16 ms·

Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

757 points by barbazoo 3y ago

charles_f 3y ago
This looks like something that I might use, but > Expect bugs and breaking changes. I get it's the pretty normal to go through fixing bugs, but for a backup solution the core of it should be stable or I would not use it
- gobip 3y ago
  Try it. Adopt it. :) Just a few weeks ago, facial recognition was added and that was it for me. I finally made the switch from Google Photos and iCloud to immich. It's your self-hosted google photos alternative, with image recognition, a map, sharing folders publicly, or with other users on your server. Some parts will be buggy though, like face detection, or memories. But the whole "backup & sync" part is very reliable, I've never had any issues.
  - vasac 3y ago
    > Some parts will be buggy though, like face detection, or memories. Frankly, I have had issues with Google Photos already. For me, it simply stopped recognizing faces since last October. I tried disabling and then enabling face recognition multiple times, but to no avail. It starts recognition from scratch, but only for photos before October. Writing to the support didn't help (although I didn't expect it to anyway), so alternatives like this one are becoming more and more tempting. I'm already self-hosting a bunch of things, but facial recognition (when it was working) was much better in Google Photos and a major reason why I'm paying for additional storage.
  - cvwright 3y ago
    I’m working on building something similar. From what I can tell, Immich, Ente, and PhotoPrism are the best of the batch when it comes to open source photo storage and management. They are all good, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Personally, I want: E2E encryption, on-device face recognition, and the ability to self-host as well as a paid option for people who don’t want to manage their own server. The existing options each hit about 90% of that, but it’s a different 90% for each one.
    - TkTech 3y ago
      Photoprism had the critical flaw of being single user last time I tried it, making it neat but a complete non starter for someone with a family larger than 1.
      - elesiuta 3y ago
        The same goes for me and I imagine many more. This is literally the only thing holding it back from being the perfect Google Photos replacement for families with someone who self-hosts.
      - anderspitman 3y ago
        Is there anyone in your family that you really want to have access to all your photos? Not even referring to just NSFW stuff. If your answer is "as the admin I'm the only one that can access everything" then consider the question from your family's POV. Not trying to discount your point only pointing out that single user and e2ee implementations have some value.
        Vaslo 3y ago
        You make a good point and you are right, but for me the concern is that the same account can break a lot of stuff. I agree, if I put a photo out there, I don’t care who sees it if I’ve given them the password. But I just worry about people deleting things, mucking up the database, etc.
        anderspitman 3y ago
        That's fair. Personally I'd like to see (and am working on) more solutions that make it realistic for everyone to run their own single user instances. Selfhosting shouldn't be any more difficult less secure than running an app on your phone.
        Vaslo 3y ago
        Interesting philosophy on this, hadn’t thought about it this way before.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  Considering it also says “still under active development. Don’t use this yet for backups” I think it’s pretty fair. It’s explicitly saying it’s not a backup solution.
  - charles_f 3y ago
    It does, it's even in the title of this post..
netsharc 3y ago
I guess the Github description/HN title is incomplete, it's curious that it's saying it's a backup solution, but what is visible is an web-based photo browser... yeah yeah I get it, just like Google Photos (i.e. App-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named according to the docs[1]), the web viewer is part of the package... I guess it needs a better description, IMO a project with several big components (web, mobile, backend) sells itself short being named just "backup solution". [1] https://immich.app/docs/overview/introduction https://immich.app/docs/overview/introduction
- Saris 3y ago
  It is a backup solution, the mobile app automatically backs up photos as you take them.
  - CameronNemo 3y ago
    Sure, that is part of it. But it seems to offer a bit more than pure backup, which you could get with a number of services.
- altran1502 3y ago
  Hey man, project's maintainer here. Thank you for the well thoughts. Naming is hard as it is :P. What would be a nice phase to describe the project?
  - smusamashah 3y ago
    Add a 2 3 line description right after your heading before Disclaimer and all other stuff that what this project actually is. What does self hosting and mobile phone mean here (I don't know if it makes your phone a backup server)
  - aembleton 3y ago
    Photo Management
cozzyd 3y ago
4+ GB of ram required?
- Saris 3y ago
  Due to machine learning / face recognition.
  - gsich 3y ago
    Picasa could do that too 2014, single threaded. (And is probably still better)
    - Saris 3y ago
      It does feel like we keep going backwards for functionality while resource requirements keep increasing. Picasa had face recognition, basic editing, and a bunch of sorting features and ran on computers that had something like 1/50th the CPU performance. Meanwhile modern replacements like DigiKam, Lightroom, ON1, and so on are incredibly bloated with very slow UI response even on a very powerful desktop PC. Although Immich does at least work well, the webUI is extremely fast and loads images instantly.
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        which is odd, because nearly every modern cpu has some sort of hardware acceleration available for AI stuff... has the tech stack just become so convoluted that we're actually going backwards? I do with they had OSS'ed the code for at least the desktop app, but maybe there were licensing issues? or just no one cared.
      - Mashimo 3y ago
        > Meanwhile modern replacements like DigiKam, Lightroom, ON1, and so on are incredibly bloated with very slow UI response even on a very powerful desktop PC. Darktable and ON1 feel decent snappy on my ~8 year old Desktop PC. Though it was a looong time since I last tried Picasa.
hexadec 3y ago
This looks incredible with the local search and context awareness. Curious if there is a comparison to other tools like photoprism about the advantages of Immich
_ea1k 3y ago
What advantage does this have over nextcloud?
- jcul 3y ago
  I haven't used this, but it seems it has AI photo recognition stuff. So you can search for "fish" for example and it will show photos of fish. And apparently it has facial recognition, so you can find photos of a specific person by name. These are killer features of Google photos for me, so it is exciting to see them in a self hosted, open source offering. There is a demo linked on the GitHub page that I checked out: https://demo.immich.app/ https://demo.immich.app/
  - sn0n 3y ago
    Nextcloud has face recognition iirc as well.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      does nextcloud support livephotos from iOS?
    - jcul 3y ago
      Oh cool, thanks. I meant to add that in my comment; It's probably not far off a decade since I looked at nextcloud, so my impression is very out of date!
- Saris 3y ago
  Performance is a big one, nextcloud is really slow.
- rounakdatta 3y ago
  Nextcloud is built for generic files, so you'll not get all the "smart optimizations" for images. Immich is intelligent enough to serve you a decent enough compressed image at first, and load the full image in background while you start to stare at it. On the other hand, Nextcloud will show you a loading banner. Immich also does use CLIP to cluster similar faces and so on. Not only that, geotagging, camera details etc.
djbusby 3y ago
How do my photos get onto this system? I don't see it from the docs.
- Saris 3y ago
  In addition to the mobile app which works like google photos and backs up photos you take automatically, you can also: - Upload via the webUI - Import a folder of photos on the host (copies photos to the Immich directory) - Add a folder of photos on the host (leaves photos in place)
  - djbusby 3y ago
    I didn't see the PlayStore link from their site. I do find it when searching manually.
    - jrasm91 3y ago
      Added.
- rounakdatta 3y ago
  Consider using the Immich CLI (https://github.com/immich-app/CLI https://github.com/immich-app/CLI) for a bulk import. The UI might hang, not give you a reliable picture (pun intended) of which files succeeded and which files failed.
Saris 3y ago
I've been using this for a few weeks, it's quite nice. Automatically backs up my phone photos, and I also imported a huge folder of existing photos on my NAS.
andirk 3y ago
Real question: is this easier and more reliable than emailing to myself for the past 20 years?
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Or using Syncthing?
- jader201 3y ago
  I’ll give you reliable, but how is emailing photos to yourself for 20 years easy? I mean I guess sending emails is relatively easy, but doing that for every photo you want to keep — for 20 years — sounds like a ton of manual effort.
- darkwater 3y ago
  Wow, that sounds like a real PITA pattern for a photo backup system, at least for me and my mental model.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Emailing is a decent solution, but which may cost money, unless your phone is connected through WiFi. I have always failed to see the appeal of a cloud solution. Whenever I arrive at home, I immediately move all the new photos from my mobile phone to my computer. This costs nothing, except a few seconds of my time and it is perfectly secure. I prefer to not keep any personal information on a mobile phone, except the mandatory list of contacts.
pj_mukh 3y ago
Hate to be that guy. But one final feature that Google photos has: Auto share photos of a certain face to an album that is shared with a group. Group is notified when new photos are added. This is CLUTCH for new parents. That being said, this is incredible and I’m definitely moving over the first chance I get.
- altran1502 3y ago
  Hey man, maintainer of the project here. This is one of the feature we are working toward, after getting the Facial Recognition some more loves and fine tunning :)
  - pj_mukh 3y ago
    Awesome! Looking forward to it!
- vxNsr 3y ago
  didn't even know this was a thing, I'm on iOS but we have to keep adding photos to the shared album of our newborn.
jrussino 3y ago
I've been looking for something like this. My wife and I each have a separate Apple Photos library. I'd love it if we could have a combined backup solution. Could we keep using Photos and back up to this, or would it be better to ditch Photos and just switch over?
- wunderland 3y ago
  Apple Photos actually supports a shared library now: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248
  - ehPReth 3y ago
    I do believe they apply extra compression to images shared via this method sadly, but haven't had time to double check.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Shared albums also don't support e2ee.
pickingdinner 3y ago
Trying to get off dropbox. 1) Anyone try Backblaze for photo backups? Is it worth trying? 2) Why is immich photo and video only? 3) Why docker? I miss the days of just files and scripts on any host.
- Saris 3y ago
  1) It's storage with an S3 API, so should work fine, you just have to figure out how to manage and view the backups on your own. 2) It's a replacement for google photos. 3) Ease of use and flexibility, you can deploy a docker compose file easily on any host or distro without needing to deal with dependencies or OS specific glitches.
- sib 3y ago
  >> 1) Anyone try Backblaze for photo backups? Is it worth trying? Yes, happy customer for many years. Restored ~2GB of photos when a MacBook Pro motherboard completely died about 18 months ago.
  - sib 3y ago
    Sorry, of course that should be ~2TB (not GB)
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Does Backblaze charge per device? $350 a year for 5 devices is a tad expensive. That is why I moved to iDrive but the UX is not as nice.
- danparsonson 3y ago
  If you have your own server somewhere, Nextcloud is a very nice free self-hostable Dropbox replacement. To your third point, I scratched my head and looked suspiciously at Docker from a distance for years, but since I've started playing with it, I absolutely love it and would not go back. Every dependency that you need is wrapped up in a single image, so installing the application is as simple as pulling the image and booting up a container from it; no worries about conflicts with other services, broken or conflicting dependencies, or breaking something later on when you make other changes. Don't like the exact installation and want to make your own? Make or modify a dockerfile, and build a new image. Want to upgrade? Just destroy the container and create a new one with the updated version - all your data, config files, etc. are (or should be!) in separate volumes from the container itself so you lose nothing, and in fact you can easily experiment with different releases, or rollback if something goes wrong. For myself, I treat all my containers as ephemeral and always recreate them whenever I restart them - it costs nothing and I know that the system is easily reproducible. Speaking of volumes, backups are a breeze - all my Docker volumes are just subdirectories of /docker/volumes so all I have to do is back that up every night and I've got a complete copy that I can instantly restore (or clone!). It really is incredibly convenient.
wunderland 3y ago
Has anyone tried setting this up on a raspberry pi 4?
- vinnymac 3y ago
  If you search the github page for the project, many have reported using a raspberry pi. For example, here is an issue where a raspberry pi 4 is used. https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/611 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/611
- unexistential 3y ago
  I used it on a Pi 4 for a month or two. Everything else was fine but the pi was really starting to struggle running the machine learning container, especially when I imported a bunch of photos at once. I have it on a beefier x86 machine now and things have been smooth.
  - aembleton 3y ago
    I guess thats only an issue when you import photos though. Once they're indexed, it should run fine.
outcoldman 3y ago
I am pretty happy with Synology and Photo backup.
davidklemke 3y ago
I like the look of this. I'm currently using PhotoPrism[1] and PhotoSync[2] as a combo to get the same thing and whilst it works fine I've always thought a single app would be far better placed. Looks relatively straightforward to get running, pretty much inline with what I had to do in order to get PhotoPrism running in the first place. Only thing I couldn't see anything about was hardware acceleration, do leverage any of the Intel instructions (VAAPI) for transcoding? That's a paid feature on PhotoPrism and something that's sorely needed. CPU bound transcoding is terrible! Think I'll put this on the TODO list for the weekend! [1]https://www.photoprism.app/ https://www.photoprism.app/ [2]https://www.photosync-app.com/home https://www.photosync-app.com/home
- GauntletWizard 3y ago
  If you do, let me know how it goes. I've been working using photoprism, like it plenty, but would love a comparison. Getting rid of all of the Google dependencies in my life is... Ugly. I would really like to still trust Google. I just can't anymore.
- LeSaucy 3y ago
  PhotoSync is pretty nifty where you can auto sync while charging at a location (ie home)
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  PhotoSync does not have autobackup for iOS last time I tried. Did this change?
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    Nothing in iOS seems to have true autobackup because background apps don’t seem to reliably wake. What I find is that it works until the app is closed, like after an os update, and then you have to manually open the app before it will start going again. I have mine set to try to run whenever I plug in to charge, and it works pretty consistently until reboot, and from there I’m not consistent about remembering to open the app again.
ktm5j 3y ago
I really like Seafile for this functionality. I host my own server using podman to run their docker container and it works super well. Their app has the ability to back up any photos/videos taken on your phone, in addition to other things it can do. Highly recommend!
- JTon 3y ago
  Just curious, when people say selfhosted does it imply they control the hardware at their home? Or does buying a VM from an operator count as self hosting?
  - niels_bom 3y ago
    I would call both selfhosting.
  - gsich 3y ago
    It counts. My discriminator is the self- part. Server location is not relevant.
    - anderspitman 3y ago
      With the caveat that your VPS provider can access all your data should they choose to.
  - yonatan8070 3y ago
    Both. Selfhosting is a spectrum between renting a cheap VPS and running a small data center at home (see r/homelab for the latter)
  - ktm5j 3y ago
    I agree, both could be considered 'selfhosting'. But in my case I am running on hardware in my house!
adr1an 3y ago
I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)
- the_common_man 3y ago
  Can syncthing automatically upload photos?
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    It worked fine for me on Android to sync my camera folder, but to my knowledge it is not possible to use it for syncing photos on iOS.
- jszymborski 3y ago
  I love SyncThing and haven't even considered this as a use case! Thanks!
- alexdeloy 3y ago
  +1 for SyncThing. It (now?) works effortless on my phone and having your screenshots and snapshots automatically on your NAS and PC to process them there is fantastic. Didn't use the "rolling trashbin" feature yet but need to look into that
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Are you using SyncThing on iOS?
  - ASalazarMX 3y ago
    AFAIK on iOS there's only Möbious Sync, which works well enough considering the restrictions iOS/iPadOS impose. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216
okokwhatever 3y ago
Chinese, Turkish & Catalán. The marketing is awesome.
- altran1502 3y ago
  Haha, we only have people speaking those languages contribute to the readme at the moment. The app is translated to multiple languages though
uniformlyrandom 3y ago
Do you want to get pwned? Because this is how you get pwned.
- 0x0 3y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - propogandist 3y ago
    [dead]
robertwt7 3y ago
I'm using Synology Photos, have no complaints. Its really a good starter when decoupling from google photos, removing all subscription and taking control of my own data with expandable raid storage
- senectus1 3y ago
  dammit I really need to turn this on my fam devices. I've spent too much time setting up fun docker instances on it instead
- dmje 3y ago
  +1 to this. I actually use both - Google photos for utility / sharing and Synology Photos for backup. It's good, easy to setup on both my device and my wife's.
- muhblah 3y ago
  +1 for the Synology eco-system
andy_ppp 3y ago
Oh I would love to be able to get rid of iCloud and host my own version but I'm guessing the integration for this is not possible on iOS?
- usbakimbo 3y ago
  There's an iPhone app
crossroadsguy 3y ago
> Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos! You shook not have only one backup ever. But this project says this in the context of not being production ready. So at least I won’t play with it with my personal photos and videos.
- capableweb 3y ago
  What project/service advises you to have only one way to store you photos and videos, so you'd consider it production ready?
unexistential 3y ago
I LOVE Immich. Been using it for a few months now, first on a Raspberry Pi 4 and then an old x86 box. Before Immich I had tried for a while to use Photoprism with Syncthing to sync photos from my phone, but the transition to that from Google Photos was a frustrating one. Immich on the other hand expressly tries to be a Google Photos replacement, and while I initially thought that was an audacious goal for a fresh open source project to have, I have been pleasantly surprised by how feature-rich it has become in a short amount of time. I know the developer makes it very clear that it's not stable yet, so I'm making sure I back up everything from my server at regular intervals. But I've found it to be more and more stable with new releases, so hopefully a first stable release is not far away.
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  Can I ask what specifically you like about it over Photprism? Just the sync? I've also been questing for a Google Photos replacement, and right now Nextcloud functions admirably for auto-sync but like garbage for anything past that like viewing albums afterwards. I've had an instance of Photoprism up for a while and was debating bringing it into "production" on my homelab.
  - unexistential 3y ago
    The biggest one was that Photoprism doesn't have a mobile app. It seems a lot of people use PhotoSync (a third party app) to back up to a PhotoPrism instance, but I didn't even want to give it a shot considering they don't offer the premium features on Android. Immich on the other hand has apps that are developed together with the server and web UI, so everything is well-integrated.
walrus01 3y ago
with termux on android and an openvpn tunnel to my own stuff, it's quite fast and effective to use rsync to mirror the entire contents of the DCIM folder and other folders where images are stored. I just have to remember to run the backup job periodically, which I could almost certainly automate if I really put more time into it. when I'm on the same LAN as my backup destination and on a 802.11ac 2x2 80 MHz channel AP, it's shockingly fast, whatever is the max real world speed of my wireless connection, somewhere around 40-50MB per second to do the sync.
- Tommstein 3y ago
  Try FolderSync on Android, I have it set up to automatically sync directories to my computer via SFTP every few hours when it's on my home network.
vkdelta 3y ago
for whatever reason, I cannot login to the demo website with the credentials listed. Is it for just single user at a time? https://demo.immich.app/auth/login https://demo.immich.app/auth/login
- YPPH 3y ago
  Can't login either. Even after taking into account Hanlon's razor, I'd speculate someone has maliciously changed the password after logging in. Demo instances need to have really short reset periods - minutes or so, or alternatively disable password changes.
- glaucon 3y ago
  Failing for me too on both Firefox and Chrome.
anotherevan 3y ago
People have mentioned SyncThing and Seafile as straight backup options. Another option one could consider is FolderSync[1]. It has a number of cloud back-ends it can interface with, but I use it to periodically SFTP to my home server to backup several areas in my phone, including photos, camera and app backups. Two niceties for me it has: * Two-way sync. I'll often clean up my camera roll on my PC, and that syncs back to the phone. * Only attempts to connect to me home server if it is on my home wi-fi. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.android.foldersync.lite https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.andro...
- zeagle 3y ago
  I would also vote for FolderSync. I run seafile and nextcloud for other purposes, but have settled using FolderSync for phone --> NAS nightly backups and it is slick. I've been using Photoview to view backed up photos locally.
- progman32 3y ago
  Putting my hat in this ring, too. I do a write-only sync of pictures from my phone to my NAS (upload new files and leave them on the phone - I prefer one way sync), and a mailbox-style sync of Signal backups (Signal can be configured to drop a backup file into a specified folder; I've configured FolderSync to upload whatever it finds there weekly and delete the backup locally). Finally, I do a two-way sync of my personal notes text file. I don't have a good situation figured out for browsing unsorted uploaded photos, and I find that this is fine for my usage. I put a curated set of personal albums on a password protected personal site for friends and family. I enjoy the role of family chronicler. My NAS is backed up via daily snapshot to a remote location. YMMV!
- firewolf34 3y ago
  Finally. I thought I was crazy having to read through so many comments on here before someone mentioned just a simple SFTP to a backup server. FolderSync is the way to go.
vxNsr 3y ago
well that's dumb, someone changed the demo username/password
TimLeland 3y ago
I wish Google Photos UI was better but it still seems to be the best solution. Hosting something like this seems like it would cost more time/money/frustration than its worth. On the other hand, I always think its awesome to see self hosted solutions! It helps to create competition.
- altano 3y ago
  Google Photos isn't a lossless backup
  - cpill 3y ago
    Really?!
    - altano 3y ago
      Sorry, sounds like my information is out of date as of 2021.
  - barkerja 3y ago
    https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?hl=en&ref_topic=6156061&sjid=7287807973876276258-NA# https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?hl=en&ref_t... According to this support article, you can store original quality. Assuming that is what you meant by "lossless".
    - altano 3y ago
      Oh, interesting. It looks like they released that in 2021 if my googling is right. Cool.
  - irjustin 3y ago
    It is if you pay which makes sense but it's true it's not obvious
    - entropy47 3y ago
blahyawnblah 3y ago
I set up a nextcloud instance to do the same thing. Works pretty well.
- Covalent 3y ago
  The nextcloud gallery performance... leaves something to be desired.
perryizgr8 3y ago
I've tried Immich and it is surprisingly polished. Compared to photoprism it is so much better just because of the nice mobile app. However I have held off on moving to it because it wants to assume control of all media and store them again. So I would be using up 2x the space required.
crobertsbmw 3y ago
The demo credentials don’t seem to work.
LennyHenrysNuts 3y ago
I use Nextcloud, seems to work fine. Does images, files, calendars and contacts.
- mordae 3y ago
  Nextcloud is super slow and inefficient on many levels. After running it professionally for several years I try yo stay as far away as possible.
- Stephen304 3y ago
  I also use nextcloud, but I've been planning on trying out immich. I used to use google photos and the migration to nextcloud left a lot to be desired. There doesn't seem to be a way to "free up space" the same way google photos could automatically delete already backed-up photos, so i have to do that manually periodically. But crucially the scrolling / thumbnail performance of the nextcloud photos timeline is terrible even with an SSD cache in my synology as well as running NC previously on an overpowered rack mount server, of course using redis with NC and all the usual optimization tips. Thumbnails take a few seconds to load making it near impossible to track down photos from more than 6 months ago. The thing that stood out to me about immich was how when I first saw a show-off post on /r/selfhosted, it included a video showing how instant the thumbnails loaded as well as some background on how they were focusing on optimizing the scrolling performance and ensuring blurred thumbnails would be available asap when scrolling. I was impressed at how it stacked up to the experience of using google photos.
artdigital 3y ago
I use an app called PhotoSync on iOS and use that to sync my stuff to whatever backup solution I use. Currently that’s photoprism but it can do all kinds of stuff like WebDAV, file system, Dropbox etc Highly recommend that app
- leokennis 3y ago
  Echo this. 100% recommendation. The app does what is says it does, and does so reliably.
- mordae 3y ago
  I hate the way it's configured, but it gets the job done. It would be nice to be able to tell it to stay away from Download.
- darknavi 3y ago
  +1 It's so simple but also extensive. AND the "pro" version (what ever IAP they have) supports Apple Family Sharing so anyone in the family can use it.
darkwater 3y ago
Any Photoprism user out there that tried this already? How does it compare, UI and updating-wise? I'm a Photprism donor but seems that development is stalling a bit lately (just a new release in over 6 months and with not so big changes, although I still have to update to be honest) EDIT: after a quick assessment in the doc pages/features, this seems to... blow Photoprism out of the water?
the100rabh 3y ago
[dead]
Fiahil 3y ago
Amazing ! I have been looking for a solution like this for a very long time I look forward to trying it out !
matthiasb 3y ago
The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS, users are sharing computing power and each users are emitting less CO2. https://engineering.teads.com/sustainability/carbon-footprint-estimator-for-aws-instances/?estimation=true&instance_id=2276&region_id=2232&compute_hours=8760#calculator https://engineering.teads.com/sustainability/carbon-footprin...
- detuur 3y ago
  Honestly, that a simple file sync service needs that kind of specs is bewildering to me.
  - Mashimo 3y ago
    It's not a simple file sync service. It has object and face detection. Metadata indexing / searching and multi user support.
    - mordae 3y ago
      Multiuser support is free, face detection is cheap enough embedded camera chips do it, metadata indexing is cheap with any recent DB engine, search is cheap with them as well. The only computationally expensive thing here is face matching. Photoprism recommends two cores and 3G RAM and claims to be able to run on a NAS.
      - Mashimo 3y ago
        From other comments in this thread it seems you can run immich on a raspberry pi. Any who, I don't consider it a simple sync service.
      - pathartl 3y ago
FatherPaulStone 3y ago
Honestly, I know it's not cool, but OneDrive is my go to here. Syncs Photos to my server, which then copies them to a local (non cloud syncing) folder, which is then indexed with Picasa. Works a treat and requires zero intervention, although is based on a) MS software and b) deprecated Google software, so may not work forever.
- mxuribe 3y ago
  I actually don't mind OneDrive - its decent enough, and i already pay a small monthly family subscription (because partner and offspring prefer MS Office - bleh). But, the hard block is that all of my daily driver machines are linux, and there is no native, MS-supported onedrive client for linux. (Yes, i know there are a couple of popular onedrive clients, but no thanks.) So, you know what i did a few years ago? I setup Nextcloud...then tested things out, and it worked great! So, now i have no desire to ever use onedrive on linux, thanks to NextCloud! But, i don't expect others to follow me along.
the_common_man 3y ago
Great app. I use with cloudron for a while now.
thepihut 3y ago
The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos! This is a bad thing for the average Joe.
- poisonborz 3y ago
  Even average Joe should have a backup. They also have a read only mode.
smusamashah 3y ago
On the github page there is headline, disclaimer, documentation, feature list etc. but the page never once describes what the product is and does in few lines. Please add a description heading on top too. I didn't understand what you mean by self hosting on phone. Does it all run on your phone making your phone the main backup server? Or do you mean there is an app which you run and connect to a self hosted backup server?
8fingerlouie 3y ago
I'm aparently boring. My "backup routine" consists of storing photos in iCloud, which is then syncronized "real time" to a local Mac Mini. From the Mac Mini i then run scheduled backups to a local external harddrive, as well as a local Raspberry Pi running Minio, and nightly to OneDrive. The external harddrive backup uses Timemachine, the raspberry pi backup uses Kopia, and OneDrive is done with Arq. Furthermore, i make yearly archive discs. Identical copies on M-disc Blu-Ray media, stored in geographically different locations. Each disc contains the photos that have changed in the previous 12 months, and no encryption/archiving is used. Alongside the M-disc media i keep a couple of external harddrives that contains the entire photo library. These are checked (with badblocks, non-destructive surface scan) yearly, updated and rotated when storing the new M-disc media.
- icemelt8 3y ago
  but WHY? why do you go to such lengths?
  - drsnow 3y ago
    You will find, in time, that nobody has an actual answer to this. It's purely nerd-lust for not doing things the simple way
    - 8fingerlouie 3y ago
      My photo library contains a large part of the moments of my life worth remembering, from being a kid, teenager, young adult, meeting my wife, our kids , pets, and everything between. I would seriously hate to lose it because somebody knocks over a can of soda. There are two major threats to my photo library. One is loss of the cloud data and/or loss of access to it (and/or malware, natural disasters, etc), which is why i keep data locally as well. The other is loss of data locally, anything from a failed piece of equipment to a house fire. The reason why i make a local backup of the synchronized cloud data is in case malware decides to encrypt/delete all my photos, in which case iCloud will happily synchronize all the changes to all devices, effectively deleting all good copies. So with a local backup of the data i've mitigated the first threat, loss of cloud data and/or access to it, but i'm still left with the threat of losing data at home, which is why i also backup to a different cloud provider, which again comes with a threat of losing access, and this is where the Blu-Ray archive comes in. Because burning Blu-Ray discs is time consuming, i rely on my "day to day" 3-2-1 backup to keep data safe, but ultimately the Blu-Ray discs safeguards against loss of cloud data and loss of local data (identical copies stored in different locations), so they're my last ditch defense of disaster recovery.
amsterdorn 3y ago
Trying to break down the rough cost to do this via a SaaS, someone correct me if I'm wrong here: - 4 cores/6GB RAM is $40/mo on DigitalOcean, and that's with only 160GB storage. Lowest AWS S3 tier is $0.023/GB, so assuming 1-2TB of photos that's $30-40 for additional storage. - The non-named company's 2TB subscription is $100/mo, translating to savings of only ~$20. - Building a server would be probably ~$250, electricity costs per month could vary greatly but maybe $30-50?. So would pay off after ~3 years.
- rounakdatta 3y ago
  You're correct, but consider these kind of solutions to be more of a hobbyist-inclined. Be prepared to continue investing into maintenance occasionally (and somewhat erratically, because Immich does bring in breaking changes). Another thing to keep in mind is that - the server you get for $250 would also allow you to deploy many other apps (I have a similar spec, and deploy ~20 apps). So, net-net if the setup brings you happiness and ROI (in any form at all), it is worth investing!
  - amsterdorn 3y ago
    All true! Been considering a media server for some time now, I'll probably end up doing this. Curious though: any other apps you self-host that you couldn't live without?
- drsnow 3y ago
  There is no sane person on earth doing this kind of thing to save money. That's entirely missing the point
  - amsterdorn 3y ago
    Subscription with 5TB storage = $250/yr. 10TB = $600/yr. I can buy a 4TB HDD for ~$80. Assuming I need more storage, this saves money.
agilob 3y ago
So, it's similar to NextCloud, but only for multimedia?
jve 3y ago
Can someone give me recommendation? I'm using Samsung Galaxy phone, photos auto sync to nextcloud... but I DO NOT WANT EVERY SINGLE PHOTO TO BE SYNCED. I'd rather tap "favorite" that would somehow put that photo in an album/path that gets synced/backed-up. Does anyone have a solution? That is, I want a single tap on photo that I consider worth backing up. Or it can work other way around - single tap to exclude from sync.
- drsnow 3y ago
  Can't you set your client to sync a specific folder and simply relocate the things you want synced to said folder?
  - jve 3y ago
    I can - moving pics in default gallery app is organizing, takes 3 clicks. Organizing photos is something I am NOT capable of doing consistently or doing at all (thats why I love photoprism). But I do not want every photo land there. Pics that I need to take temporary when I just take a photo of something to lookup one time (wiring colors before disconnecting, a photo I want to show single time for my wife etc.) Ideally there would be app that would take whatever is marked as favorite (dunno, maybe metadata stores that info) and move those pics. OR someone can just recommend some photo app which with a single click moves photo to folder X :)
muxator 3y ago
> Prompt engineering is kind of like alchemy. There's no clear way to predict what will work best. It's all about experimenting I know this sentence is true for prompt engineering, but please help me with my language barrier. Is the meaning of "engineering" in this context more akin to "hammering out"? Does English have a specific ambiguity here? In my language "to engineer" means a specific technical activity with strong scientific roots, and a regulated profession. You cannot legally call yourself an engineer unless you jave a specific university degree and have a specific certification. Nothing of what is described in this sentence would ever have anything to do with "engineering".
parski 3y ago
I hope I don't come across as entitled or an asshole, but Docker means I'm not getting near it. Would love to see a bare host installation option for us BSD folks so I can stick it in a jail. Looks real good though! I'll be checking in now and then to see if that happens.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  Docker is way too pervasive. It’s a great option, but it shouldn’t be the only option.
  - tiagod 3y ago
    Well, a Docker file is just a list of commands. You're free to look at it and repeat them manually, or simply copy them to a script.
- generallee5686 3y ago
  I'm guessing they don't because the application requires 8 services to run... I really love the idea of this project but I feel like it is grossly over engineered.
- screamingninja 3y ago
  What specifically do you dislike about Docker? Have you considered Podman?
ori_prior 3y ago
For photo and video backups, I'm using auto-upload in the Nextcloud Android app together with my own Nextcloud instance. There are various Nextcloud apps like memories where you can get additional functionality for those photos that were synced over. What I'm still desperately looking for is proper self-hosted full-phone backups for Android phones.
jdalgetty 3y ago
Very nice google photos clone!
escape-big-tech 3y ago
I've actually been looking for a good self hosted solution for pictures, that allows me to automatically upload pictures from my phones (I use both ios and android). I've been using nextcloud photos but honestly the experience of the photos app for nextcloud has always been bad for me. I've been looking at immich and photoprism; how do the two compare, what are the advantages of immich over photoprism, and vice versa?
- darknavi 3y ago
  If you are on iOS, PhotoSync works great. It's just a backup app but supports a ton of different endpoints (I use sftp), scheduling, and most importantly to me custom naming. iOS photo names are dogshit and renaming them to be time-stamped it amazing.
m3nu 3y ago
Immich is making fast progress and is a great alternative to PhotoPrism for pictures, since the UI is more similar to Google Photos. Just the memory usage is still a bit high. At https://pikapods.com https://pikapods.com, we revenue share with the author (Alex) and provide hosting for less technical users. So hoping to see it grow and improve further.
kouru225 3y ago
I use photoprism, but tbh photoprism rarely correctly identifies faces and labels content. I can’t tell if it’s just a limitation of the algorithm or if I’m running into a limitation of the database, because photoprism also has this issue where it automatically runs MySQL, but it doesn’t recommend using MySQL. So you have to make your own MariaDB, but then migrating from MySQL to MariaDB is this whole process I don’t wanna go through.

757 points by barbazoo 3y ago

This looks like something that I might use, but > Expect bugs and breaking changes. I get it's the pretty normal to go through fixing bugs, but for a backup solution the core of it should be stable or I would not use it

gobip 3y ago
Try it. Adopt it. :) Just a few weeks ago, facial recognition was added and that was it for me. I finally made the switch from Google Photos and iCloud to immich. It's your self-hosted google photos alternative, with image recognition, a map, sharing folders publicly, or with other users on your server. Some parts will be buggy though, like face detection, or memories. But the whole "backup & sync" part is very reliable, I've never had any issues.
- vasac 3y ago
  > Some parts will be buggy though, like face detection, or memories. Frankly, I have had issues with Google Photos already. For me, it simply stopped recognizing faces since last October. I tried disabling and then enabling face recognition multiple times, but to no avail. It starts recognition from scratch, but only for photos before October. Writing to the support didn't help (although I didn't expect it to anyway), so alternatives like this one are becoming more and more tempting. I'm already self-hosting a bunch of things, but facial recognition (when it was working) was much better in Google Photos and a major reason why I'm paying for additional storage.
- cvwright 3y ago
  I’m working on building something similar. From what I can tell, Immich, Ente, and PhotoPrism are the best of the batch when it comes to open source photo storage and management. They are all good, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Personally, I want: E2E encryption, on-device face recognition, and the ability to self-host as well as a paid option for people who don’t want to manage their own server. The existing options each hit about 90% of that, but it’s a different 90% for each one.
  - TkTech 3y ago
    Photoprism had the critical flaw of being single user last time I tried it, making it neat but a complete non starter for someone with a family larger than 1.
    - elesiuta 3y ago
      The same goes for me and I imagine many more. This is literally the only thing holding it back from being the perfect Google Photos replacement for families with someone who self-hosts.
    - anderspitman 3y ago
      Is there anyone in your family that you really want to have access to all your photos? Not even referring to just NSFW stuff. If your answer is "as the admin I'm the only one that can access everything" then consider the question from your family's POV. Not trying to discount your point only pointing out that single user and e2ee implementations have some value.
      - Vaslo 3y ago
        You make a good point and you are right, but for me the concern is that the same account can break a lot of stuff. I agree, if I put a photo out there, I don’t care who sees it if I’ve given them the password. But I just worry about people deleting things, mucking up the database, etc.
        anderspitman 3y ago
        That's fair. Personally I'd like to see (and am working on) more solutions that make it realistic for everyone to run their own single user instances. Selfhosting shouldn't be any more difficult less secure than running an app on your phone.
        Vaslo 3y ago
        Interesting philosophy on this, hadn’t thought about it this way before.
vineyardmike 3y ago
Considering it also says “still under active development. Don’t use this yet for backups” I think it’s pretty fair. It’s explicitly saying it’s not a backup solution.
- charles_f 3y ago
  It does, it's even in the title of this post..

netsharc 3y ago

I guess the Github description/HN title is incomplete, it's curious that it's saying it's a backup solution, but what is visible is an web-based photo browser... yeah yeah I get it, just like Google Photos (i.e. App-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named according to the docs[1]), the web viewer is part of the package... I guess it needs a better description, IMO a project with several big components (web, mobile, backend) sells itself short being named just "backup solution". [1] https://immich.app/docs/overview/introduction https://immich.app/docs/overview/introduction

Saris 3y ago
It is a backup solution, the mobile app automatically backs up photos as you take them.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
  Sure, that is part of it. But it seems to offer a bit more than pure backup, which you could get with a number of services.
altran1502 3y ago
Hey man, project's maintainer here. Thank you for the well thoughts. Naming is hard as it is :P. What would be a nice phase to describe the project?
- smusamashah 3y ago
  Add a 2 3 line description right after your heading before Disclaimer and all other stuff that what this project actually is. What does self hosting and mobile phone mean here (I don't know if it makes your phone a backup server)
- aembleton 3y ago
  Photo Management

cozzyd 3y ago

4+ GB of ram required?

Saris 3y ago
Due to machine learning / face recognition.
- gsich 3y ago
  Picasa could do that too 2014, single threaded. (And is probably still better)
  - Saris 3y ago
    It does feel like we keep going backwards for functionality while resource requirements keep increasing. Picasa had face recognition, basic editing, and a bunch of sorting features and ran on computers that had something like 1/50th the CPU performance. Meanwhile modern replacements like DigiKam, Lightroom, ON1, and so on are incredibly bloated with very slow UI response even on a very powerful desktop PC. Although Immich does at least work well, the webUI is extremely fast and loads images instantly.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      which is odd, because nearly every modern cpu has some sort of hardware acceleration available for AI stuff... has the tech stack just become so convoluted that we're actually going backwards? I do with they had OSS'ed the code for at least the desktop app, but maybe there were licensing issues? or just no one cared.
    - Mashimo 3y ago
      > Meanwhile modern replacements like DigiKam, Lightroom, ON1, and so on are incredibly bloated with very slow UI response even on a very powerful desktop PC. Darktable and ON1 feel decent snappy on my ~8 year old Desktop PC. Though it was a looong time since I last tried Picasa.

hexadec 3y ago

This looks incredible with the local search and context awareness. Curious if there is a comparison to other tools like photoprism about the advantages of Immich

_ea1k 3y ago

What advantage does this have over nextcloud?

jcul 3y ago
I haven't used this, but it seems it has AI photo recognition stuff. So you can search for "fish" for example and it will show photos of fish. And apparently it has facial recognition, so you can find photos of a specific person by name. These are killer features of Google photos for me, so it is exciting to see them in a self hosted, open source offering. There is a demo linked on the GitHub page that I checked out: https://demo.immich.app/ https://demo.immich.app/
- sn0n 3y ago
  Nextcloud has face recognition iirc as well.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    does nextcloud support livephotos from iOS?
  - jcul 3y ago
    Oh cool, thanks. I meant to add that in my comment; It's probably not far off a decade since I looked at nextcloud, so my impression is very out of date!
Saris 3y ago
Performance is a big one, nextcloud is really slow.
rounakdatta 3y ago
Nextcloud is built for generic files, so you'll not get all the "smart optimizations" for images. Immich is intelligent enough to serve you a decent enough compressed image at first, and load the full image in background while you start to stare at it. On the other hand, Nextcloud will show you a loading banner. Immich also does use CLIP to cluster similar faces and so on. Not only that, geotagging, camera details etc.

djbusby 3y ago

How do my photos get onto this system? I don't see it from the docs.

Saris 3y ago
In addition to the mobile app which works like google photos and backs up photos you take automatically, you can also: - Upload via the webUI - Import a folder of photos on the host (copies photos to the Immich directory) - Add a folder of photos on the host (leaves photos in place)
- djbusby 3y ago
  I didn't see the PlayStore link from their site. I do find it when searching manually.
  - jrasm91 3y ago
    Added.
rounakdatta 3y ago
Consider using the Immich CLI (https://github.com/immich-app/CLI https://github.com/immich-app/CLI) for a bulk import. The UI might hang, not give you a reliable picture (pun intended) of which files succeeded and which files failed.

Saris 3y ago

I've been using this for a few weeks, it's quite nice. Automatically backs up my phone photos, and I also imported a huge folder of existing photos on my NAS.

andirk 3y ago

Real question: is this easier and more reliable than emailing to myself for the past 20 years?

kwhitefoot 3y ago
Or using Syncthing?
jader201 3y ago
I’ll give you reliable, but how is emailing photos to yourself for 20 years easy? I mean I guess sending emails is relatively easy, but doing that for every photo you want to keep — for 20 years — sounds like a ton of manual effort.
darkwater 3y ago
Wow, that sounds like a real PITA pattern for a photo backup system, at least for me and my mental model.
adrian_b 3y ago
Emailing is a decent solution, but which may cost money, unless your phone is connected through WiFi. I have always failed to see the appeal of a cloud solution. Whenever I arrive at home, I immediately move all the new photos from my mobile phone to my computer. This costs nothing, except a few seconds of my time and it is perfectly secure. I prefer to not keep any personal information on a mobile phone, except the mandatory list of contacts.

pj_mukh 3y ago

Hate to be that guy. But one final feature that Google photos has: Auto share photos of a certain face to an album that is shared with a group. Group is notified when new photos are added. This is CLUTCH for new parents. That being said, this is incredible and I’m definitely moving over the first chance I get.

altran1502 3y ago
Hey man, maintainer of the project here. This is one of the feature we are working toward, after getting the Facial Recognition some more loves and fine tunning :)
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  Awesome! Looking forward to it!
vxNsr 3y ago
didn't even know this was a thing, I'm on iOS but we have to keep adding photos to the shared album of our newborn.

jrussino 3y ago

I've been looking for something like this. My wife and I each have a separate Apple Photos library. I'd love it if we could have a combined backup solution. Could we keep using Photos and back up to this, or would it be better to ditch Photos and just switch over?

wunderland 3y ago
Apple Photos actually supports a shared library now: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213248
- ehPReth 3y ago
  I do believe they apply extra compression to images shared via this method sadly, but haven't had time to double check.
- sneak 3y ago
  Shared albums also don't support e2ee.

pickingdinner 3y ago

Trying to get off dropbox. 1) Anyone try Backblaze for photo backups? Is it worth trying? 2) Why is immich photo and video only? 3) Why docker? I miss the days of just files and scripts on any host.

Saris 3y ago
1) It's storage with an S3 API, so should work fine, you just have to figure out how to manage and view the backups on your own. 2) It's a replacement for google photos. 3) Ease of use and flexibility, you can deploy a docker compose file easily on any host or distro without needing to deal with dependencies or OS specific glitches.
sib 3y ago
>> 1) Anyone try Backblaze for photo backups? Is it worth trying? Yes, happy customer for many years. Restored ~2GB of photos when a MacBook Pro motherboard completely died about 18 months ago.
- sib 3y ago
  Sorry, of course that should be ~2TB (not GB)
quickthrower2 3y ago
Does Backblaze charge per device? $350 a year for 5 devices is a tad expensive. That is why I moved to iDrive but the UX is not as nice.
danparsonson 3y ago
If you have your own server somewhere, Nextcloud is a very nice free self-hostable Dropbox replacement. To your third point, I scratched my head and looked suspiciously at Docker from a distance for years, but since I've started playing with it, I absolutely love it and would not go back. Every dependency that you need is wrapped up in a single image, so installing the application is as simple as pulling the image and booting up a container from it; no worries about conflicts with other services, broken or conflicting dependencies, or breaking something later on when you make other changes. Don't like the exact installation and want to make your own? Make or modify a dockerfile, and build a new image. Want to upgrade? Just destroy the container and create a new one with the updated version - all your data, config files, etc. are (or should be!) in separate volumes from the container itself so you lose nothing, and in fact you can easily experiment with different releases, or rollback if something goes wrong. For myself, I treat all my containers as ephemeral and always recreate them whenever I restart them - it costs nothing and I know that the system is easily reproducible. Speaking of volumes, backups are a breeze - all my Docker volumes are just subdirectories of /docker/volumes so all I have to do is back that up every night and I've got a complete copy that I can instantly restore (or clone!). It really is incredibly convenient.

wunderland 3y ago

Has anyone tried setting this up on a raspberry pi 4?

vinnymac 3y ago
If you search the github page for the project, many have reported using a raspberry pi. For example, here is an issue where a raspberry pi 4 is used. https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/611 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/611
unexistential 3y ago
I used it on a Pi 4 for a month or two. Everything else was fine but the pi was really starting to struggle running the machine learning container, especially when I imported a bunch of photos at once. I have it on a beefier x86 machine now and things have been smooth.
- aembleton 3y ago
  I guess thats only an issue when you import photos though. Once they're indexed, it should run fine.

outcoldman 3y ago

I am pretty happy with Synology and Photo backup.

davidklemke 3y ago

I like the look of this. I'm currently using PhotoPrism[1] and PhotoSync[2] as a combo to get the same thing and whilst it works fine I've always thought a single app would be far better placed. Looks relatively straightforward to get running, pretty much inline with what I had to do in order to get PhotoPrism running in the first place. Only thing I couldn't see anything about was hardware acceleration, do leverage any of the Intel instructions (VAAPI) for transcoding? That's a paid feature on PhotoPrism and something that's sorely needed. CPU bound transcoding is terrible! Think I'll put this on the TODO list for the weekend! [1]https://www.photoprism.app/ https://www.photoprism.app/ [2]https://www.photosync-app.com/home https://www.photosync-app.com/home

GauntletWizard 3y ago
If you do, let me know how it goes. I've been working using photoprism, like it plenty, but would love a comparison. Getting rid of all of the Google dependencies in my life is... Ugly. I would really like to still trust Google. I just can't anymore.
LeSaucy 3y ago
PhotoSync is pretty nifty where you can auto sync while charging at a location (ie home)
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
PhotoSync does not have autobackup for iOS last time I tried. Did this change?
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  Nothing in iOS seems to have true autobackup because background apps don’t seem to reliably wake. What I find is that it works until the app is closed, like after an os update, and then you have to manually open the app before it will start going again. I have mine set to try to run whenever I plug in to charge, and it works pretty consistently until reboot, and from there I’m not consistent about remembering to open the app again.

ktm5j 3y ago

I really like Seafile for this functionality. I host my own server using podman to run their docker container and it works super well. Their app has the ability to back up any photos/videos taken on your phone, in addition to other things it can do. Highly recommend!

JTon 3y ago
Just curious, when people say selfhosted does it imply they control the hardware at their home? Or does buying a VM from an operator count as self hosting?
- niels_bom 3y ago
  I would call both selfhosting.
- gsich 3y ago
  It counts. My discriminator is the self- part. Server location is not relevant.
  - anderspitman 3y ago
    With the caveat that your VPS provider can access all your data should they choose to.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  Both. Selfhosting is a spectrum between renting a cheap VPS and running a small data center at home (see r/homelab for the latter)
- ktm5j 3y ago
  I agree, both could be considered 'selfhosting'. But in my case I am running on hardware in my house!

adr1an 3y ago

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

the_common_man 3y ago
Can syncthing automatically upload photos?
- newaccount74 3y ago
  It worked fine for me on Android to sync my camera folder, but to my knowledge it is not possible to use it for syncing photos on iOS.
jszymborski 3y ago
I love SyncThing and haven't even considered this as a use case! Thanks!
alexdeloy 3y ago
+1 for SyncThing. It (now?) works effortless on my phone and having your screenshots and snapshots automatically on your NAS and PC to process them there is fantastic. Didn't use the "rolling trashbin" feature yet but need to look into that
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Are you using SyncThing on iOS?
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  AFAIK on iOS there's only Möbious Sync, which works well enough considering the restrictions iOS/iPadOS impose. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216

okokwhatever 3y ago

Chinese, Turkish & Catalán. The marketing is awesome.

altran1502 3y ago
Haha, we only have people speaking those languages contribute to the readme at the moment. The app is translated to multiple languages though

uniformlyrandom 3y ago

Do you want to get pwned? Because this is how you get pwned.

0x0 3y ago
Care to elaborate?
- propogandist 3y ago
  [dead]

robertwt7 3y ago

I'm using Synology Photos, have no complaints. Its really a good starter when decoupling from google photos, removing all subscription and taking control of my own data with expandable raid storage

senectus1 3y ago
dammit I really need to turn this on my fam devices. I've spent too much time setting up fun docker instances on it instead
dmje 3y ago
+1 to this. I actually use both - Google photos for utility / sharing and Synology Photos for backup. It's good, easy to setup on both my device and my wife's.
muhblah 3y ago
+1 for the Synology eco-system

andy_ppp 3y ago

Oh I would love to be able to get rid of iCloud and host my own version but I'm guessing the integration for this is not possible on iOS?

usbakimbo 3y ago
There's an iPhone app

crossroadsguy 3y ago

> Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos! You shook not have only one backup ever. But this project says this in the context of not being production ready. So at least I won’t play with it with my personal photos and videos.

capableweb 3y ago
What project/service advises you to have only one way to store you photos and videos, so you'd consider it production ready?

unexistential 3y ago

I LOVE Immich. Been using it for a few months now, first on a Raspberry Pi 4 and then an old x86 box. Before Immich I had tried for a while to use Photoprism with Syncthing to sync photos from my phone, but the transition to that from Google Photos was a frustrating one. Immich on the other hand expressly tries to be a Google Photos replacement, and while I initially thought that was an audacious goal for a fresh open source project to have, I have been pleasantly surprised by how feature-rich it has become in a short amount of time. I know the developer makes it very clear that it's not stable yet, so I'm making sure I back up everything from my server at regular intervals. But I've found it to be more and more stable with new releases, so hopefully a first stable release is not far away.

dabluecaboose 3y ago
Can I ask what specifically you like about it over Photprism? Just the sync? I've also been questing for a Google Photos replacement, and right now Nextcloud functions admirably for auto-sync but like garbage for anything past that like viewing albums afterwards. I've had an instance of Photoprism up for a while and was debating bringing it into "production" on my homelab.
- unexistential 3y ago
  The biggest one was that Photoprism doesn't have a mobile app. It seems a lot of people use PhotoSync (a third party app) to back up to a PhotoPrism instance, but I didn't even want to give it a shot considering they don't offer the premium features on Android. Immich on the other hand has apps that are developed together with the server and web UI, so everything is well-integrated.

walrus01 3y ago

with termux on android and an openvpn tunnel to my own stuff, it's quite fast and effective to use rsync to mirror the entire contents of the DCIM folder and other folders where images are stored. I just have to remember to run the backup job periodically, which I could almost certainly automate if I really put more time into it. when I'm on the same LAN as my backup destination and on a 802.11ac 2x2 80 MHz channel AP, it's shockingly fast, whatever is the max real world speed of my wireless connection, somewhere around 40-50MB per second to do the sync.

Tommstein 3y ago
Try FolderSync on Android, I have it set up to automatically sync directories to my computer via SFTP every few hours when it's on my home network.

vkdelta 3y ago

for whatever reason, I cannot login to the demo website with the credentials listed. Is it for just single user at a time? https://demo.immich.app/auth/login https://demo.immich.app/auth/login

YPPH 3y ago
Can't login either. Even after taking into account Hanlon's razor, I'd speculate someone has maliciously changed the password after logging in. Demo instances need to have really short reset periods - minutes or so, or alternatively disable password changes.
glaucon 3y ago
Failing for me too on both Firefox and Chrome.

anotherevan 3y ago

People have mentioned SyncThing and Seafile as straight backup options. Another option one could consider is FolderSync[1]. It has a number of cloud back-ends it can interface with, but I use it to periodically SFTP to my home server to backup several areas in my phone, including photos, camera and app backups. Two niceties for me it has: * Two-way sync. I'll often clean up my camera roll on my PC, and that syncs back to the phone. * Only attempts to connect to me home server if it is on my home wi-fi. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.android.foldersync.lite https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.andro...

zeagle 3y ago
I would also vote for FolderSync. I run seafile and nextcloud for other purposes, but have settled using FolderSync for phone --> NAS nightly backups and it is slick. I've been using Photoview to view backed up photos locally.
progman32 3y ago
Putting my hat in this ring, too. I do a write-only sync of pictures from my phone to my NAS (upload new files and leave them on the phone - I prefer one way sync), and a mailbox-style sync of Signal backups (Signal can be configured to drop a backup file into a specified folder; I've configured FolderSync to upload whatever it finds there weekly and delete the backup locally). Finally, I do a two-way sync of my personal notes text file. I don't have a good situation figured out for browsing unsorted uploaded photos, and I find that this is fine for my usage. I put a curated set of personal albums on a password protected personal site for friends and family. I enjoy the role of family chronicler. My NAS is backed up via daily snapshot to a remote location. YMMV!
firewolf34 3y ago
Finally. I thought I was crazy having to read through so many comments on here before someone mentioned just a simple SFTP to a backup server. FolderSync is the way to go.

vxNsr 3y ago

well that's dumb, someone changed the demo username/password

TimLeland 3y ago

I wish Google Photos UI was better but it still seems to be the best solution. Hosting something like this seems like it would cost more time/money/frustration than its worth. On the other hand, I always think its awesome to see self hosted solutions! It helps to create competition.

altano 3y ago
Google Photos isn't a lossless backup
- cpill 3y ago
  Really?!
  - altano 3y ago
    Sorry, sounds like my information is out of date as of 2021.
- barkerja 3y ago
  https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?hl=en&ref_topic=6156061&sjid=7287807973876276258-NA# https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?hl=en&ref_t... According to this support article, you can store original quality. Assuming that is what you meant by "lossless".
  - altano 3y ago
    Oh, interesting. It looks like they released that in 2021 if my googling is right. Cool.
- irjustin 3y ago
  It is if you pay which makes sense but it's true it's not obvious
  - entropy47 3y ago

blahyawnblah 3y ago

I set up a nextcloud instance to do the same thing. Works pretty well.

Covalent 3y ago
The nextcloud gallery performance... leaves something to be desired.

perryizgr8 3y ago

I've tried Immich and it is surprisingly polished. Compared to photoprism it is so much better just because of the nice mobile app. However I have held off on moving to it because it wants to assume control of all media and store them again. So I would be using up 2x the space required.

crobertsbmw 3y ago

The demo credentials don’t seem to work.

LennyHenrysNuts 3y ago

I use Nextcloud, seems to work fine. Does images, files, calendars and contacts.

mordae 3y ago
Nextcloud is super slow and inefficient on many levels. After running it professionally for several years I try yo stay as far away as possible.
Stephen304 3y ago
I also use nextcloud, but I've been planning on trying out immich. I used to use google photos and the migration to nextcloud left a lot to be desired. There doesn't seem to be a way to "free up space" the same way google photos could automatically delete already backed-up photos, so i have to do that manually periodically. But crucially the scrolling / thumbnail performance of the nextcloud photos timeline is terrible even with an SSD cache in my synology as well as running NC previously on an overpowered rack mount server, of course using redis with NC and all the usual optimization tips. Thumbnails take a few seconds to load making it near impossible to track down photos from more than 6 months ago. The thing that stood out to me about immich was how when I first saw a show-off post on /r/selfhosted, it included a video showing how instant the thumbnails loaded as well as some background on how they were focusing on optimizing the scrolling performance and ensuring blurred thumbnails would be available asap when scrolling. I was impressed at how it stacked up to the experience of using google photos.

artdigital 3y ago

I use an app called PhotoSync on iOS and use that to sync my stuff to whatever backup solution I use. Currently that’s photoprism but it can do all kinds of stuff like WebDAV, file system, Dropbox etc Highly recommend that app

leokennis 3y ago
Echo this. 100% recommendation. The app does what is says it does, and does so reliably.
mordae 3y ago
I hate the way it's configured, but it gets the job done. It would be nice to be able to tell it to stay away from Download.
darknavi 3y ago
+1 It's so simple but also extensive. AND the "pro" version (what ever IAP they have) supports Apple Family Sharing so anyone in the family can use it.

darkwater 3y ago

Any Photoprism user out there that tried this already? How does it compare, UI and updating-wise? I'm a Photprism donor but seems that development is stalling a bit lately (just a new release in over 6 months and with not so big changes, although I still have to update to be honest) EDIT: after a quick assessment in the doc pages/features, this seems to... blow Photoprism out of the water?

the100rabh 3y ago

[dead]

Fiahil 3y ago

Amazing ! I have been looking for a solution like this for a very long time I look forward to trying it out !

matthiasb 3y ago

The recommended spec is 4 cores and 6GB. Running this 24/7 for a year in US where the carbon intensity is about 400 gCO₂eq/kWh would produce about 150kg of CO2 per user per year. I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. With Google Photos, as a SaaS, users are sharing computing power and each users are emitting less CO2. https://engineering.teads.com/sustainability/carbon-footprint-estimator-for-aws-instances/?estimation=true&instance_id=2276&region_id=2232&compute_hours=8760#calculator https://engineering.teads.com/sustainability/carbon-footprin...

detuur 3y ago
Honestly, that a simple file sync service needs that kind of specs is bewildering to me.
- Mashimo 3y ago
  It's not a simple file sync service. It has object and face detection. Metadata indexing / searching and multi user support.
  - mordae 3y ago
    Multiuser support is free, face detection is cheap enough embedded camera chips do it, metadata indexing is cheap with any recent DB engine, search is cheap with them as well. The only computationally expensive thing here is face matching. Photoprism recommends two cores and 3G RAM and claims to be able to run on a NAS.
    - Mashimo 3y ago
      From other comments in this thread it seems you can run immich on a raspberry pi. Any who, I don't consider it a simple sync service.
    - pathartl 3y ago

FatherPaulStone 3y ago

Honestly, I know it's not cool, but OneDrive is my go to here. Syncs Photos to my server, which then copies them to a local (non cloud syncing) folder, which is then indexed with Picasa. Works a treat and requires zero intervention, although is based on a) MS software and b) deprecated Google software, so may not work forever.

mxuribe 3y ago
I actually don't mind OneDrive - its decent enough, and i already pay a small monthly family subscription (because partner and offspring prefer MS Office - bleh). But, the hard block is that all of my daily driver machines are linux, and there is no native, MS-supported onedrive client for linux. (Yes, i know there are a couple of popular onedrive clients, but no thanks.) So, you know what i did a few years ago? I setup Nextcloud...then tested things out, and it worked great! So, now i have no desire to ever use onedrive on linux, thanks to NextCloud! But, i don't expect others to follow me along.

the_common_man 3y ago

Great app. I use with cloudron for a while now.

thepihut 3y ago

The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos! This is a bad thing for the average Joe.

poisonborz 3y ago
Even average Joe should have a backup. They also have a read only mode.

smusamashah 3y ago

On the github page there is headline, disclaimer, documentation, feature list etc. but the page never once describes what the product is and does in few lines. Please add a description heading on top too. I didn't understand what you mean by self hosting on phone. Does it all run on your phone making your phone the main backup server? Or do you mean there is an app which you run and connect to a self hosted backup server?

8fingerlouie 3y ago

I'm aparently boring. My "backup routine" consists of storing photos in iCloud, which is then syncronized "real time" to a local Mac Mini. From the Mac Mini i then run scheduled backups to a local external harddrive, as well as a local Raspberry Pi running Minio, and nightly to OneDrive. The external harddrive backup uses Timemachine, the raspberry pi backup uses Kopia, and OneDrive is done with Arq. Furthermore, i make yearly archive discs. Identical copies on M-disc Blu-Ray media, stored in geographically different locations. Each disc contains the photos that have changed in the previous 12 months, and no encryption/archiving is used. Alongside the M-disc media i keep a couple of external harddrives that contains the entire photo library. These are checked (with badblocks, non-destructive surface scan) yearly, updated and rotated when storing the new M-disc media.

icemelt8 3y ago
but WHY? why do you go to such lengths?
- drsnow 3y ago
  You will find, in time, that nobody has an actual answer to this. It's purely nerd-lust for not doing things the simple way
  - 8fingerlouie 3y ago
    My photo library contains a large part of the moments of my life worth remembering, from being a kid, teenager, young adult, meeting my wife, our kids , pets, and everything between. I would seriously hate to lose it because somebody knocks over a can of soda. There are two major threats to my photo library. One is loss of the cloud data and/or loss of access to it (and/or malware, natural disasters, etc), which is why i keep data locally as well. The other is loss of data locally, anything from a failed piece of equipment to a house fire. The reason why i make a local backup of the synchronized cloud data is in case malware decides to encrypt/delete all my photos, in which case iCloud will happily synchronize all the changes to all devices, effectively deleting all good copies. So with a local backup of the data i've mitigated the first threat, loss of cloud data and/or access to it, but i'm still left with the threat of losing data at home, which is why i also backup to a different cloud provider, which again comes with a threat of losing access, and this is where the Blu-Ray archive comes in. Because burning Blu-Ray discs is time consuming, i rely on my "day to day" 3-2-1 backup to keep data safe, but ultimately the Blu-Ray discs safeguards against loss of cloud data and loss of local data (identical copies stored in different locations), so they're my last ditch defense of disaster recovery.

amsterdorn 3y ago

Trying to break down the rough cost to do this via a SaaS, someone correct me if I'm wrong here: - 4 cores/6GB RAM is $40/mo on DigitalOcean, and that's with only 160GB storage. Lowest AWS S3 tier is $0.023/GB, so assuming 1-2TB of photos that's $30-40 for additional storage. - The non-named company's 2TB subscription is $100/mo, translating to savings of only ~$20. - Building a server would be probably ~$250, electricity costs per month could vary greatly but maybe $30-50?. So would pay off after ~3 years.

rounakdatta 3y ago
You're correct, but consider these kind of solutions to be more of a hobbyist-inclined. Be prepared to continue investing into maintenance occasionally (and somewhat erratically, because Immich does bring in breaking changes). Another thing to keep in mind is that - the server you get for $250 would also allow you to deploy many other apps (I have a similar spec, and deploy ~20 apps). So, net-net if the setup brings you happiness and ROI (in any form at all), it is worth investing!
- amsterdorn 3y ago
  All true! Been considering a media server for some time now, I'll probably end up doing this. Curious though: any other apps you self-host that you couldn't live without?
drsnow 3y ago
There is no sane person on earth doing this kind of thing to save money. That's entirely missing the point
- amsterdorn 3y ago
  Subscription with 5TB storage = $250/yr. 10TB = $600/yr. I can buy a 4TB HDD for ~$80. Assuming I need more storage, this saves money.

agilob 3y ago

So, it's similar to NextCloud, but only for multimedia?

jve 3y ago

Can someone give me recommendation? I'm using Samsung Galaxy phone, photos auto sync to nextcloud... but I DO NOT WANT EVERY SINGLE PHOTO TO BE SYNCED. I'd rather tap "favorite" that would somehow put that photo in an album/path that gets synced/backed-up. Does anyone have a solution? That is, I want a single tap on photo that I consider worth backing up. Or it can work other way around - single tap to exclude from sync.

drsnow 3y ago
Can't you set your client to sync a specific folder and simply relocate the things you want synced to said folder?
- jve 3y ago
  I can - moving pics in default gallery app is organizing, takes 3 clicks. Organizing photos is something I am NOT capable of doing consistently or doing at all (thats why I love photoprism). But I do not want every photo land there. Pics that I need to take temporary when I just take a photo of something to lookup one time (wiring colors before disconnecting, a photo I want to show single time for my wife etc.) Ideally there would be app that would take whatever is marked as favorite (dunno, maybe metadata stores that info) and move those pics. OR someone can just recommend some photo app which with a single click moves photo to folder X :)

muxator 3y ago

> Prompt engineering is kind of like alchemy. There's no clear way to predict what will work best. It's all about experimenting I know this sentence is true for prompt engineering, but please help me with my language barrier. Is the meaning of "engineering" in this context more akin to "hammering out"? Does English have a specific ambiguity here? In my language "to engineer" means a specific technical activity with strong scientific roots, and a regulated profession. You cannot legally call yourself an engineer unless you jave a specific university degree and have a specific certification. Nothing of what is described in this sentence would ever have anything to do with "engineering".

parski 3y ago

I hope I don't come across as entitled or an asshole, but Docker means I'm not getting near it. Would love to see a bare host installation option for us BSD folks so I can stick it in a jail. Looks real good though! I'll be checking in now and then to see if that happens.

tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Docker is way too pervasive. It’s a great option, but it shouldn’t be the only option.
- tiagod 3y ago
  Well, a Docker file is just a list of commands. You're free to look at it and repeat them manually, or simply copy them to a script.
generallee5686 3y ago
I'm guessing they don't because the application requires 8 services to run... I really love the idea of this project but I feel like it is grossly over engineered.
screamingninja 3y ago
What specifically do you dislike about Docker? Have you considered Podman?

ori_prior 3y ago

For photo and video backups, I'm using auto-upload in the Nextcloud Android app together with my own Nextcloud instance. There are various Nextcloud apps like memories where you can get additional functionality for those photos that were synced over. What I'm still desperately looking for is proper self-hosted full-phone backups for Android phones.

jdalgetty 3y ago

Very nice google photos clone!

escape-big-tech 3y ago

I've actually been looking for a good self hosted solution for pictures, that allows me to automatically upload pictures from my phones (I use both ios and android). I've been using nextcloud photos but honestly the experience of the photos app for nextcloud has always been bad for me. I've been looking at immich and photoprism; how do the two compare, what are the advantages of immich over photoprism, and vice versa?

darknavi 3y ago
If you are on iOS, PhotoSync works great. It's just a backup app but supports a ton of different endpoints (I use sftp), scheduling, and most importantly to me custom naming. iOS photo names are dogshit and renaming them to be time-stamped it amazing.

m3nu 3y ago

Immich is making fast progress and is a great alternative to PhotoPrism for pictures, since the UI is more similar to Google Photos. Just the memory usage is still a bit high. At https://pikapods.com https://pikapods.com, we revenue share with the author (Alex) and provide hosting for less technical users. So hoping to see it grow and improve further.

kouru225 3y ago

I use photoprism, but tbh photoprism rarely correctly identifies faces and labels content. I can’t tell if it’s just a limitation of the algorithm or if I’m running into a limitation of the database, because photoprism also has this issue where it automatically runs MySQL, but it doesn’t recommend using MySQL. So you have to make your own MariaDB, but then migrating from MySQL to MariaDB is this whole process I don’t wanna go through.