One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don’t know.
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.
Ooh, that’s really cool
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
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
Is it better than NC?
Never used NC but this just works.
If you use Nextcloud, install the App Memories and you will have the same functions as Immich plus all the upload functions of Nextcloud.
But if you are not interested in all the Nextcloud functionalities (including contact and calendar sync, musicserver, filesharing, etc) and just want picture management, Immich is the better choice.
That’s exactly what I have, and that’s exactly what I wanted … DARN … oh well. I guess it’s nice to have the document sync as well
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.
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.
Did you see the external libraries options?
I haven’t used Immich, so no. I might get around to it sometime in the next couple months.
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.
Yes
Immich sounds great.
Does it have E2EE? I rent a VPS and would prefer personal files that I have on it to be protected.
It is fundamentally built around the files being decrypted in RAM, for all the search features. You can use an encrypted partition for storing the photos and DB, to avoid having plaintext files on disk.
If it weren’t Docker-dependant, I’d imagine this would be a good FreedomBox app.
Sounds more like a Freedombox problem for not supporting one of the best ways to run sevrer software ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What is it and what does it do?
I second this?
From the logo, it looks like immich
Immich! Photo management: https://immich.app/
Immich
Google photo self hosted alternative
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.
FLASH! AAAAAAAA
Why does it need to be two types? Can’t I have 2 spinning?
You put them in a safe. Safe falls down, spinning is gone.
You put them in a safe and forget about them for some time. Flash is gone, spinning still has data.
Good point!
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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.
I do nightly borg backups of much more than 200gb. The idea of incremental backups is you’re only doing the changes, and photos don’t tend to change.
What challenge did you come across with a 200GB backup?
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Ente is also open source and can be self-hosted.
If it works then great. I find it pretty lacking compared to Immich.
I guess they fill different niches. I use Ente for the e2ee, that’s pretty important to me. Immich definitely seems more like a drop in Google Photos alternative, I just use software on my computer to do that instead.
E2EE is definitely important for uploads on someone else’s server. On my server? Ehhh, not so much. The entire drive is already encrypted. Another layer of encryption would just slow it down. Just my opinion.
I would think e2ee would be important if youre uploading files when away from your local network. If that isn’t enabled, then it’s far less important. At that point, it would only matter if there was a compromised client harvesting your wifi packets.
If this is happening via a VPN you almost definitely already have transit encryption
e2ee would be important if youre uploading files when away from your local network
Even without e2ee or a VPN, just plain old HTTPS should be enough to secure that part, or am I missing something?
Immich automatically uploads when I connect to wifi so that’s not really a problem. Nor am I personally concerned with someone MITMing my personal photos, I just want them out of corporate silos that use them to exploit me or hand them over to the gov in a dragnet.
Their auth is better than the tool itself (last time I evaluated options which was maybe a year ago)
Oh they update a lot. The clients have gotten really snappy, which is nice because browsing photos felt a bit cumbersome before. There’s now automatic albums and facial recognition, if you opt in to that. Was going to say that there’s no editing tool but there is. It’s quite basic though, three tabs, crop, transform (rotate, flip, resize), and colours (brightness, contrast, saturation, and blur for some reason lmao).
There’s also a bunch of sharing features. You could share images or albums directly, or even create embeds for if you have a portfolio website. I pretty much only use it as a backup service though.
As someone who only used the stock synology app and has always wanted to try something else, what features and things does this do better? I am close to trying it out just to see. Im sure it will solve my 1 big issue where I can’t control the location of photos that default to my application storage, which is pretty small, instead of my actual storage array.
Does everything Google photos does. Their app looks/feels exactly Google’s app, including sharing links. Assuming you’re running it on reasonably powerful hardware, it does all the same face recognition and ML based search that Google photos does.
You don’t even need reasonably powerful hardware, I do it on my raspberry Pi 5. It just takes a little longer, which isn’t usually a problem except for the first time you import your library.
Does it have an Android app that will automatically back up photos and videos that I take? Is there a way to do it without exposing a bunch of stuff from my home network?
Yes. I use it, no issues. Use tail scale to backup while away from the home network.
Yes, and yes.
Their Android app feels like an exact clone of the Google Photos Android app.
To access it remotely, you can use Tailscale like someone else mentioned. But you need to have Tailscale installed on everyone’s phones.
You can also use a Cloudflare Tunnel to allow it to be accessed over the Internet without exposing anything from your home network directly to the Internet.
The latter is useful when I want to share a secret link to a photo album after hanging out with people so everybody can upload the photos they took to one place (something I used to do a lot with Google Photos)
I currently have a Wireguard server setup on my router with the client on my phone that connects automatically any time I leave home (thanks Tasker!). This is essentially the same as the tail scale setup, right??
Any idea how much that cloudflare tunnel costs?? I’d love to be able to share via a link rather than sending individual pictures, but my current setup really only allows it if that person is connected to my home wifi.
I got the supporter for free, because I donated to them before they joined FUTO. I donate frequently to opensource projects. This is a good way to say thanks to the devs 😊
Even small donations are fine, so please donate to projects you enjoy 👍🏻
I didn’t know they were giving supporter status to people who donated before they joined FUTO
You needed to connect your Github account once, the app checked if you donated, then you got the supporter status
They joined that open washing company? ughhhh
Thanks for the reminder, done 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
Yup. Whoever backdoored xz was very close to getting it into production. The only reason they got caught was a slight performance regression and an inquisitive and dedicated developer. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/
Some years ago, a backdoor made it into Gentoo. https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-infection-proves-windows-malware-monopoly-is-over-gentoo-ships-backdoor-updated/
@corsicanguppy @sonofearth People concerned about this kind of thing could sponsor distributions to create native packages. For example, hire a debian developer to package and include immich in debian.
I’ve personally been meaning to package navidrome for debian for several years now, but other things have taken priority.
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.
Same bro, just became a supporter myself. Worth every dollar!
Yup, purchased myself 2 days ago. Absolutely deserve all of the support!
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?
Because it has a lot of photo specific features:
- face recognition: enables you to (mostly) automatic tagging of who’s in the photo
- map of images, e.g. look at all the images you have taken in Italy
- (local) AI to search images by keywords, e.g. “sunset at the beach”
- memories: what happened on this day in the previous years
These are just the ones on top of my head, but you’ll probably get the idea. If you just want to back up you photos then nextcloud is more than enough, but you’d probably enjoy the immich features once you used them.
Regarding the two copies: you can use immich on an external library, so you don’t have to have to copies.
It’s like asking why should I use paperless when I can just keep my documents as PDFs in my nextcloud.
The issue for me is that Nextcloud has these features as well with App add-ons. I have yet to try Immich because what’s more important for me is the actual backup\upload of my photos than actually browsing them. Maybe someday, but my self hosting initiatives typically involve me chasing a shiny red ball of a deployment, and Immich just isn’t shiny enough for me yet.
Sure, if you just want upload / backup it’s not worth it. If your currently happy with nextcloud then there is no reason to try immich.
But I highly recommend to sometimes view old photos to keep the memories alive.
I haven’t looked into the nextlcoud add-ons, but didn’t have a great experience with the ones I tried so far. In general I’m not really happy with nextlcoud even for file sync / share, but I haven’t found any replacement, every thing else is much worse.
It does take quite a bit of upkeep, especially if you don’t use it frequently. I recently found my instance broke due to a bad addon, and then Authelia also broke because NC decided thier OIDC addon is not supported on the latest v32. I was able to re-enable without issue, but still flagged as unsupported.
Sounds like I’m talking myself into Immich already haha.
The AI search is just crazy, especially when you adjust the model quality.
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 am a supporter and ordered the retro demo disk. Itll be here soon :)
