com/apps#photo
I've looked into cloud hosting. But of course, photos and videos take up a lot of space. Object storage is cheap but not supported by Immich. Block storage is not cheap.
I did look into s3fuse but the concensus seemed to be that lots of tiny files like thumbnails wouldn't perform well.
Does anyone cloud host it? What's your solution?
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/immich
The hardware isn't that much to manage anymore these days, a small usff uses very little electricity, can stay up for a few hours on a UPS.
Tools like Proxmox make it point and click like any cloud provider within reason.
A small UPS that can communicate its power state over USB isn't too expensive. So if power goes out, it sends a message to its host that it should shutdown after a certain amount of time and then when power restores, it turns the server back on. I can understand the desire to not have to manage all that though.
Videos take up a lot of space. Photos increasingly don't. 20 years of family photos for me takes up 150GB, and that's with me being very slovenly about cleaning up the "bad" photos, if I found a decent workflow for trimming photos I could probably cut that down by 75% pretty easily. Linode will attach 160GB of storage for $16/month, plus you'd need a $5/month VM to attach that to. https://www.linode.com/pricing/#block-storage
I acknowledge that you may be in a position where that is too much, but on the other hand, broadly speaking, it's not going to get much cheaper than this even in the next few years. It's not like it's $500/month anymore and there's room for it to be cut by $300/month.
Immich can also survive without necessarily being up all the time. If you have a computer of any kind and any reasonable spec that spends a reasonable amount of time being on, you can use tailscale or something to hook it to your phone and run a backup process every so often to a cloud block storage. It's OK that it isn't always up and then you get to pay object storage prices, which for 150GB now is as close to negligible as you can reasonably get.
Interesting, would you mind elaborating on how you do that? I take it you have your backup key stored on your home server then? What tool do you use to decrypt & parse the backup?
[1] https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools
The startup of the Activity is VERY slow. Images are rendered one by one in the list view (potentially in full resolution?) and the scrolling in the list is quite slow. The upload button does not keep the "uploading" state but after some time jumps back to the initial "start upload" state. Going into background or turning the screen off sometimes stops the upload. This test was done on my Samsung S23 Ultra (so CPU power should not be the issue).
Nevertheless the upload works as expected if I stay in the app and keep the screen active. Seems like this is not really the intended way of uploading things to Immich (auto upload is).
However, I'm back to Synology Photos. I'm using Immich iOS apps. The upload/syncing is noticeably a lot slower than Synology. Gave it a few months, but it's not getting any better. Moved back to Synology Photos for now.
Has anyone switched from NC Photos -> Immich and have any thoughts on the process (and how well Immich plays with NC if I keep my photos stored there)?
[1] https://github.com/immich-app/immich/pull/18763/commits/fe7a...