{"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "category": "selfhosted", "category_name": "Self-hosted and home server", "description": "Self-hosted photo and video backup and management platform with mobile apps.", "recommenders": 50, "commenters": 74, "warners": 3, "score": 47.59, "rising": 7.53, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-24", "why": "Loved as a self-hosted replacement for Google Photos and Apple Photos, with fast browsing and search and phone apps that back up photos automatically.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 50, "neutral": 19, "compare": 3, "warn": 4}, "spark": [3, 5, 3, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1, 12, 4, 14, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Google Photos replacement", "Reliability"], "caveat": "Setup and upgrades", "short_quote": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through.", "icon": true, "domain": "immich.app", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://immich.app", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Immich"], "verdict": [{"text": "Loved as a self-hosted replacement for Google Photos and Apple Photos", "cites": [{"id": 780345168, "item_id": 48771573, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771573", "by": "slaye", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos.", "excerpt": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos. I've been using it behind Tailscale for months with no problems ever since I first got into homelabbing. Actually, moving from Google Photos to Immich after I hit my 100GB storage limit was the whole reason I got into self-hosting, and what a fun ride that has been! I can't believe self-hosted products of this caliber are free. Huge shout-out to HomeAssistan", "context": "homelabber", "use_case": "self-hosted photo library", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 792624432, "item_id": 49539027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539027", "by": "cdrnsf", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through.", "excerpt": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through. I have a public proxy sitting in front of it as well (which it makes easy by letting you configure external sharing URLs), so I can share out password-protected or public galleries and accept uploads without exposing it directly.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage and sharing", "switched_from": "Apple Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 788743408, "item_id": 49296463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296463", "by": "onel", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance.", "excerpt": "On web I use an adblocker to block annoying google popups, including the Gemini one in gmail. Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance. One click install: https://malmo.network/store/immich", "context": "", "use_case": "Google Photos alternative", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 761267568, "item_id": 47579223, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47579223", "by": "igor47", "date": "2026-03-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends.", "excerpt": "Dude get off the train. I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends. I deleted all my Google photos from my Google account and I don't miss it. Alternatives exist. I love being able to automatically share my photos with my partner, or create shared albums that other people can upload into. All my photo syncing happens automatically via sync thing, but less technical friends use the immich phone ap", "context": "self-hosts for friends", "use_case": "photo library and sharing", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "I Regret the Blood Pact I Have Made with iCloud Photos"}]}, {"text": ", with fast browsing and search and phone apps that back up photos automatically.", "cites": [{"id": 738727392, "item_id": 46170462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170462", "by": "Groxx", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "+1, quite satisfied with immich", "excerpt": "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 a", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 776244192, "item_id": 48515262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515262", "by": "hagbard_c", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features", "excerpt": "I replaced Memories with Immich running as an external application using the OpenID connect provider app to authenticate Nextcloud users. Immich and Memories seem to aim at more or less the same spot but Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features which is the main attraction for me since it makes it possible to actually find that needle in the 160.000+ large h", "context": "160,000+ photo library", "use_case": "photo management with Nextcloud", "switched_from": "Memories", "story": "Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future"}, {"id": 795803344, "item_id": 49737709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737709", "by": "nodar86", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos.", "excerpt": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos. I used this guide [0] for the initial import. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "backing up iCloud photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795945424, "item_id": 49746589, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746589", "by": "osr00", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich has such a better app experience imo", "excerpt": "Many of the apps I ended up not using was either because the projects were abandoned or because the web/app UX is just too bad or ugly. For instance I really like Photoprism but Immich has such a better app experience imo. I recently discovered Arpeggi (client for my Navidrome server) and I have such a good time using it", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is that setup and upgrades take real effort", "cites": [{"id": 780267040, "item_id": 48766690, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766690", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging.", "excerpt": "Man, I wish my experience was as nice. I used the proxmox lxc for it and after a 2 months of organizing I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging. It might have been related to a big version migration if I remember correctly. It turned me off the stack. The upgrading wasn't as turnkey as I wanted it to be and I dont think the case is different today. I just want to be able to or", "context": "runs Proxmox LXC", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 735125716, "item_id": 45945357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945357", "by": "rootnod3", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "For some reason they only officially support the docker images but not a single clear instruction on how to set it up manually.", "excerpt": "I used to love both, Kubernetes and Nix. But after a few years of using both I felt like the abstraction levels are a bit too deep. Sure, it's easy to stand up a mail server in NixOS, or to just use docker/kubernetes to deploy stuff. But after a few years it felt like I don't have a single understanding of the stack. When shit hits the fan, it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. I am now back on running my serve", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}, {"id": 780241968, "item_id": 48765123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765123", "by": "phikappa", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich has got to be the thing that I've spent ages setting up, use extremely infrequently but the one time a year I use it I'm so happy I did. Great software.", "excerpt": "There's a lot of things I spent a ton of time setting up, use once, and then never again. Tons of things that are easy to set up, and provide small benefits every day for a long time. Immich has got to be the thing that I've spent ages setting up, use extremely infrequently but the one time a year I use it I'm so happy I did. Great software.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780375120, "item_id": 48773445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773445", "by": "darkwater", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "excerpt": "In my case I spent it not so much time setting it up, some time upgrading with some manual work required from time to time with breaking changes (but not so often) and I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}]}, {"text": ", and some users hit import, metadata or resource problems with large libraries.", "cites": [{"id": 780358545, "item_id": 48772409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772409", "by": "cromka", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "yet you can't easily and safely import your photos. That's inconsistent at best.", "excerpt": "It seemed like that for me, too, until I realized my photos were botched. The only way to know that was looking into the logs: I have some 9000 photos which it silently fails to extract metadata from. The only sign in the UI that something is off is the fact those 9k photos never get processed, you can try in perpetuity. The logs reveal they were botched either by immich-go or iOS app, ffmpeg freaks out when processi", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780382224, "item_id": 48773889, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773889", "by": "neogodless", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Immich", "excerpt": "Yup. I love Immich, but I'm also a control freak, so my 25 years of digital photos I had before using Immich still exist in an External Library. It mostly works but I still have some issues. Like I keep getting a batch of ~70 photos that lose their \"date taken\" and revert to the date/time I started using Immich. (Fortunately the file names are date/times and I can manually go through and fix them, but having done it ", "context": "has 25 years of digital photos", "use_case": "photo library with external library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 792628496, "item_id": 49539281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love immich! On board since June 2026.", "excerpt": "I love immich! On board since June 2026. But, here's a brief report on my evening installation project.. setting up Immich: Ingesting a 1.7TB library (160k+ RAW photos) is apparently not a standard task! - Thumbnails and ML vectors consumed hundreds of gigabytes. I had to move the library folder to a dedicated ZFS HDD (700GB currently). - ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-kill", "context": "ingesting 1.7TB photo library", "use_case": "large photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Google Photos replacement", "summary": "Many commenters moved off Google Photos, Apple Photos, iCloud or Nextcloud to Immich and are happy with it.", "quotes": [{"id": 780345168, "item_id": 48771573, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771573", "by": "slaye", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos.", "excerpt": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos. I've been using it behind Tailscale for months with no problems ever since I first got into homelabbing. Actually, moving from Google Photos to Immich after I hit my 100GB storage limit was the whole reason I got into self-hosting, and what a fun ride that has been! I can't believe self-hosted products of this caliber are free. Huge shout-out to HomeAssistan", "context": "homelabber", "use_case": "self-hosted photo library", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 792624432, "item_id": 49539027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539027", "by": "cdrnsf", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through.", "excerpt": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through. I have a public proxy sitting in front of it as well (which it makes easy by letting you configure external sharing URLs), so I can share out password-protected or public galleries and accept uploads without exposing it directly.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage and sharing", "switched_from": "Apple Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 732821985, "item_id": 45801374, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801374", "by": "jimangel2001", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The gallery is very bad, now we use immich.", "excerpt": "Nextcloud is a mess. It tries to do everything. The only reason I keep it in production is because it's a hustle to transition my files and DAVx info elsewhere. The http upload is miserable, it's slow, it fails with no message, it fails to start, it hangs. When uploading duplicate files the popup is confusing. The UI is slow, the addons break on every update. The gallery is very bad, now we use immich.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo gallery", "switched_from": "Nextcloud", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}]}, {"label": "Reliability", "summary": "Long-term users report running it for months or a year with no problems.", "quotes": [{"id": 792617360, "item_id": 49538585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538585", "by": "normalaccess", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fantastic project. I have been using it for about a year and have had no problems yet.", "excerpt": "Fantastic project. I have been using it for about a year and have had no problems yet. Building another box to deploy for family.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 738766096, "item_id": 46172881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46172881", "by": "tgiba", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's really amazing.", "excerpt": "I use my Immich instance locally as photos and videos storage for 7-8 months now. It's really amazing. Reading comments here I'd say it's medium-difficulty tier to set up. I have it on my Elitedesk 800 G3 mini, in Docker Compose, with hardware encoding and it's more than sufficient to handle this work. Never had a bug.", "context": "runs it on a mini PC with Docker Compose", "use_case": "local photo and video storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 783501584, "item_id": 48968849, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968849", "by": "Vedor", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far", "excerpt": "You can, I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far (but I keep the photos backed up elsewhere just in case, I use Immich mostly to share curated sets of photos)", "context": "self-hosts on Raspberry Pi 4", "use_case": "sharing curated photo sets", "switched_from": "", "story": "The death and rebirth of my home server"}]}, {"label": "Speed and search", "summary": "Commenters describe it as fast to browse, with strong search across large libraries.", "quotes": [{"id": 738727392, "item_id": 46170462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170462", "by": "Groxx", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "+1, quite satisfied with immich", "excerpt": "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 a", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 776244192, "item_id": 48515262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515262", "by": "hagbard_c", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features", "excerpt": "I replaced Memories with Immich running as an external application using the OpenID connect provider app to authenticate Nextcloud users. Immich and Memories seem to aim at more or less the same spot but Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features which is the main attraction for me since it makes it possible to actually find that needle in the 160.000+ large h", "context": "160,000+ photo library", "use_case": "photo management with Nextcloud", "switched_from": "Memories", "story": "Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future"}, {"id": 780267376, "item_id": 48766711, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766711", "by": "MohamedMabrouk", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich is an amazing software.", "excerpt": "Immich is an amazing software. I use it regularly as an alternative along side Google photos. I keep in it large videos that I wouldn't upload normally to Google photos + the snappy experience at home vs Cloud-Bades solution.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo/video storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "Mobile backup", "summary": "The phone apps back up photos and give a better app experience than alternatives.", "quotes": [{"id": 795803344, "item_id": 49737709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737709", "by": "nodar86", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos.", "excerpt": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos. I used this guide [0] for the initial import. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "backing up iCloud photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795945424, "item_id": 49746589, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746589", "by": "osr00", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich has such a better app experience imo", "excerpt": "Many of the apps I ended up not using was either because the projects were abandoned or because the web/app UX is just too bad or ugly. For instance I really like Photoprism but Immich has such a better app experience imo. I recently discovered Arpeggi (client for my Navidrome server) and I have such a good time using it", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 737523648, "item_id": 46095228, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095228", "by": "cuu508", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm running Immich on NanoPi R6C (arm64, even lower idle power usage, still plenty fast for running Immich).", "excerpt": "I'm running Immich on NanoPi R6C (arm64, even lower idle power usage, still plenty fast for running Immich). I use Cloudflare tunnel to make it available outside the home network. I've set up two DNS names \u2013 one for accessing it directly in the local network, and and a second one that goes through the tunnel. The Immich mobile app supports internal/external connection settings \u2013 it uses the direct connection when con", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}]}, {"label": "Sharing", "summary": "Shared albums, public or password-protected galleries and uploads from others are appreciated.", "quotes": [{"id": 792624432, "item_id": 49539027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539027", "by": "cdrnsf", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through.", "excerpt": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through. I have a public proxy sitting in front of it as well (which it makes easy by letting you configure external sharing URLs), so I can share out password-protected or public galleries and accept uploads without exposing it directly.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage and sharing", "switched_from": "Apple Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 761267568, "item_id": 47579223, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47579223", "by": "igor47", "date": "2026-03-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends.", "excerpt": "Dude get off the train. I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends. I deleted all my Google photos from my Google account and I don't miss it. Alternatives exist. I love being able to automatically share my photos with my partner, or create shared albums that other people can upload into. All my photo syncing happens automatically via sync thing, but less technical friends use the immich phone ap", "context": "self-hosts for friends", "use_case": "photo library and sharing", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "I Regret the Blood Pact I Have Made with iCloud Photos"}, {"id": 783501584, "item_id": 48968849, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968849", "by": "Vedor", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far", "excerpt": "You can, I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far (but I keep the photos backed up elsewhere just in case, I use Immich mostly to share curated sets of photos)", "context": "self-hosts on Raspberry Pi 4", "use_case": "sharing curated photo sets", "switched_from": "", "story": "The death and rebirth of my home server"}]}, {"label": "Face recognition", "summary": "Face identification helps find people across an archive.", "quotes": [{"id": 792729440, "item_id": 49545590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545590", "by": "hakcermani", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich does such a good job with face identification", "excerpt": "Had gazillion copies of folders and iphoto libraries in various backups, but since i moved to linux as daily driver was on the hunt for a good photo archiver. Just recently started using Immich. Tried Photoprism too which would have also fit my need well, but somehow Immich won the coin toss ! (After many years was able to pull that one pic my wife was after from my archive !). My all those duplicates have been now b", "context": "Linux daily driver, self-hosts in Docker on Ubuntu", "use_case": "photo archive and dedup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Setup and upgrades", "summary": "Setup can take a long time, upgrades sometimes need manual work, and only Docker is officially supported.", "quotes": [{"id": 780267040, "item_id": 48766690, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766690", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging.", "excerpt": "Man, I wish my experience was as nice. I used the proxmox lxc for it and after a 2 months of organizing I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging. It might have been related to a big version migration if I remember correctly. It turned me off the stack. The upgrading wasn't as turnkey as I wanted it to be and I dont think the case is different today. I just want to be able to or", "context": "runs Proxmox LXC", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 735125716, "item_id": 45945357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945357", "by": "rootnod3", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "For some reason they only officially support the docker images but not a single clear instruction on how to set it up manually.", "excerpt": "I used to love both, Kubernetes and Nix. But after a few years of using both I felt like the abstraction levels are a bit too deep. Sure, it's easy to stand up a mail server in NixOS, or to just use docker/kubernetes to deploy stuff. But after a few years it felt like I don't have a single understanding of the stack. When shit hits the fan, it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. I am now back on running my serve", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}, {"id": 780375120, "item_id": 48773445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773445", "by": "darkwater", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "excerpt": "In my case I spent it not so much time setting it up, some time upgrading with some manual work required from time to time with breaking changes (but not so often) and I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "Import and metadata", "summary": "Some imports silently fail metadata extraction or lose photo dates, especially with external libraries.", "quotes": [{"id": 780358545, "item_id": 48772409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772409", "by": "cromka", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "yet you can't easily and safely import your photos. That's inconsistent at best.", "excerpt": "It seemed like that for me, too, until I realized my photos were botched. The only way to know that was looking into the logs: I have some 9000 photos which it silently fails to extract metadata from. The only sign in the UI that something is off is the fact those 9k photos never get processed, you can try in perpetuity. The logs reveal they were botched either by immich-go or iOS app, ffmpeg freaks out when processi", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780382224, "item_id": 48773889, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773889", "by": "neogodless", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Immich", "excerpt": "Yup. I love Immich, but I'm also a control freak, so my 25 years of digital photos I had before using Immich still exist in an External Library. It mostly works but I still have some issues. Like I keep getting a batch of ~70 photos that lose their \"date taken\" and revert to the date/time I started using Immich. (Fortunately the file names are date/times and I can manually go through and fix them, but having done it ", "context": "has 25 years of digital photos", "use_case": "photo library with external library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "Resource use", "summary": "Large RAW libraries can consume lots of RAM and disk, and one commenter calls performance and storage weak, citing no S3 support.", "quotes": [{"id": 792628496, "item_id": 49539281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love immich! On board since June 2026.", "excerpt": "I love immich! On board since June 2026. But, here's a brief report on my evening installation project.. setting up Immich: Ingesting a 1.7TB library (160k+ RAW photos) is apparently not a standard task! - Thumbnails and ML vectors consumed hundreds of gigabytes. I had to move the library folder to a dedicated ZFS HDD (700GB currently). - ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-kill", "context": "ingesting 1.7TB photo library", "use_case": "large photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 796682672, "item_id": 49792667, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49792667", "by": "denysvitali", "date": "2026-09-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Immich sucks, sadly, performance wise and in terms of storage (they don't support S3, WTF).", "excerpt": "A better link: https://github.com/open-noodle/gallery Seems to be a fork of Immich. They claim performance is a goal but it's still written in Node.JS? Curious. I tried to do something very similar a while back (https://github.com/denysvitali/immich-go-backend) but didn't fully follow through. Immich sucks, sadly, performance wise and in terms of storage (they don't support S3, WTF). I'll eventually get back go it an", "context": "tried building a Go port of Immich backend", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Noodle Gallery \u2013 Self-hosted photo and video manager forked from Immich"}]}, {"label": "Mobile app", "summary": "The app has performance issues for some users and may cache the server address.", "quotes": [{"id": 780432448, "item_id": 48777028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777028", "by": "wookmaster", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome.", "excerpt": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome. The App has some performance issues but the web is flawless. I cut down on my iCloud plan since I deleted most of my videos from it. I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo/video library", "switched_from": "iCloud", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 738748176, "item_id": 46171761, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46171761", "by": "teekert", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Best selfhosted app ever.", "excerpt": "I also run NixOS (btw) but opted for the container. My Docker compose setup has moved from Arch to Ubuntu to NixOS now, so I like the flexibility of that setup. I also use Tailscale, and use cloudflare as nameserver and Caddy in front of Immich to get an nice url and https. For DNS redirects I use Adguard on the tailnet, but (mostly for family) I also set some redirects in my Mikrotik hEX (E50UG). This way Immich is ", "context": "runs NixOS and Docker compose", "use_case": "family photo and video library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}]}, {"label": "Missing features", "summary": "Users ask for smart albums, better shared-album workflows and cross-user deduplication.", "quotes": [{"id": 738765296, "item_id": 46172831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46172831", "by": "sylens", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "run Immich in parallel with Google Photos right now for my family", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve experimented with both Immich and Ente over the last year and run Immich in parallel with Google Photos right now for my family. Once they add a few more features to support things like smart albums, I\u2019ll be able to drop Google Photos entirely. I love that the consumer space is getting this kind of attention. It\u2019s one of the biggest opportunities for big tech to lock people into their ecosystem, as photos are so", "context": "", "use_case": "family photo library", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 738723696, "item_id": 46170231, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170231", "by": "drekipus", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love the immich success story", "excerpt": "Immich started the same time and with the same backstory/reasoning to my (failed) project. I love the immich success story but it seems like it's missing a crucial use case in my view: I don't actually want a majority of the photos on my phone. I want something like a shared album that me and my wife both have access to, and so we can share photos specifically to that album (quickly and without hassle), so we can do ", "context": "built a similar failed photo app", "use_case": "photo backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 792667569, "item_id": 49541723, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In immich, I can only dedupe across a single user library.", "excerpt": "Good news, my coding agents can access my proxmox and HA and immich and make having a homelab easier than it ever has been. I actually just used codex to help me find dupes across multiple user libraries in immich and quarantine them. In immich, I can only dedupe across a single user library. I used codex to find grid based images that I needed to convert into animated images from back in my iphone 4 days. It located", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}]}, {"label": "Backup costs", "summary": "You still need your own backups, which can cancel out savings versus Google Photos.", "quotes": [{"id": 792625360, "item_id": 49539085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539085", "by": "drdexebtjl", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Still worth it, imo.", "excerpt": "I use Immich, but saved me money it has not. Unless you actually go through the \"Backing up your photos\" step, you _will_ lose your photos, it's just a matter of time. And if you're like most people, that is probably not acceptable. And by the time you do the math for the cost of your backups, you'll find Google Photos pricing is actually pretty good. Still worth it, imo.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 757014848, "item_id": 47313428, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313428", "by": "GTP", "date": "2026-03-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "backup of your phone's pics with Immich", "excerpt": "Look into self-hosting. Start small with only one or two services that have a big impact on your privacy (e.g., backup of your phone's pics with Immich) and expand from there once you gained some experience. Things will go wrong, expecially in the beginning. So set up encrypted backups, I use Kopia for that, one repository on an external SSD and another on Backblaze.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "phone photo backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you keep your data private?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "bengalister", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "justsomehuman", "context": "self-hosts on a Hetzner CAX31", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013881", "date": "2026-10-08"}, {"by": "brokenmachine", "context": "Android user with home server", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826456", "date": "2026-09-24"}, {"by": "jmathai", "context": "spent years on digital photo management, runs an open source photo project", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790154", "date": "2026-09-21"}, {"by": "KomoD", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748253", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "recvonline", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748213", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "nodar86", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737709", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "j_bum", "context": "has SDAM", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708140", "date": "2026-09-15"}, {"by": "gavmor", "context": "runs many disparate self-hosted services", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49584845", "date": "2026-09-06"}, {"by": "hakcermani", "context": "Linux daily driver, self-hosts in Docker on Ubuntu", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545590", "date": "2026-09-03"}, {"by": "nickthegreek", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "date": "2026-09-02"}, {"by": "Helmut10001", "context": "ingesting 1.7TB photo library", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "date": "2026-09-02"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "Google Photos alternative", "for families", "runs on low-power hardware", "for large photo libraries"], "use_cases": ["photo library", "photo hosting", "photo management", "self-hosted photos", "photo storage", "self-hosted photo library"], "compared": [{"slug": "google-photos", "name": "Google Photos", "co": 13, "switched_from": 8, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "jellyfin", "name": "Jellyfin", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "nextcloud", "name": "Nextcloud", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "apple-photos", "name": "Apple Photos", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "home-assistant", "name": "Home Assistant", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "syncthing", "name": "Syncthing", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ente", "name": "Ente", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "forgejo", "name": "Forgejo", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48761944", "title": "Immich v3.0.0 Released", "mentions": 13}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538375", "title": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095087", "title": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746527", "title": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290545", "title": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 3, "warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 3}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 12, "warn": 2, "neutral": 2}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 4}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 5, "recommend": 14, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 6}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803484529, "item_id": 50217783, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50217783", "by": "slickdork", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I did google take out > immich and it maintained all meta data.", "excerpt": "I did google take out > immich and it maintained all meta data. I used https://github.com/simulot/immich-go", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads"}, {"id": 801897313, "item_id": 50118582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50118582", "by": "dd_xplore", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "immich (iGPU + ML + another container running on my PC for additional ML resource)", "excerpt": "I had a N100 mini PC with 16GB DDR5 (the chinese ones with 4 Ethernet for router use). That thing ran lot's of my services - arr stack, jellyfin, immich (iGPU + ML + another container running on my PC for additional ML resource), n8n, it-tools, handbrake, and another project that I used to do. This mini PC also handled 4k hevc quite fine! This is a surprisingly capable chip.But I wanted more so I bought a core Ultra ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801839494, "item_id": 50114968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "immich", "excerpt": "I also self host some services: keycloak, forgejo, home assistant, immich, grafana/prometheus, jellyfin, pureftp (to store my surveillance cameras videos), and a vibecoded financial app, and soon hermes agent on a 2023 laptop. I chose to run most of them on Kubernetes since I am used to work with it. I use: - ha-proxy running on the host and istio running inside the cluster for the sni based ingress routing - cert-ma", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "use_case": "photo hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800306099, "item_id": 50019131, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019131", "by": "paweladamczuk", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "- Navidrome - Jellyfin - Vaultwarden - Immich - pi agent. I use it through tmux and iSH on my iPhone - librechat. nice UI but honestly I probably jsut use pi more often - copyparty. to visually inspect whatever I create with pi, and to access my documents, to upload files I need on the server quickly and easily from any device", "context": "", "use_case": "photo hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800258130, "item_id": 50016133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016133", "by": "ahf8Aithaex7Nai", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also run a few personal web services: Immich, Gitea, Bookstack, Jellyfin, and more.", "excerpt": "I use Yggdrasil [0] to connect my computers. This ensures they are always connected within a flat, private IPv6 namespace. However, two computers cannot find each other if they are both behind NAT on different networks. At least one of them must be reachable by the other via TCP. That\u2019s why I use the cheapest VPS I could find as a globally accessible Yggdrasil hub. I\u2019ve been running it this way for many years now, an", "context": "", "use_case": "photo hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800222106, "item_id": 50013881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013881", "by": "justsomehuman", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I run the following services / apps.", "excerpt": "Not quite as cheap as $5 but I've been running at Hetzner CAX31 for a couple of years now and I run the following services / apps. Actual Budget - https://github.com/actualbudget/actual AirTrail - https://github.com/johanohly/AirTrail Beszel - https://github.com/henrygd/beszel Coder - https://github.com/coder/coder Crowdsec - https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec Dawarich - https://github.com/Freika/dawarich Dozz", "context": "self-hosts on a Hetzner CAX31", "use_case": "photo hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 797223300, "item_id": 49826456, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826456", "by": "brokenmachine", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich to connect to my self-hosted media", "excerpt": "I use termux to ssh and RealVNC to connect to a remote vnc session, all over a wireguard VPN. Also Syncthing to automatically sync files between the phone and my home server. I download podcasts and audiobooks into a folder on the server and they're automatically on my phone ready to play. Immich to connect to my self-hosted media. And ntfy to get notifications from my home stuff. Tasker to automatically activate my ", "context": "Android user with home server", "use_case": "self-hosted media", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple iPhone 18 Pro Camera test"}, {"id": 796682672, "item_id": 49792667, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49792667", "by": "denysvitali", "date": "2026-09-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Immich sucks, sadly, performance wise and in terms of storage (they don't support S3, WTF).", "excerpt": "A better link: https://github.com/open-noodle/gallery Seems to be a fork of Immich. They claim performance is a goal but it's still written in Node.JS? Curious. I tried to do something very similar a while back (https://github.com/denysvitali/immich-go-backend) but didn't fully follow through. Immich sucks, sadly, performance wise and in terms of storage (they don't support S3, WTF). I'll eventually get back go it an", "context": "tried building a Go port of Immich backend", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Noodle Gallery \u2013 Self-hosted photo and video manager forked from Immich"}, {"id": 796642464, "item_id": 49790154, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790154", "by": "jmathai", "date": "2026-09-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich is absolutely wonderful.", "excerpt": "I know this post is about Noodle, but I want to talk about Immich. I believe I've spent, perhaps, the most time of anyone on earth on digital photo management (hard to quantify, but since 2005 - 2 startups, one acquisition, and an ongoing open source project used by thousands). I say that because I've refused to settle for most solutions in this space. Even when I adopted using Google Photos, it was as a read only vi", "context": "spent years on digital photo management, runs an open source photo project", "use_case": "photo and video management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Noodle Gallery \u2013 Self-hosted photo and video manager forked from Immich"}, {"id": 795972049, "item_id": 49748253, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748253", "by": "KomoD", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Authelia, Immich, Jellyfin, Fusion, qBittorrent, Memos and Gitea.", "excerpt": "Authelia, Immich, Jellyfin, Fusion, qBittorrent, Memos and Gitea. I think that's all of them.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795971413, "item_id": 49748213, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748213", "by": "recvonline", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich: For my photos", "excerpt": "* Kavita: eBooks and Comics * Jellyfin: Movies and TV Shows * Seafile: Hosting my private files * AdGuard Home: DNS/Ad blocking for all my devices * Vaultwarden: Passwords * Immich: For my photos * Plausible: Analytics * Audiobookshelf: Audiobooks * Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr + Transmission * Radicale: Calendar + Contacts * HedgeDoc: For my Markdown files LLMs made it REALLY easy to setup a self hosting server and mainta", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795945424, "item_id": 49746589, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746589", "by": "osr00", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich has such a better app experience imo", "excerpt": "Many of the apps I ended up not using was either because the projects were abandoned or because the web/app UX is just too bad or ugly. For instance I really like Photoprism but Immich has such a better app experience imo. I recently discovered Arpeggi (client for my Navidrome server) and I have such a good time using it", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795803344, "item_id": 49737709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737709", "by": "nodar86", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos.", "excerpt": "I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos. I used this guide [0] for the initial import. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "backing up iCloud photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795330240, "item_id": 49708140, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708140", "by": "j_bum", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood", "excerpt": "Yes. It\u2019s called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM). I suffer from it quite badly. I can remember broad and important details, but struggle to remember even moderate details from anything beyond the past 2-3 months, with sharp falloff after that. Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood (I used to just dump them onto HDDs), I experienced a sharp ", "context": "has SDAM", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination"}, {"id": 794347152, "item_id": 49646697, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49646697", "by": "toomuchtodo", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Would it be difficult to extend https://github.com/immich-app/immich with this capability?", "excerpt": "Great work! Would it be difficult to extend https://github.com/immich-app/immich with this capability?", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Automating culling \u2013 3,478 RAW photos with 977 vision calls"}, {"id": 793488176, "item_id": 49593011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593011", "by": "ticoombs", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "One of the best solutions I've ever used for photos, backups, enrichment, etc", "excerpt": "While you're doing that check out Immich - https://immich.app One of the best solutions I've ever used for photos, backups, enrichment, etc", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management and backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard"}, {"id": 793357521, "item_id": 49584845, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49584845", "by": "gavmor", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "upload images to Immich [1] albums", "excerpt": "If your \"opt-in platform features\" and \"interface to allow permissioned access to data and capabilities between different apps\" is more expressive/discoverable than eg Cloud Foundry's \"Service Broker\" approach[0], then I am pretty excited! I run a lot of disparate services which don't interoperate except through explicit workflow automation pipelines (I use ConcourseCI to eg upload images to Immich [1] albums, but ot", "context": "runs many disparate self-hosted services", "use_case": "photo albums", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloud in a Bottle: making self-hosting accessible to everyone"}, {"id": 793352001, "item_id": 49584500, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49584500", "by": "makeitdouble", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I haven't used Immich so it might have evolved a lot since then", "excerpt": "It's about 3~4 years I haven't used Immich so it might have evolved a lot since then, but looking at their current roadmap there is a ton of features I use everyday in Photos that won't be there. And it's not to fault Immich, on the contrary, Photos is one of the rare Google property where the team is constantly pushing the envelope. I could combine it with a bunch of external tools to make do, but it would be crazy ", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloud in a Bottle: making self-hosting accessible to everyone"}, {"id": 792743588, "item_id": 49546474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "by": "TranquilMarmot", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "photos in Immich", "excerpt": "I have a server in a closet with a few hard drives attached to it. All of my devices connect to it via Tailscale. I use the wonderful https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest as a web UI around restic. Every night, I back the data up to a Hetzner storage box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ which is only ~$3.50/mo USD for 1TB of data. I have three \"tiers\" of data for myself: 1. Important things I care abo", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 792729440, "item_id": 49545590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545590", "by": "hakcermani", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich does such a good job with face identification", "excerpt": "Had gazillion copies of folders and iphoto libraries in various backups, but since i moved to linux as daily driver was on the hunt for a good photo archiver. Just recently started using Immich. Tried Photoprism too which would have also fit my need well, but somehow Immich won the coin toss ! (After many years was able to pull that one pic my wife was after from my archive !). My all those duplicates have been now b", "context": "Linux daily driver, self-hosts in Docker on Ubuntu", "use_case": "photo archive and dedup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792667569, "item_id": 49541723, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In immich, I can only dedupe across a single user library.", "excerpt": "Good news, my coding agents can access my proxmox and HA and immich and make having a homelab easier than it ever has been. I actually just used codex to help me find dupes across multiple user libraries in immich and quarantine them. In immich, I can only dedupe across a single user library. I used codex to find grid based images that I needed to convert into animated images from back in my iphone 4 days. It located", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792647936, "item_id": 49540496, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540496", "by": "drdexebtjl", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to run Immich on a 2nd gen Core i3.", "excerpt": "> I'm sure Immich has similar, but I know it would take a lot of processing to make it happen. It\u2019s less than you think! Consider that Apple\u2019s image recognition happens on your phone. Also, it doesn\u2019t matter if indexing is slow, as long as the photos are indexed before you need to search for them. I used to run Immich on a 2nd gen Core i3.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792645152, "item_id": 49540322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540322", "by": "inventor7777", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I gave Immich a fair try, but it could not replace Apple Photos for my use case.", "excerpt": "I gave Immich a fair try, but it could not replace Apple Photos for my use case. YMMV, but my favorite Photos app features simply weren't available. I use Apple's top-notch editing for all sorts of stuff - RAW images, videos, basic enhancements, etc. When I tested, Immich didn't have very good, if any, editing features. I also love Apple's search functions, and it Just Works\u2122. I'm sure Immich has similar, but I know ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792628496, "item_id": 49539281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love immich! On board since June 2026.", "excerpt": "I love immich! On board since June 2026. But, here's a brief report on my evening installation project.. setting up Immich: Ingesting a 1.7TB library (160k+ RAW photos) is apparently not a standard task! - Thumbnails and ML vectors consumed hundreds of gigabytes. I had to move the library folder to a dedicated ZFS HDD (700GB currently). - ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-kill", "context": "ingesting 1.7TB photo library", "use_case": "large photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792625360, "item_id": 49539085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539085", "by": "drdexebtjl", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Still worth it, imo.", "excerpt": "I use Immich, but saved me money it has not. Unless you actually go through the \"Backing up your photos\" step, you _will_ lose your photos, it's just a matter of time. And if you're like most people, that is probably not acceptable. And by the time you do the math for the cost of your backups, you'll find Google Photos pricing is actually pretty good. Still worth it, imo.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792624432, "item_id": 49539027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539027", "by": "cdrnsf", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through.", "excerpt": "I love this project \u2014 I replaced Apple photos with it and it's been smooth sailing the whole way through. I have a public proxy sitting in front of it as well (which it makes easy by letting you configure external sharing URLs), so I can share out password-protected or public galleries and accept uploads without exposing it directly.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage and sharing", "switched_from": "Apple Photos", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792617360, "item_id": 49538585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538585", "by": "normalaccess", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fantastic project. I have been using it for about a year and have had no problems yet.", "excerpt": "Fantastic project. I have been using it for about a year and have had no problems yet. Building another box to deploy for family.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792381025, "item_id": 49523814, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523814", "by": "alibrarydweller", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the people I have resolved from faces in my Immich photos", "excerpt": "I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user, I like that I have alerts set to remind me of birthdays and other events, and that there's a place to list, e.g. everyone who got a Christmas card from me last year. I recommend it to people. I'm agnostic about a rewrite, I never used Chandler and as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly serviceable for me the end user as it is. I rarely use the UI. I have been contemplating interac", "context": "", "use_case": "photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "We are rebuilding Monica"}, {"id": 789232752, "item_id": 49327047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49327047", "by": "tehlike", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use immich too, on my home cluster. I did it as a \"backup\" to google", "excerpt": "I use immich too, on my home cluster. I did it as a \"backup\" to google, in case my account gets flagged by an AI with no immediate recourse. PS: I used to be an employee, and there was a time i needed an account help for an old account who was clearly definitely mine, and they were of no help. Good for security, terrible if you get flagged.", "context": "former Google employee", "use_case": "photo backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 789225760, "item_id": 49326610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49326610", "by": "hiisukun", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the author(s) have done a fantastic job", "excerpt": "This exact issue was the final straw for me ditching google photos! I had previously been using syncthing to sync & backup the photos, same as other files on my phone and laptop. I now use Immich [1] (mentioned elsewhere in this thread but without the proper link), having purchased a single-payment lifetime family licence. There is, as I understand it, no benefit to me to purchase it. After a month of use it was clea", "context": "runs it on an old home computer, family licence", "use_case": "photo backup", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 788743408, "item_id": 49296463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296463", "by": "onel", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance.", "excerpt": "On web I use an adblocker to block annoying google popups, including the Gemini one in gmail. Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance. One click install: https://malmo.network/store/immich", "context": "", "use_case": "Google Photos alternative", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 787493194, "item_id": 49218324, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218324", "by": "ragequittah", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Most of the stuff I use is free and excellent.", "excerpt": "Most of the stuff I use is free and excellent. Linux, Firefox, libreoffice, xcp-ng, bottles, steam, playnite, opnsense, docker, dockhand, immich, freshrss, obsidian, tailscale, calibre, caddy, docker, pi-hole, signal, audiobookshelf I could probably keep going for a long while. I'm very glad most good software creators I've come across do not have your mindset.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Improving GPT-5.6 Sol in ChatGPT\u2014and expanding access for free users"}, {"id": 783501584, "item_id": 48968849, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968849", "by": "Vedor", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far", "excerpt": "You can, I am self-hosting Immich via Docker on Raspberry Pi 4 with small SSD and it's nothing but good experience so far (but I keep the photos backed up elsewhere just in case, I use Immich mostly to share curated sets of photos)", "context": "self-hosts on Raspberry Pi 4", "use_case": "sharing curated photo sets", "switched_from": "", "story": "The death and rebirth of my home server"}, {"id": 783333232, "item_id": 48958327, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48958327", "by": "kevstev", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "its happily running linux and hosting Immich, among other things", "excerpt": "So I actually had a use case for this last month. My NAS is too weak to run immich well, so I dusted off my old sandybridge core i7 laptop from ~2011, and it actually benchmarks about 4x my nas, and has 8GB of RAM. But it was still loaded with windows. Long story short, its actually kind of difficult these days to install linux on such an old box, distros have become massive. I searched around in my closet and found ", "context": "self-hosts on an old laptop", "use_case": "self-hosted photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "CD Sales Growth Outpaced Vinyl in the First Half of 2026"}, {"id": 780432448, "item_id": 48777028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777028", "by": "wookmaster", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome.", "excerpt": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome. The App has some performance issues but the web is flawless. I cut down on my iCloud plan since I deleted most of my videos from it. I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo/video library", "switched_from": "iCloud", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780382224, "item_id": 48773889, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773889", "by": "neogodless", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Immich", "excerpt": "Yup. I love Immich, but I'm also a control freak, so my 25 years of digital photos I had before using Immich still exist in an External Library. It mostly works but I still have some issues. Like I keep getting a batch of ~70 photos that lose their \"date taken\" and revert to the date/time I started using Immich. (Fortunately the file names are date/times and I can manually go through and fix them, but having done it ", "context": "has 25 years of digital photos", "use_case": "photo library with external library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780375120, "item_id": 48773445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773445", "by": "darkwater", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "excerpt": "In my case I spent it not so much time setting it up, some time upgrading with some manual work required from time to time with breaking changes (but not so often) and I use it weekly, it just works and it's wonderful.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780364880, "item_id": 48772805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772805", "by": "firen777", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I literally just discovered this program a month ago and stabilized my self-host set up just one week ago.", "excerpt": "> Upload asset directly to album on the mobile app Does this fix this problem? https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/12748 It's a pretty big issue for me having multiple devices and multiple people who want to pool pictures of our cats together in one album. Currently I have to do this kind of set up: 1. Syncthing sync our photos back to the homelab server hosting immich - /mnt/Syncthing/a1/cats/ - /mnt/Sy", "context": "runs a homelab", "use_case": "self-hosted photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780359184, "item_id": 48772449, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772449", "by": "INTPenis", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "That's all the change I need with immich.", "excerpt": "I agree, we used to have photo albums in cupboards, and they used to get burnt if the house burned down, or water damaged if the boiler broke, or even stolen. Now we have them digitally and we can back them up off-site. That's all the change I need with immich. To fully encrypt them would just be inviting more problems.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780358545, "item_id": 48772409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772409", "by": "cromka", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "yet you can't easily and safely import your photos. That's inconsistent at best.", "excerpt": "It seemed like that for me, too, until I realized my photos were botched. The only way to know that was looking into the logs: I have some 9000 photos which it silently fails to extract metadata from. The only sign in the UI that something is off is the fact those 9k photos never get processed, you can try in perpetuity. The logs reveal they were botched either by immich-go or iOS app, ffmpeg freaks out when processi", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780345168, "item_id": 48771573, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771573", "by": "slaye", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos.", "excerpt": "An incredible piece of software, on par with Google Photos. I've been using it behind Tailscale for months with no problems ever since I first got into homelabbing. Actually, moving from Google Photos to Immich after I hit my 100GB storage limit was the whole reason I got into self-hosting, and what a fun ride that has been! I can't believe self-hosted products of this caliber are free. Huge shout-out to HomeAssistan", "context": "homelabber", "use_case": "self-hosted photo library", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780267040, "item_id": 48766690, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766690", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging.", "excerpt": "Man, I wish my experience was as nice. I used the proxmox lxc for it and after a 2 months of organizing I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging. It might have been related to a big version migration if I remember correctly. It turned me off the stack. The upgrading wasn't as turnkey as I wanted it to be and I dont think the case is different today. I just want to be able to or", "context": "runs Proxmox LXC", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780241968, "item_id": 48765123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765123", "by": "phikappa", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich has got to be the thing that I've spent ages setting up, use extremely infrequently but the one time a year I use it I'm so happy I did. Great software.", "excerpt": "There's a lot of things I spent a ton of time setting up, use once, and then never again. Tons of things that are easy to set up, and provide small benefits every day for a long time. Immich has got to be the thing that I've spent ages setting up, use extremely infrequently but the one time a year I use it I'm so happy I did. Great software.", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 776244192, "item_id": 48515262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515262", "by": "hagbard_c", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features", "excerpt": "I replaced Memories with Immich running as an external application using the OpenID connect provider app to authenticate Nextcloud users. Immich and Memories seem to aim at more or less the same spot but Immich outpaces Memories nearly everywhere: it is a lot faster and offers far better search features which is the main attraction for me since it makes it possible to actually find that needle in the 160.000+ large h", "context": "160,000+ photo library", "use_case": "photo management with Nextcloud", "switched_from": "Memories", "story": "Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future"}, {"id": 761267568, "item_id": 47579223, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47579223", "by": "igor47", "date": "2026-03-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends.", "excerpt": "Dude get off the train. I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends. I deleted all my Google photos from my Google account and I don't miss it. Alternatives exist. I love being able to automatically share my photos with my partner, or create shared albums that other people can upload into. All my photo syncing happens automatically via sync thing, but less technical friends use the immich phone ap", "context": "self-hosts for friends", "use_case": "photo library and sharing", "switched_from": "Google Photos", "story": "I Regret the Blood Pact I Have Made with iCloud Photos"}, {"id": 738727392, "item_id": 46170462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170462", "by": "Groxx", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "+1, quite satisfied with immich", "excerpt": "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 a", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"}, {"id": 735125716, "item_id": 45945357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945357", "by": "rootnod3", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "For some reason they only officially support the docker images but not a single clear instruction on how to set it up manually.", "excerpt": "I used to love both, Kubernetes and Nix. But after a few years of using both I felt like the abstraction levels are a bit too deep. Sure, it's easy to stand up a mail server in NixOS, or to just use docker/kubernetes to deploy stuff. But after a few years it felt like I don't have a single understanding of the stack. When shit hits the fan, it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. I am now back on running my serve", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted photo management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}]}