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Self-hosting my photos with Immich

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#151

Post by palata »

fy20 wrote: post #50
krick wrote: post #17

I never even used Google Photos (because, you know), so if somebody could explain more concretely: how do you use it? Is it actually a backup app (and if so, is it really much different from using a generic backup app or even just syncthing), or does it somehow magically allow you to keep the preview gallery and search on your device, while your actual 200 GB of photos are somewhere in the cloud and the local storage…

For nearly a decade I've been using Google Photos with a love-hate relationship. I've tried a few alternative photo apps, even tried building one myself as a side side side side project, but nothing really felt like it could replace how I use Google Photos (haven't tried in the past couple of years mind). I have a daughter, and my family lives in another country, so I want to be able to share photos with them. These…

What about automatic background sync without ever having to open the app on mobile? Does that work or do you have to open the app regularly for it to sync properly?

This doesn't work properly on Nextcloud (it sometimes gets out of sync and then I'm screwed because I have to reset the app on my family member's phone and have them resync for hours).

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#152

Post by HunOL »

fsh wrote: post #108

My biggest worry with Immich is how to future-proof the albums. With photos sorted into folders, it should be no problem to access them in a couple of decades. With Immich, I have to rely on the software still working or finding some kind of tool to dump the database.

In the same boat. It seems there is API to export photos, so was thinking about some script that will export photos into separate folder and use hard links in order not to take more space.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#153

Post by palata »

sva_ wrote: post #145
Jnr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenVPN is far from "no fuss", especially when compared to Tailscale. I like to self host things so I also self host Headscale (private tailnet) and private derp proxy nodes (it is like TURN). Since derp uses https and can run on 443 using SNI I get access to my network also at hotels and other shady places where most of the UDP and TCP traffic is blocked. Tailscale ACL is also great and requires more work to achieve…

Why not just use wireguard directly? The configuration is fairly trivial

With Tailscale you don't have to learn anything, you just install apps and click.

One value of Tailscale for a ton of simple use-cases is that people don't have time / don't want to learn.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#154

Post by esperent »

flymaipie wrote: post #149

I prefer Photoview’s simplicity over Immich. Immich leans too much toward mimicking Google Photos for my taste.

I would disagree there. I've tried lots of photo managers, and for organizing thousands of photos, I think Google Photos has it pretty much nailed. When choosing a photo/video manager, "works pretty much exactly like Google Photos but without all the AI bullshit and privacy issues" is a major selling point for me. Ideally it would even have the same shortcuts so that my muscle memory still works.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#155

Post by esperent »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #9
stavros wrote: post #6

I adore Immich. I set it up a while ago, and I'm finally looking at my photos again. I was previously using Nextcloud for photos, but it was such a slog to find anything that I never took or looked at photos. Immich put the joy back in photography for me, it's so easy to find anything, even with just searching with natural language.

Yeah I started with memories for nextcloud. But it was buggy/slow unfortunately. Being able to scroll to dates with immich is golden. And the facial recognition is on device and works great.

I don't have that experience with Nextcloud Memories.

Everything works well and it's comparably fast with Google Photos for me, and scrolling to specific dates works fine.

How long ago did you try it? I've only been using it for a few months so maybe it's improved over time.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#156

Post by palata »

anotherpaul wrote: post #114
vekerdyb wrote: post #110

Surprised that neither the article, nor the comments mention Photoprism from what I can see. It’s not I’ve been hosting Photoprism and syncing my photos with PhotoSync from my iPhone for a while now. I would consider switching to another solution if it had in-browser basic editing (cropping, contrast / white balance adjustment, etc). https://www.photoprism.app/

So am I seeing this right: Immich, ente and photoprism all compete in a similar space? Seems immich is the most polished webpage, but which solution will become the next cloud for photos is to be seen. Surely it's not next cloud anymore, considering the comments here.

> Surely it's not next cloud anymore, considering the comments here.

I have been testing Nextcloud for backing up photos from my family members' phones. Wouldn't recommend.

The sync on iOS works well for a while, then it stops working, then some files are "locked" and error messages appear, or it just stops syncing, and the only way I find to recover is to essentially restart the sync from scratch. It will then reupload EVERYTHING for hours, even though 95% images are already on the server.

Note that in my use-case, the user never opens the app. It has to work in the background, always, and the user should not have to know about it.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#157

Post by palata »

Groxx wrote: post #23

I'll throw in another "+1, quite satisfied with immich" comment, because I'm honestly that impressed. The project as a whole feels competent . Stuff that should be fast is fast. E.g. upload a few tens of thousands of photos (saturates my wifi just fine), wait for indexing and thumbnailing to finish, and then jump a few years in the scroll bar - odds are very good that it'll have the thumbnails fully rendered in like…

How does the mobile syncing work?

Really looking for a system where I can install the app on my parents' iPhones and it backs up their photos to my server without them having to even know about the app. They won't open it, ever.

Nextcloud fails at that.

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#158

Post by wongarsu »

fsh wrote: post #108

My biggest worry with Immich is how to future-proof the albums. With photos sorted into folders, it should be no problem to access them in a couple of decades. With Immich, I have to rely on the software still working or finding some kind of tool to dump the database.

At this point you could just point Claude code at the database and the image folder and ask it to write a migration script

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#159

Post by palata »

cromka wrote: post #95

Immich is great, but I like Ente more because of the E2E encryption. I don't trust that someday my hardware wouldn't get stolen and all photos get in possession of someone else.

I like Ente's E2EE for hosting on a remote server.

In my case I want to host on my personal server at home, so it feels actually nicer to not have E2EE. I basically would like to have the photos of all my family members on a hard disk that they could all access if needed (by plugging it into their computer).

Re: Self-hosting my photos with Immich

#160

Post by corn13read2 »

quag wrote: post #69
kalaksi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running NixOS on some of my hosts, but I still don't fully commit to configuring everything with nix, just the base system, and I prefer docker-compose for the actual services. I do it similarly with Debian hosts using cloud-init (nix is a lot better, though). The reason is that I want to keep the services in a portable/distro-agnostic format and decoupled from the base system, so I'm not tied too much to a singl…

How do you update the software in the containers when new versions come out or vulnerabilities are actively being exploited? My understanding is that when using containers updating is an ordeal and you avoid the need my never exposing the services to the internet.

pull new container, stop old and start new. can also make immutable containers.
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