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!
dpcx · 34s ago
The only problem I've had with it so far is that the date on photos coming from icloud is when they were uploaded, not the date that the photo was created or even the date that I've marked the photo as being taken. Makes seeing photos from 90 years ago kind of strange.
ashenke · 1h ago
Thank you for this, I updated some time ago but never really switched. Night and day difference !
The other thing I'm waiting for is search results ordered by date instead of relevance. When I'm searching for a picture in particular I know was taken 3 years ago, and search keywords to find it, it's impossible to find this specific photo because the ordering seem random
rclkrtrzckr · 1h ago
CLI? Didn't even know that! A doc pointer would be awesome
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.
I recently looked into both Immich and Ente.io for syncing and also sharing photos since 1) Syncthing has been rather unreliable for me in the last year, 2) my photo library has become too big to just sync it across devices, 3) I was never really happy with NextCloud for sharing photos.
Immich looked really nice but in the end I went with Ente because of its E2E encryption. So far I'm really happy!
wonger_ · 47m ago
How has syncthing been unreliable for you? Curious as I was going to start using it more. Was it something about large files or many files?
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 wish it'd be easy to plug it to a s3 backend and thumbnails etc. ephemeral things could just be on disk.
dddw · 58m ago
I actually got it working with cloud storage on hetzner. Wasn't supersnappy, but it worked. I borked the build though and am planning to run it on my home-server
jdc0589 · 1h ago
this is pretty much the situation I'm in re the storage. I'm perfectly fine running a home server, I already do, but workloads with heavy storage requirements scare me away from it. I don't want to have to think about that at home, and the cost of pretty much anything other than object storage in the cloud is prohibitive, and as you mentioned obj store support is non-existent or hacky and slow with most of these products.
prism56 · 31m ago
I run a homeserver and self host applications (freshrss, linkding). I just don't understand the security enough to trust my photos. I've gone with Ente.io. Their 3 tiered backup and my local backup should be good enough.
The other issue is my family use my account and don't want to be in charge if my backups fail.
I do love what immich is doing though and would love to run it.
andreldm · 2h ago
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.
gh02t · 1h ago
IIRC, Immich started as a project after Photoprism changed their licensing to restrict several features, and then picked up a ton of momentum very fast. They've pledged they won't ever pay-gate features, which isn't always a positive as those features help sustain a project long term, but they have so much community support and love that I'm not worried about that in this case.
Feature wise I think they are pretty comparable (vs the paid version of Photoprism), and I like the UI of Immich slightly more. Immich also supports singe sign on via OIDC easily, which I rather appreciate so my family doesn't have to remember 10 different passwords.
Regarding stability it's actually pretty reliable. I've been running it for a long time via Docker in the form of the TrueNAS plugin and have never had any issues, like ever, so I think it being marked as unstable was a bit overly cautious. I think they have also recently moved to a new phase of development that is also going to be even more stable. Even if it does break, all of your media is stored in a nicely organized directory structure on the filesystem so you're not going to lose anything.
rickdeckard · 1h ago
I tried both ~1,5 years ago, Immich won the "spouse test" as I could get my partner to use the app on her phone (with her own profile) instead of the native gallery.
Photoprism didn't support profiles or have an app (back then at least, don't know about today), and I couldn't convince her of using some other gallery in the browser...
I for myself liked the Photoprism GUI, but I could never get the face recognition to work well, and manually tagging people/places (or basically doing anything) on thousands of pictures was quite painful.
krs_ · 1h ago
Also interested in this. I've been running photoprism for several years now using their docker image and don't really have much to complain about but always open to other alternatives.
One thing Immich supports which Photoprism doesn't is multiple user accounts. That doesn't really bother me too much but it's a pretty big advantage.
Edit: Actually one thing I can complain a bit about is the object recognition accuracy. Face recognition I think works decently enough but objects are frequently not identified in my photos. How's Immich in this regard?
I just wish it didn't need Postgres and SQLite was an option.
palla89 · 1h ago
I'm considering a migration from Synology Photos to this, is this supported in some way or I should transfer / reimport everything manually?
vr46 · 2h ago
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.
prism56 · 14m ago
How many and size?
aidenn0 · 1h ago
The facial recognition can tell my kids apart better than I can (with just the cropped face; other context makes it obvious which kid is which).
esel2k · 41m ago
Its great however I still think they could simplify usage:
- admin vs config menu - I always search in both
- mounted folders vs backup folders: I would welcome a
Simple Filter in the main view as I find the folder view ugly
- Initial setup with all the jobs a big complicated
cyp0633 · 40m ago
Really great job, been happy so far. Would be better if the text is searchable via OCR.
clueless · 5m ago
ah it's not? that would be a blocker for me
javipas · 2h ago
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
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?
hamdingers · 1h ago
The solution is packaging.
My Immich server performs a nightly backup to a 2tb flash drive labelled "PHOTOS" attached to the router. My partner knows where it is and what it's for, and everyone knows how to use a flash drive.
kaffekaka · 1h ago
What solution are you using now?
I feel the same, so I keep photos on hard drives and usb drives in different locations. I have a Restic backup at Backblaze but that is where the bus factor comes in. I don't know what would be best.
CryptoBanker · 1h ago
If you can't backup your essential local data then self hosting isn't really ever an option for you
petethepig · 3h ago
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.
Dennip · 2h ago
For a while I was running a windows VM with the iCloud for windows utility that syncs your photos to a folder on your windows PC, iirc it worker reasonably well as an 'automated' sync solution. (under the surface the folder was a share on my NAS, which in turn fed into a separate immich instance)
dsego · 2h ago
> Apple Photos app is trash when it comes to handling large libraries
Some would say it's deliberately made to keep the library cluttered so you have to pay more for cloud storage.
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)?
hamdingers · 1h ago
Immich edges it out on people recognition and context search but otherwise similar in features. The Immich interface is much more like Google Photos and I find that to be better.
Regardless of where you're coming from I recommend migrating to Immich by "uploading" all your photos using the immich cli, and letting it manage the library.
eptcyka · 57m ago
Nextcloud was dog slow for me, Immich just flies. And the client app is far better both on iOS and Android. Nextcloud never worked for my SO, Immich just does.
sanex · 3h ago
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.
tbabej · 2h ago
Immich is extremely stable even if not labeled as such. My personal experience is zero maintenance (other than updating docker container) since deployment several years ago.
sanex · 2h ago
I went through one upgrade a year or so ago that forced me to redo my backup so I'm a little shy of going all in again until they say stable.
gedy · 1h ago
This sounds a bit like my experience with Home Assistant, it's very stable as long as I don't frequently update it. If I install every update I've frequently messed up my installation/config.
InfinityByTen · 1h ago
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.
Brajeshwar · 1h ago
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).
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.
aidenn0 · 1h ago
Does Immich have features that need a high-end GPU? I hosted it on a machine with a 1050Ti, and see others in this comment section mentioning using a RPi.
LeFantome · 1h ago
Mine is running as a container on an old Mac Pro 2013 (running Proxmox). My GPU is not even as good as yours.
It runs great.
The “beta timeline” required hashing that took forever but this was on my wife’s iPhone and nothing to do with the back-end (she has 50,000 photos).
The machine-learning stuff uses the GPU. Facial recognition for example. It takes longer on low-end hardware but I am not sure why that is a problem.
lazzurs · 1h ago
Fantastic software, I am surprise more people don't use it.
knadh · 2h ago
Been self-hosting for a while. Amazing set of features and web and mobile apps work flawlessly.
packetlost · 1h ago
I've been using immich for awhile now and it has been great!
righthand · 3h ago
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.
ochronus · 1h ago
I'm a happy user and supporter, it's awesome software!
avinassh · 46m ago
any opinion on how does this compare with ente?
LetMeLogin · 1h ago
I love immich!
sciencesama · 2h ago
Can we make it into an app ?? For windows and mac like click and install ? That can scan all the folders and do all its stuff !??
dpcx · 1m ago
macOS on arm, you can download the ios app and install it. That's what I did to import my wife's photos.
ls-a · 1h ago
I can't get past the name. So cringe makes me not want to come near it
semiquaver · 1h ago
Perhaps I’m missing something. What makes the name cringe?
hereme888 · 1h ago
Download the repo, open in VS Code, and do a search + replace from "Immich", as well as the "Immich" part of file names to whatever you want.
Then, go into the design folder of the repo and replace all the images with whatever logo names you want.
ls-a · 13m ago
I'm pretty sure the bad choices didn't stop at the naming. I understand people using it because there are no alternatives
The other thing I'm waiting for is search results ordered by date instead of relevance. When I'm searching for a picture in particular I know was taken 3 years ago, and search keywords to find it, it's impossible to find this specific photo because the ordering seem random
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.
Immich looked really nice but in the end I went with Ente because of its E2E encryption. So far I'm really happy!
1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40563541
1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40772809
3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33159796
7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42984617
4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30537564
1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39731179
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?
The other issue is my family use my account and don't want to be in charge if my backups fail.
I do love what immich is doing though and would love to run it.
Feature wise I think they are pretty comparable (vs the paid version of Photoprism), and I like the UI of Immich slightly more. Immich also supports singe sign on via OIDC easily, which I rather appreciate so my family doesn't have to remember 10 different passwords.
Regarding stability it's actually pretty reliable. I've been running it for a long time via Docker in the form of the TrueNAS plugin and have never had any issues, like ever, so I think it being marked as unstable was a bit overly cautious. I think they have also recently moved to a new phase of development that is also going to be even more stable. Even if it does break, all of your media is stored in a nicely organized directory structure on the filesystem so you're not going to lose anything.
Photoprism didn't support profiles or have an app (back then at least, don't know about today), and I couldn't convince her of using some other gallery in the browser...
I for myself liked the Photoprism GUI, but I could never get the face recognition to work well, and manually tagging people/places (or basically doing anything) on thousands of pictures was quite painful.
One thing Immich supports which Photoprism doesn't is multiple user accounts. That doesn't really bother me too much but it's a pretty big advantage.
Edit: Actually one thing I can complain a bit about is the object recognition accuracy. Face recognition I think works decently enough but objects are frequently not identified in my photos. How's Immich in this regard?
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.
https://medium.com/@javipas/thats-how-i-ve-replaced-google-p...
My Immich server performs a nightly backup to a 2tb flash drive labelled "PHOTOS" attached to the router. My partner knows where it is and what it's for, and everyone knows how to use a flash drive.
I feel the same, so I keep photos on hard drives and usb drives in different locations. I have a Restic backup at Backblaze but that is where the bus factor comes in. I don't know what would be best.
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.
Some would say it's deliberately made to keep the library cluttered so you have to pay more for cloud storage.
Why Are Our Photo Libraries Such a MESS? (Ben Vallack) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsYeVWyNxaY
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)?
Regardless of where you're coming from I recommend migrating to Immich by "uploading" all your photos using the immich cli, and letting it manage the library.
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
[0] https://selfh.st/apps/
[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.
It runs great.
The “beta timeline” required hashing that took forever but this was on my wife’s iPhone and nothing to do with the back-end (she has 50,000 photos).
The machine-learning stuff uses the GPU. Facial recognition for example. It takes longer on low-end hardware but I am not sure why that is a problem.
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.
Then, go into the design folder of the repo and replace all the images with whatever logo names you want.