Immich

What it is

Immich is a server you run yourself for your photos and videos. Its README calls it a high performance self-hosted photo and video management solution. It comes with a web app and phone apps. The phone uploads new photos in the background, and the server groups faces, reads text in pictures and answers searches by what a photo shows. This entry is about running the server, which you install yourself, most routes starting from two release files, and not from a phone app store.

1. Download two release files and run docker compose up -d
2. The first user to register at port 2283 is the admin
3. The phone app signs in at the same address
4. Backup uploads photos from the albums you pick
5. Machine learning groups faces and feeds search

Who it suits

People who want their photo library on a machine they control and are happy to run Docker. A family or a home lab can both use it, because it has users, shared albums and an admin. Skip it if you do not want to look after a server. The docs ask for at least 6 GB of memory, and the backups are yours to arrange.

Where to use it

The server runs as Docker containers. The docs recommend 64-bit Linux and strongly discourage other systems. If you still want to try, Windows can be set up through Docker Desktop or WSL 2 and macOS through Docker Desktop, and the team’s help there is severely reduced. You reach it in a browser, or from phone apps for iOS and Android.

How to set it up

Get it saves a zip of Mindket’s setup notes in your downloads folder, with a page for each way to run Immich, the phone app, upgrades and backups. The main route is Docker Compose with two files from the latest release.

1. Make a folder for Immich. Into it, download docker-compose.yml and example.env from the latest release. Save the second one as .env.
2. Edit .env. Point UPLOAD_LOCATION at a new folder with free space, change DB_PASSWORD, and set TZ if you want one.
3. Run docker compose up -d. It starts the containers.
4. Open the web page and register. Go to http://<machine-ip-address>:2283 and click Getting Started. The first user is the admin.

mkdir ./immich-app
cd ./immich-app
wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env

docker compose up -d

The first two lines make the folder and move into it. The next two fetch the files and save example.env as .env.

How to use it

Upload from the web app, or let the phone do it. On the phone, tap the cloud icon at the top right, choose the albums to back up and press Enable Backup. It uploads on Wi-Fi unless you change that in the backup settings.

Search covers more than file names.

• People: faces the server recognized
• Contextual: what a photo or video shows
• Text inside images, read with OCR
• Locations, from reverse geocoding
• File name, folder path, description, tags and camera
• Time frame, media type, favorites, archive and star rating

The machine learning service does the work for faces and contextual search. The docs say it downloads a model the first time it needs one.

To update, change IMMICH_VERSION in .env if you pinned it, read the release notes, then run this in the folder with docker-compose.yml:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Example

You want your partner’s phone and yours to share one library at home. You set up the server and register as the admin. Then you create a second user here:

Administration > Users > Create user

On each phone you sign in at the server address and turn on backup. Each phone uploads to its own account. To see each other’s photos you use a shared album or partner sharing, which the README lists as features.

For newcomers and experts

If you are new. Immich keeps your photos on your own machine, so you are also the one who backs them up. Try a few photos from your phone first. The Quick start page suggests a few photos before the whole library, and says large uploads can take quite a while. Set up server backups before you trust it with everything.

For experts. The compose file runs four services. They are the server on port 2283, a machine learning service with a model-cache volume, a Valkey image for Redis, and Postgres from Immich’s own registry with the VectorChord extension. Setting IMMICH_VERSION to a tag such as v3 follows that major version and skips release candidates. Pointing IMMICH_CONFIG_FILE at a JSON or YAML file turns off editing the other properties in the web app.

The docs cover a GPU for video transcoding (NVENC, Quick Sync, RKMPP and VAAPI) and for machine learning (ARM NN, CUDA, ROCm, OpenVINO and RKNN). Both are marked experimental. Behind a reverse proxy, forward the Host, X-Real-IP, X-Forwarded-Proto and X-Forwarded-For headers, allow big uploads and serve Immich from the root of a domain, since sub-paths are not supported. The immich-admin tool inside the server container resets the admin password and lists users.

Good to know

Most of it runs on your machine, and the risks are mostly about your own copies.

• Backups: database dumps run daily at 2:00 AM by default and keep the last 14. They hold only metadata, so your photos and videos need their own copy of UPLOAD_LOCATION. The README warns to follow a 3-2-1 plan
• Copy order: the docs say to stop the server container while you copy, or to back up the database first and the files second
• Updates: the phone app usually works with the current and the prior major version, while the server works only with its matching major version, so update the phones first. Downgrading is not supported
• Free Up Space: it deletes local copies of photos Immich has backed up. On Android, WhatsApp chats can then show blurry media, and if you use iCloud Photos on iOS it also deletes the photo from iCloud and your other devices on the same Apple Account
• Outbound connections: the default config loads map styles from tiles.immich.cloud, and the machine learning service downloads a model the first time it needs one. The config also turns on a new version check and reverse geocoding. These notes did not trace whether, or what, either of those sends
• Password: the example .env ships with DB_PASSWORD=postgres, so change it. Postgres is not publicly exposed, so the password is only used locally
• Install script: it pipes a downloaded script into bash and the docs call it experimental, so read it first
• Community guides: the Synology, Unraid and TrueNAS pages are not officially supported by the Immich team
• Cost: the software is free. The Support page says you can also buy Immich, and that all features stay free with nothing behind a paywall
• License: AGPL-3.0, with the standard LICENSE file. Read it before you change Immich and share your version
• Not an endorsement: Mindket wrote these notes, and the Immich team did not make or endorse them. They come from the README and docs pages and nothing in them was run