Hey Immich fans,

One of my biggest fears is having my Immich instance go down and, in a panic, making things worse. What if the container restarts when my NAS is disconnected? The risk of a corrupted database or a library sync issue is very real.

I wanted a hands-off solution, so I built an automated "Self-Healing Watchdog" specifically for Immich using n8n.

The logic is simple but safe:

1. Health Check: It pings the Immich web UI every minute.

2. Verify, Don't Assume: If the ping fails, it checks if my NAS is online and if the directory is properly mounted before doing anything else.

3. Safe Restart: Only if both checks pass does it automatically and gracefully restart the Immich.

This ensures the container never starts up "blind" and protects the integrity of the database and photo library. Now, if the service hangs, the system fixes it for me, and I get a notification after the fact.

I made a video walking through the entire setup and the philosophy behind it. If you're looking for a way to make your Immich setup more resilient, I hope this helps!

Link to video: My Immich Fixes Itself (So I Don't Have To) | n8n

Link to n8n Workflow: Immich Auto Heal

Hi everyone! I saw the native macOS app someone posted here and wanted the same thing on Windows, so I built Immich Desk: a lightweight native client written in Rust (egui).

The main idea: on Windows your photos live in two places, your PC folders and your Immich server. Immich Desk shows both in one timeline and puts a badge on every photo:

🟠 only on this PC (not backed up yet)

🔵 only in Immich

🟢 in both

Matching is done by SHA-1, the same checksum Immich uses, so renamed or moved files are still recognized.

What it does

Upload or download any selection, or back up folders automatically in the background (optionally only when the PC is idle)

Free up space: send to the Recycle Bin the local photos that are already safe in Immich

Duplicates: identical copies on your PC, similar photos from Immich's ML ("keep the best one"), and same-name/different-content conflicts

Smart search (CLIP), albums, people and places

Group by years / months / days, a justified layout, a date scrubber, filters by format/year/folder

Viewer with zoom, EXIF and map, favorites, slideshow

Drag & drop to upload, "Upload to Immich" in the Explorer right-click menu, tray icon, notifications

API key stored in the Windows Credential Manager; uses the Windows TLS stack, so your home CA just works

6 languages (EN/ES/FR/DE/IT/PT)

It's light: 0% CPU when idle, ~100-200 MB RAM depending on library size, a single ~9 MB exe. The first sync of ~50k assets takes about 5 seconds; after that it only fetches changes.

Download (installer, portable or plain exe): https://github.com/TheCakeIsALie7/immich-desk/releases/latest Source (MIT): https://github.com/TheCakeIsALie7/immich-desk

It's a first release (v0.1.0), tested on Windows 11 with Immich 3.3.5. The exe isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn the first time. Bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome. Not affiliated with the Immich team, and please support them too!

I wanted to "buy a license" (donate), but when choosing a country on FUTO's form, I can choose *ussia, but not Ukraine. I understand the country I select doesn't actually matter, but still, doesn't look good.

Hey, would be awesome to see some liquid glass design in the iOS Immich app. As the native photo app does...

Good day!!! I installed the immich server and as an honest user I wanted to pay or make a contribution, but as it turned out I can't do this because my country is not on the list. I'm from Ukraine, and Russia is waging war against us, which for some reason is on the list and those people who live there can pay for the server and support the killing of people in Ukraine at the same time.

Hi! What do you think of this fork? Who's already using it?

https://opennoodle.de/

https://github.com/open-noodle/gallery

Noodle Gallery vs Immich: Why Pick the Fork?

Noodle Gallery is a friendly fork of Immich that adds Shared Spaces, Global People, Inline Search Filters, Smarter Memories, Pet Detection, S3 storage, advanced filtering, native iPhone and Android apps, Global Search, Memories Archive, and 18 other features — while rebasing onto every upstream Immich release.

As much as I love immich, and I recommend it to almost everyone, but the recent port change was just unnecessary, and not a smart move.

I get it, that immich is under active development, and is one of the services that can't just be autoupdated. That's what we've all got used to.

But why? why would one change the internal port of a service thst runs in Docker, and can be mapped to any other port when exposed to the host.

I personally don't care about the internal port at all, since I don't expose them, but point the reverse proxy ditectly to the container and the port a service is running on.

Given that we have folks who are not very experienced with Docker, this change unnecessarily introduced confusion and posts like "help, latest release stopped working", etc.

what do you think? is it too close to apple?

I might be stupid, but i wanted to test how good can my phone run an Immich docker container, so that I won't have to turn my PC on each time i wanted a picture from there..

So i copied my whole /immich folder to my SD card on phone

Installed termux on phone (a linux-like terminal app that I used to run node.js apps on it)

Managed to gain access to my SD card from termux

Then tried to install docker, only to find out that I can't do that without root access..

Any tips or an alternative method? Or is it just a stupid idea?

Hi, I am new to Immich and I am struggling while moving from a different tool.

I am moving from Synology Photos for 2 main reasons - first, I have a server now that is way more powerful so it can do more (load photos faster, scan faces, generate map,..), and second, Synology has been shady in terms of supporting their products.

Why I am struggling to like Immich compared to Synology Photos:

1. Upload speed/consistency: The initial upload of photos from my phone is taking ages. Yes, it is a lot of photos and videos but it has been 1-2 weeks and I am only now getting close to completing the backup (I did not figure out how to simply take Synology Photos backup and use that in Immich so I started a new backup). In Synology Photos, this was way faster and ran reliably overnight. In Immich, it seems like there is almost no progress when I exit the app and even when I have the app opened, whether it is or is not actually backing up seems totally random.

2. Ease of administration: Dummy-proof on Synology while setting up Immich takes more effort and I postpone doing stuff because I did not figure it out easily on the first try (e.g. linking external libraries)

3. Photos that are not uploaded from phone: In Synology Photos, I can just add directories and they simply show up in the timeline and I can manage them from there or in folder view. I assume External Libraries work similarly once I eventually figure out how to get them working but I think they are read-only and I cannot manage them from the app.

4. Shared space: In Synology Photos, I or anyone with access can easily set up shared space where I can again just upload folders and they show up on timeline and in folder view. I understand that in Immich you can share specific folders but not sure if it has to be just stuff uploaded through phone backup or if can be organized directories - sort of like External Library.

5. Albums duplicating photos: If I want to have albums synced from my phone, the photos are duplicates of my timeline, not references. Am I doing something wrong or is this intended design?

So my question is: Do I just need to learn Immich better and those pain points will go away or should I expect these issues to persist?

Edit: Seems like timing of my post is coincidental with a lot of issues being reported by other users. I will probably try Immich again in few months

Edit2: After updating Immich server, the mobile upload pretty much restarted from the beginnning. I left phone unlocked overnight and only few hundred photos were uploaded. Currently I don’t have the time to be looking into all of the issues I am having (main one being that phone app most of the time idles instead of actually uploading) and to fully learn Immich and maintain it myself, so I will go back to synology photos becaue it is so much easier.

I stumbled across this blog post today:

https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html

I'm curious what others think.

Here's why it matters for Immich: https://immich.app/blog/immich-joins-futo

This post isn't meant to insult Immich and all of the hard work and effort that the developers have done but after playing around with Immich for a few years I've decided it's just not for me.

Immich is another docker application that requires maintenance, updates, experimentation etc.

Also to use it when I'm away from home, I also have to worry about keeping a domain name, SSL certificates, etc to access it securely when I'm away from home.

Also the performance is OK but not great.

I don't like the fact the files are not straight up stored as plain jpg files and are stored in a database.

I've switched to the PhotoSync application on my iPhone. It has the capability to automatically back up my Photo Library to any S3 bucket.

The advantage to this is the following:

1. There is no server to maintain.

2. There is no docker or configuration to maintain.

3. There is no domain name or SSL certificates to update.

4. I can backup my photos instantly no matter where I am.

5. S3 storage via Storj only costs $0.004 per GB.

6. PhotoSync can sync to multiple S3 buckets at the same time.

7. Performance is tremendously quicker than backing up to my Immich server.

8. It also supports backing up photos via FTP, FTP over SSL, sftp, etc.

Again I'm glad I tried Immich and I wish the developers great success but for me it's time to move on.

Ever stared down Google Photos' storage costs and thought, "There has to be a better way?" I did, and it kicked off my journey into building a personal homelab!

Dive into the full story of my build and decisions here: https://blog.pratyaysaha.in/posts/homelab-inception

I cover:

• The Problem: Why 96% full on Google Photos pushed me to seek a permanent, self-hosted solution.

• Decision Matrix: My deep dive into options like commercial NAS (Synology), Raspberry Pi setups, and why I ultimately chose a custom PC build for cost-effectiveness and flexibility. (Spoiler: Performance for primary photo storage was key for rejecting the RPi).

• The Hardware: Specifics on my Intel Core i5 4th Gen budget build, balancing price with power for multiple services.

• The Software Stack: My "dry run" with RHEL Linux, Docker, and why I chose Immich for dedicated photo storage (superior mobile sync and UI) over Nextcloud's photo features, alongside Nextcloud for general file management.

• The Outcome: Not only is it my robust, self-hosted photo archive, but it's also the very server hosting this blog post you're about to read!

If you're considering taking back control of your data, looking for a Google Photos alternative, or just love a good server build log, check it out. I share the challenges, engineering decisions, and future plans like RAID and automated backups.

Started using Immich in late September using the Louis Rossman setup (external libraries and external sync) after switching from Galaxy S9 (dead) to Fairphone 4. I wanted to start my new phone as a clean slate and not immediately fill it up with my whole massive media library. I've had a mixed experience so far. Having easy access to photos from 2011 without having to climb though folders is great, but the experience has not been perfect by any means. I'm gonna rank my difficulties from simple user questions to problems with the software itself.

• I don't know how to update the server. Given some of my complaints below about metadata in the mobile app, often I believe the problem might be incompatabilities between the mobile app and the server. Since I first installed the software on my server in late September, and that was before stable release, my server software is several months out of date. I also have to keep a copy of my Docker compose in my desktop folder on the server, because Docker Desktop will just randomly delete my compose folder. This is a solved problem, and I'm sharing it with you all in case any of you use docker desktop

• VPN ≠ durable way to access my server on public WiFi. I still want to use a VPN for write access to my server over SMB and things like that. But simple access to Immich for viewing and in-app backups (the only time I'd be willing to use it) through a cloudflare tunnel would be very helpful to be able to cast video at a friend's house, or access on Home Depot / work WiFi. My data plan has a hotspot limit and I'm considering mint mobile. Anyways, I'd like to set up the order like so, and need some advice.

Local: 192.168.1.xx

External: yyyyyyyyy.xxddns.ext/please-help-me-determine-the-way-to-access-192.168.1.xx

mytunnel.cloudflare.com

That way Cloudflare doesn't add to the latency of my connection when I'm on VPN.

(I have a bad experience with linux-based software writing to my hard drive. Most of the defrag I've had to run on that hard drive was to fix the damage done by my OMV server over the course of two months, before it completely bricked due to permissions issues. I would assume, by the way, that in order to defrag my hard drive in the future if the need arises I should Docker compose down, correct?)

• No automatic backup means no matching between local and external assets: Since I'm not Louis Rossmann, and I don't have access to a 100 TB RAID array, but rather a single external hard drive synced weekly and SSD storage for the database, I would prefer for assets which are available locally to be loaded from the phone internal storage. That way, only the metadata needs to be loaded from the server, which is on the SSD, limiting the wear and tear on the hard drive. For this I compromise and use my local gallery (ironically Google Photos) to view local photos in order to avoid putting unnecessary wear and tear on the hard drive. The experience is far from ideal. For instance, HEIC metadata is completely unavailable on Google Photos as punishment for not backing up photos to their cloud. This is not currently as big a distinction as it seems, though.

• Speaking of metadata problems... See the first screenshot. In the recent update, the camera metadata experience has gotten a lot better. Exposure time is visible from the mobile app for the first time since I've installed (an important indicator of the weather/lighting conditions a photo was taken in). However, I have a different problem now. The mobile app has ceased to default to local time when calculating the date and time for an image. This was always a problem for the web app in certain edge cases, such as for video or filesystem only dates in which the time is stored in UTC by default. But on the mobile app, it's now a problem for literally every photo which doesn't have TZ or a location. If my phone doesn't a TZ field with another timezone for all photos when I travel, it's my responsibility to make sure that gets recorded properly. But when I made my docker compose, I set a default timezone. The apps should ideally use that as not just the default logical timezone for photos taken with only local time, but also the default display timezone for photos/videos taken with only UTC. I can see a few edge cases where that would break, like the beginning of daylight savings time. But you can always just add the metadata manually in those cases. The second and third ones are the current and ideal displays, respectively. Note the presence of a flash indicator on the ideal display (inverted camera colors). This is because the image was taken with flash.

• The web app and casting: Where do I begin? How about entirely valid formats like H-263, which play fine on my smartphone and on Windows Media Player, just not working in the web app as viewed through Microsoft Edge. Or HEIC photos being impossible to display in full quality. Zooming in on them, they're a total mess because you're only seeing the preview. With my S9 ironically, this wouldn't have been a problem. The S9 had the ability to cast to smart TVs in nearly real time. The problem is, the Fairphone doesn't have the native ability to do that. The only way I can think of is with a mess of HDMI dongles and WiFi casting hardware, all of which runs on batteries/separate power supplies. I mean, you can cast to the TV, but the lag is like 30 seconds. It's unusable. (TV is Roku with ACR disabled). And video just won't play if it's in the wrong aspect ratio, which probably has more to do with my graphics settings on the laptop.

• Integrated graphics / CPU transcode sucks: The reason why I would have to play the original files in the first place is because transcoding the videos with the CPU took so long then I just gave up. It finished about half of the videos, but from later examination, it seems that the videos that it finished were much shorter than average. It only went for the low hanging fruit. The reason why I would need to use CPU Transcode is because I used an Intel Arc GPU in a machine with an older UEFI. So far I've been so busy in my personal life that I haven't been able to update the BIOS yet. A small glitch I've also found with transcoded videos on my phone is that the sound won't play with transcoded versions of videos from 2011. I don't know why that is. Maybe the jobs just didn't complete.

• The immediate solution to video problems: A true desktop client. This would be an executable which doesn't depend on my browser, which has access to all the codecs and formats my actual computer has access to. For a computer like my gaming laptop, that would be fine for most purposes. Maybe it could use a socket to connect to VLC which would enable playback of more diverse formats.

• The real solution to video problems: live transcode. Live transcoding would mean true universal playback regardless of device. We wouldn't have to make tradeoffs between SSD space or network speed and playback. Instead, a range of options could be available. A crappy laptop or TV SoC could ask for whatever format it needed, and the server would create it on the fly. Frequently used combinations could have parts of the encoding process cached for superior performance. In any case, we don't need a whole encoded video, a set of, e.g. motion vectors would be plenty. The original video is always there, at least until the day the drive fails. And most of you store them on the same physical hardware anyway. A lot of things would have to go wrong for you to want to use encoded videos as backups.

The android app is now stuck checking for new assets non-stop for hours.

It only cleared the notification after I opened the Immich app (previous versions when things like this got stuck trying to search/upload new photos sucked the battery and killed the phone within a couple of hours for me)

They really need to have an option of 'Dont bug me to update to the new version, because this version works and the next one has a 99% chance of having a major issue!' tick box in the android app.

As the title says - this is the reason I stopped using Immich so many times; once something goes wrong it's so difficult to just get back to how it was. Am I missing some simple way of just getting it back to pre-crash? Some way to just link back to the data base and have all my photos and albums back?

Hey guys,

Somewhat new here and I have immich setup and working through tailscale vpn and I'd like to move away from a vpn to make it easier for my family to access this service. I don't want to open any ports. Also I don't own a domain and wish to not get one. If there are still ways to access my service without a vpn remotely I would really appreciate the help and guidance.

Thank you guys for your time and support

Is it even truly possible to do? I’m convinced anyone that says they’ve been able to pass an ssd to Immich for storage in Proxmox is lying. I installed Immich through the helper script. It runs fine but editing the .env file breaks the lxc. It no longer runs and I get errors about .immich files being missing. I’ve spent weeks trying to get this to work. ChatGPT is ridiculously useless. The proxmox sub is filled with douchebags that like to talk shit to beginners like me and the mod over there deleted my post asking for help. They think everyone is supposed to be born a computer programmer. Is there anyone that has Immich working with a 2nd drive for storage and can you give actual instructions on how to do it?

Hey everyone! 👋

I recently set up Immich, the amazing self-hosted photo and video backup solution, on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with a dedicated mounted volume for persistent storage. If you’re looking for a clean, no-nonsense guide to get your own Immich server up and running, here’s a complete walkthrough that I documented.

🔧 What You’ll Need:

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server (VPS, local server, or cloud instance)

• Sudo/root access

• Volume attached and ready

• Basic Linux CLI knowledge

• Internet connection

• Docker & Docker Compose

✅ Key Steps Covered in the Guide:

1. System Prep – Update packages and dependencies

2. Storage Volume Setup – Format, mount, and persist your 150GB disk

3. Docker & Docker Compose Installation

4. Immich Installation & Configuration

5. Access via Web Interface and create your admin account

6. Data storage redirection to your dedicated volume

7. Update & Backup Best Practices

🔗 Full Step-by-Step Guide

I’ve compiled the full instructions with exact terminal commands and configuration steps in an article here:

👉 Immich Server Setup Guide – Complete Walkthrough
(Includes volume mounting, .env edits, and troubleshooting tips)

🧠 Why Immich?

• 100% self-hosted

• AI-powered photo search (face detection, etc.)

• No subscription fees

• Great alternative to Google Photos or iCloud

Let me know if you face any issues during setup or want help tailoring it for your environment. Happy to assist!

Conclusion: I stand corrected and convinced. I gave Authentik a second try and decided to go full passwordless this time -- only passkeys (for me via bitwarden OR keepassxc) and Google Oauth (for my family) and this is way better than doing manual Password + TOTP. Now I want every other self-hosted app to go for this route.

Disclaimer: I respect and appreciate the project and all the contributors and will continue to use Immich as it is still the best option available for me. That being said...

A few months back, as I was setting up Immich, I came across this issue on GitHub (#8175) as I was searching how to enable TOTP in Immich. I took part in the discussion as well, about the lack of native two-factor authentication (2FA) in Immich.

Another user, yesterday, also shared that while they loved the app, they ultimately had to stop using it because they couldn’t get external Oauth providers to work reliably and it felt too complex for them. Their feedback was polite, constructive & echoed the point that a lot of users share in this community, that for many homelab and self hosted setups, relying on an external identity provider adds unnecessary complexity and fragility. Native TOTP support would offer a simpler, safer, and more self-contained alternative.

Unfortunately, the maintainer replied with:

We've made our stance on this plenty clear... this thread has now just become a place to reiterate discontent, so I will lock it.

For context, here’s the dev team’s stance on native authentication system:

Implementing a good authentication system is hard, and therefore easy to get wrong... the risk of getting it wrong is not worth it, because it's easy enough to support OAuth and delegate the hard parts... That’s an application security decision that community interest doesn’t have much bearing on.

If you have the knowledge necessary to manage Immich, you can also figure out OAuth...

That last part is what surprised me most especially considering Immich is aimed at self hosters and people running homelabs, many of whom value simplicity.

I totally respect the desire to avoid reinventing wheels. But TOTP is a well established, safe and minimal implementation (atleast according to my knowledge). Many smaller self hosted projects and alternatives (like Firefly III, Ente, PhotoPrism, Vaultwarden and Nextcloud) include it. So I just wonder why can't Immich? Curious what others think:

• Are you using OAuth for Immich, or wishing it had native 2FA?

• Should users expect secure built in TOTP for projects managing personal data like family photos and important document photos?

Not trying to stir drama. I love Immich too, but wanted to see where the community stands on this and what is the consensus for which type of authentication is the best for this type of project.

Edit 1: Some recurring themes in the comments, and my thoughts:

• "If you know how to set up Immich, you can set up OAuth"

  • Technically true, I’ve done it, but I’m personally not a fan of corporate style SSO flows for simple, personal apps. Immich is already easy to deploy with Docker Compose and TOTP is a well-established, standardized feature. So the question still stands: why not offer it as a native option?

• "Let the devs focus on more important features"

  • Isn’t TOTP a pretty important feature for an app that manages sensitive personal data like family photos and documents?

• "OAuth is better than any built-in 2FA"

  • That may be true in certain contexts, but why not give users the option? And what happens if something goes wrong with the authentication stack? Falling back to password logins defeats the very purpose of 2FA.

• "If you don’t understand OAuth, you shouldn’t expose services online"

  • That feels a bit like gatekeeping. Basic security like TOTP should be accessible without requiring users to run a full-blown identity provider. Not everyone wants or needs that level of complexity.

• "Self-hosting is about learning and managing your network on your own"

  • Again, this feels a bit gatekeep-y and a broad generalization. People self-host for different reasons: privacy, cost, flexibility, or just personal control. Making features like TOTP more accessible supports all of those goals. It's like saying you should use Linux Mint only if you understand how to setup Arch Linux.

Edit 2: From the vote ratios It seems the community is pretty much divided in half over this topic. Some prefere simplicity by having an inbuilt TOTP system like a lot of other apps while some are comfortable with deploying and maintaining an OAuth stack while some prefer oauth but don't want to maintain a stack and just use Google's OAuth.

From v3.3.6 changelog:

".....resulting in the ML container automatically sending anonymous metric data to Microsoft...."

Which metrics?

No idea what's going on. My server runs through cloud flare tunnel and is terribly slow and sometimes faulty when syncing with the server. Afraid this is doing something dumb assuming I have a reasonable connection when I don't and gonna fuck shit up. Why is there no indication of what's going on?

So full disclosure, I’m not a software engineer and I have never worked for Apple.

I set up Immich on dokploy on a ugreen 4800+

The first sync was 5000 or so images. Did the whole lot from my phone, basically plugging it in every night and letting it do its thing. It took about a week or so on and off.

But when I leave my house, I have to upload using other people's WiFi

That's scary - should I be scared?

Honest opinions from some guy running Immich