Immich (Google Photos - locally)! 📷
Create your own Google Photos server to store as much as your HDD can!
Continuing my self-hosting journey, the next challenge was to make my NAS more intuitive and user-friendly. When I used Google Cloud, organization is so simple. It is possible to share albums, view memories of old photos, search for photos by location and even find duplicate photos. Would it be possible to have something similar with my own infrastructure? Using my NAS with a 4TB HDD without having to pay any monthly fees?
Yes, my friends, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post. The name of the app is Immich. It is open source and has a large number of people contributing. It also has a mobile app. The only downside is that it is still under heavy development, so you may encounter some instability, but nothing that will impact the experience. Below I will tell you some ways to mitigate the risks as well. Let’s go.
The recommended way to install immich is via docker compose. It has a microservice, a postgres database and redis for caching. To get good results, it is recommended to have a processor with a good capacity. Otherwise, I recommend that you take a look at another alternative called Photoprism.
Another recommendation I make is that you configure your photos folder in read-only mode. This is possible as a feature of docker itself and prevents immich from making changes to your photos, eliminating the risk of losing any information due to a bug or problem in the app. This will prevent you from using the app’s own backup function. However, there are other alternatives for this and I may make a related post later.
Your docker compose file should look something like this:
name: immich
services:
immich-server:
container_name: immich_server
image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
volumes:
- ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
env_file:
- .env
ports:
- '2283:2283'
depends_on:
- redis
- database
restart: always
healthcheck:
disable: false
immich-machine-learning:
container_name: immich_machine_learning
image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
volumes:
- model-cache:/cache
env_file:
- .env
restart: always
healthcheck:
disable: false
redis:
container_name: immich_redis
image: docker.io/redis:6.2-alpine@sha256:905c4ee67b8e0aa955331960d2aa745781e6bd89afc44a8584bfd13bc890f0ae
healthcheck:
test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
restart: always
database:
container_name: immich_postgres
image: docker.io/tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.2.0@sha256:90724186f0a3517cf6914295b5ab410db9ce23190a2d9d0b9dd6463e3fa298f0
environment:
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS: '--data-checksums'
volumes:
- ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}:/var/lib/postgresql/data
healthcheck:
test: >-
pg_isready --dbname="$${POSTGRES_DB}" --username="$${POSTGRES_USER}" || exit 1;
Chksum="$$(psql --dbname="$${POSTGRES_DB}" --username="$${POSTGRES_USER}" --tuples-only --no-align
--command='SELECT COALESCE(SUM(checksum_failures), 0) FROM pg_stat_database')";
echo "checksum failure count is $$Chksum";
[ "$$Chksum" = '0' ] || exit 1
interval: 5m
start_interval: 30s
start_period: 5m
command: >-
postgres
-c shared_preload_libraries=vectors.so
-c 'search_path="$$user", public, vectors'
-c logging_collector=on
-c max_wal_size=2GB
-c shared_buffers=512MB
-c wal_compression=on
restart: always
volumes:
model-cache:
Configure the environment variables and other settings here:
After deployment, you can check if the server is active by accessing the machine’s IP link on port 3000, where you can configure your first user, which is the administrator, and start configuring your library. In the last few weeks, the developers have added a function to notify you when an album is shared by email, the function to stack similar photos, and several improvements to the mobile app. I’ve been using immich for a few months and the speed of development and stability of the app are really impressive. If you also use it, leave a comment about your experience, or if you use Photoprism or some other alternative, I’d be happy to know, see you later.
Sponsor the Immich project:
