Any users here mind sharing their experience?
So far, so good? The initial rollout was rough, and the app kept reuploading my whole album and then realizing it was already there.
But since the flurry of hotfixes, its been smoother sailing
My use case:
I use a Synology NAS to backup my photos/videos. On mobile, I use the Synology Photos app for 100% of the backups, because it’s been 100% reliable for me over the years.
I basically run Immich in read-only mode, and specifically for searches. The contextual search is incredible, and after putting it side-by-side with a very expensive Windows software that uses local AI search, it came out on top… no contest.
So in that sense, I’m very happy!
Same here. Their recent antics has made me nervous about staying with them. But their photo software is great.
Silly question, how does immich read from NAS? Is that a native functionality or do you mount it in docker?
Yes, when you mount the external library (when setting up docker), you can set it as read-only. 👌
I run it on a VPS. Works great across oceans. Biggest gripe is that it doesn’t load local content first. It checks online and then pulls from those thumbnails. So if you have a weak or slow connection, then you’ll get a spinning wheel of death or assets that don’t load properly.
Well after reading this I just went to open the app and it now things none of my tens of thousands of photos are synced to the server, yet the sync icon at the top says there’s nothing to sync. So… not great today lol.
Overall it’s been a very buggy experience for a long time and evidently that’s not about to change anytime soon.
You might have to sign out and then in again. There was a bug with the initial release that caused this kind of behavior
The Android app finally works the way you’d expect it. The UI no longer lags due to syncing. Syncing is much faster and more reliable.
Running minipc with immich pointed to NAS drive with photos. I had issues with uploading files in the background on previous version but it seems to be fixed right now.
I’m on version 1.143.1 I skipped all the beta timeline stages and updated from 1.135 I think.
About 30k photos and 2k videos
The web interface was great, the android app (pixel 8) was very slow. Even local assets were slow.
Since update, its way faster. Feels really good, responsive, low latency. Sync and backups have been no issue at all.
Sync on android turned itself off after updating, but I turned it back on, selected the same folders to watch and it processed for a few mins and then everything continued to work with no issues.
On the previous version, sync was pretty good. Sometimes it didn’t trigger as a background process and i had to manually open the app but it worked. New sync also works well though haven’t yet uploaded a large number of things.
As long as you keep the apps up to date both on your devices and the server, I’ve had zero issues with it!
I just wanted something similar to Google photos which i could set and forget, other than being a bit lazy with managing my NAS, it’s been flawless! Plus it’s the benefit that my data is staying with me 🥰
I’ve tried 3 or 4 times to set it up but I just can’t mount a folder within the same drive for immich to recognize. My next plan is install mint and immich on a separate drive and connect my photo drive as external to upload to immich.
Immich is great. The iPhone app is not trustworthy with syncing photos and always freezes. It will get there eventually, if you have the patience for crashes on the iOS app. In fact, for the last week the app just hangs on open, which usually means I need to re-install the app and all that. I have a large library of over 60k photos/videos and an older phone, which doesn’t help. Despite these issues, it’s still great. Every other feature works flawlessly. I haven’t tried this new update but I am hopeful and glad they are pushing forward with cleaning up syncing!
Anyone know of a good managed hosting (or vps) for Immich that doesn’t break the bank? I have about 5TB of photos/videos and I don’t feel safe without a remote backup. I played with self hosting and I really (really) like Immich but I keep Google photos/Drive just to ensure I won’t lose anything.
Continue to self host, create a yearly backup on external harddrive which you keep offline at a trusted family members house.
I do something similar — I have a raspberry pi and a HD, with daily rsync and snapshots (monthly retained indefinitely, weekly retained for a month, daily retained for a week). It’s at family’s house, connected to my home via WireGuard via a VPS. Tailscale (or anything really) would also work here.
It’s a great setup! Just have some watchdog reboot if it can’t talk to home (a simple cronjob with
ping -c1 home.lan || reboot
or similar).Even our “slow” 35Mbps upload speed is way more than enough for incremental rsyncs of my Immich library. The initial sync was done in person, though.
Good enough. Simple, cheap. Brilliant.
Anyone reading this have any suggestions as to where we all can source cheap high-volume drives, such as refurbs pulled from upgraded old racks?
I’m looking to source a cheap trusted family member if anyone has one going?
Lots of families seem to be relocating these days for some reason… Maybe try reaching out there. 👍
I got one from goHardDrive on eBay (link). It was cheap enough, looks flawless, and knock on wood has been working fine.
Googling around, the brand gets…mixed reviews. My use case is such that of this drive fails it’s not a big deal.
I remember before, you could use crashplan to easily backup to a computer at a friend’s house and vice versa. Anyone know any similar tools? The biggest requirement would be that it’s easy enough to use that someone who doesn’t know what “self hosting” is can do it.
As someone who tried syncthing with their non-self hosting friends, let me tell you, that edit folder option is terrifying for the general public lol
I guess you can do "local"backups then syncthing them over, but thats a bit contrived
BitTorrent sync.
If you’re fine with self hosting, you can just self host it and backup your local drives to a remote location. That’s what I do.
For backup software, I use Duplicacy. But Veeam, Borg, etc… would work just fine. For images, since they’re just static files and you don’t really need a version history, you could get away with a scheduled rsync job. Though, technically that leaves you more at risk of ransomeware or something that overwrites your data.
For remote storage, I’d first consider a Hetzner storage box since they are flat-rate pricing and pretty dang cheap at $13/mo for 5TB. You might also consider StorJ, B2, S3, etc… I’d just stay away from any lesser known ultra-cheap storage providers.
Though, technically that leaves you more at risk of ransomeware or something that overwrites your data.
I rsync as well, but use snapshotting on the remote drives. So, a bad rsync would suck but shouldn’t really result in data loss. Ransomware on my local+remote server would of course be very bad…
At such volume it is difficult to come up a service that does not break a bank. Storage is expensive.
Perhaps immich + monthly backups to S3 glacier. That is if you don’t have a second and third site available
Yeah it sucks because Microsoft charges $10/mo for 6tb.
I have 10tb and just ended up getting a 8 bay Synology. Practically turnkey and the photo app is pretty nice. A work of warning. Once your photos get to around 7tb, the photo system sometimes crashes. I spoke to a dev at Synology and there is a fix coming.
deleted by creator
Reverse proxy if your home internet is decent.
50mbps upload is fine for me.
I had it running on a mini PC with 8tb of storage, but I couldn’t get the latency down to where I want it, so I moved it to a VPS.
Problem with that is there is no backup in case of flood/fire/tornado etc.
rsync.net is awesome.
That’s what I do. 1.6TB currently on rsync.net, only my personal artifacts excluding all media that can be reacquired and it’s a reasonable $10/mo. Synced daily at 4am.
If I wanted my backups to include my media collection or anything exceeding several TB, I would build a second NAS and drop it at my parents’.
I just have my data folder and database being copied to backblaze. It’s relatively cheap. Most hosting providers don’t necessarily do backup unless you configure that on your own anyway.
There are products that will let you back up onto your buddy’s free space and vice-versa, but the simplest pricy thing you can do is to drop a NAS at a friend’s place and set up a VPN.
But maybe the monthly fee is okay for now. Maybe consider proton for files instead?
Layer 7 storage servers might be what you are looking for.
I use Netcup VPS
Wow, 7tb for $21/month. That’s much better than I’ve been seeing.
Question for the Immich users: if I have two users A and B, who share all pictures. Can user A create an album with pictures from user B? That doesn’t work with Nextcloud and is grinding my gears!
Yes, you can. You can share an album and collaboratively each add to it or you can share the entire library and take photos directly out of theirs and add to a new album. So I believe you can accomplish what you want. Just tested it with my wife and I’s accounts.
Awesome, thank you. Then I’ll give it a try, that would solve a headache of several years.
Does the app clear storage space on your phone ever? Last I looked, it only mirrored pictures to Immich, so everyone’s phone eventually fills up storage. Had to stick with Nextcloud because it deletes after uploading.
You can, manually. Sounds worse than it is.
It doesn’t actively delete but there’s an option to delete from device