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For people who still haven't tried Immich, I urge you to do so. If you self-host anything at all, which in 2024 you should, as a technical person, it's literall

by ein0p 3y ago

For people who still haven't tried Immich, I urge you to do so. If you self-host anything at all, which in 2024 you should, as a technical person, it's literally half an hour worth of work to self-host this full blown Google Photos alternative under Docker Compose, and much of that time will be spent setting up Nginx reverse proxy and downloading packages. The only thing that I miss from Google Photos is landmark recognition (a lot of my photos do not have GPS tags), but that can be added later I'm sure. I'm just blown away that someone just went ahead and rolled something this full featured for free and with no strings attached.

poisonborz 3y ago
With selfhosting, the problem was never really the software, but everything around it. Getting an openly reachable web address, securing it, the storage, making backups etc. There are some nimble projects to simplify some parts of this, but there are huge gaps still. Some important OSS celebs still trumpet that "users will never self-host". But if and once this vertical problem is solved, I'd expect a landfall, and we would all look back at this intermittent "cloud era" as some dead-end temporary dark age.
- EspadaV9 3y ago
  I gave up on making services openly reachable and instead just put Wireguard on my server and then connect into that and access things via their IP:port as though they were local. At some point I might set up a reverse proxy so I can give services names, but this has been fine for the past year, so motivation to change it is low.
- ein0p 3y ago
  All of that is super straightforward in 2024. The problem before Immich came along was that software sucked in one way or another. Take Photoprism - the leading solution (imo) before Immich. Poor AI and search, poor mobile uploads, user management requires CLI. Immich absolutely nails all of those things and more. It’s a nearly 1:1 Google Photos replacement with total privacy, unlimited storage, and very similar user interface. Thanks to Docker Compose all of this can be brought up locally (to try out) in one minute flat, and exposed remotely in half an hour. Or don’t even expose it remotely, and do what I do - set up WireGuard such that it automatically connects when you’re not at home and you get access to your home network. That way you don’t need to worry about maintenance as much. An occasional update is all that’s needed since your audience is now “trusted”.
pquki4 3y ago
As a software engineer who cares about privacy but does not have much experience in security, ops or much time in constantly patching servers, I trust Google more than myself in not getting hacked, messing things up or unintentionally leaking my own pictures to the public.
- ein0p 3y ago
  The solution is simple: install it behind WireGuard and trust yourself more than Google. Google has repeatedly betrayed your trust over the years.
xrd 3y ago
I agree. It's an incredible clone. Flawless.
- codestation 3y ago
  Doesn't seem to support encryption at rest nor object storage, i will stick to Nextcloud for now.
  - ein0p 3y ago
    I also self-host NextCloud, and if we're honest, its image hosting is pretty underwhelming in comparison. I moved it to Immich. If those issues are critical to you, however, that is a valid concern, but I'd venture to say they aren't critical to most self-hosters, whereas good mobile sync, AI integration (intelligent search and facial recognition), and ease of use are. Immich excels at all three.
  - xrd 3y ago
    I didn't know that. I self host this on my own hardware in my office. If I wanted encryption at rest, I would just do it at the hard disk level I suppose.
kyriakos 3y ago
Setup is easy, the problem is local storage as opposed to cloud storage for the photo library
- rpgwaiter 3y ago
  Is that a problem? That's kinda the whole point. It's docker, so you can make a cloud drive mountpoint with rclone on the host, then mount that path inside of docker if you really wanted to I imagine most people running immich also have a good amount of local storage
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    Setting it up in a way that is sufficiently robust is non-trivial. It's not unworkable but we shouldn't underestimate it.
    - ein0p 3y ago
      Setting things up in cloud in a way that prevents some proverbial NSA analyst from beating off to the naked pictures of your wife without you knowing, on the other hand, is impossible. Why this learned helplessness? Is this “hacker news” or “layperson news”?

by ein0p 3y ago

poisonborz 3y ago

With selfhosting, the problem was never really the software, but everything around it. Getting an openly reachable web address, securing it, the storage, making backups etc. There are some nimble projects to simplify some parts of this, but there are huge gaps still. Some important OSS celebs still trumpet that "users will never self-host". But if and once this vertical problem is solved, I'd expect a landfall, and we would all look back at this intermittent "cloud era" as some dead-end temporary dark age.

EspadaV9 3y ago
I gave up on making services openly reachable and instead just put Wireguard on my server and then connect into that and access things via their IP:port as though they were local. At some point I might set up a reverse proxy so I can give services names, but this has been fine for the past year, so motivation to change it is low.
ein0p 3y ago
All of that is super straightforward in 2024. The problem before Immich came along was that software sucked in one way or another. Take Photoprism - the leading solution (imo) before Immich. Poor AI and search, poor mobile uploads, user management requires CLI. Immich absolutely nails all of those things and more. It’s a nearly 1:1 Google Photos replacement with total privacy, unlimited storage, and very similar user interface. Thanks to Docker Compose all of this can be brought up locally (to try out) in one minute flat, and exposed remotely in half an hour. Or don’t even expose it remotely, and do what I do - set up WireGuard such that it automatically connects when you’re not at home and you get access to your home network. That way you don’t need to worry about maintenance as much. An occasional update is all that’s needed since your audience is now “trusted”.

pquki4 3y ago

As a software engineer who cares about privacy but does not have much experience in security, ops or much time in constantly patching servers, I trust Google more than myself in not getting hacked, messing things up or unintentionally leaking my own pictures to the public.

ein0p 3y ago
The solution is simple: install it behind WireGuard and trust yourself more than Google. Google has repeatedly betrayed your trust over the years.

xrd 3y ago

I agree. It's an incredible clone. Flawless.

codestation 3y ago
Doesn't seem to support encryption at rest nor object storage, i will stick to Nextcloud for now.
- ein0p 3y ago
  I also self-host NextCloud, and if we're honest, its image hosting is pretty underwhelming in comparison. I moved it to Immich. If those issues are critical to you, however, that is a valid concern, but I'd venture to say they aren't critical to most self-hosters, whereas good mobile sync, AI integration (intelligent search and facial recognition), and ease of use are. Immich excels at all three.
- xrd 3y ago
  I didn't know that. I self host this on my own hardware in my office. If I wanted encryption at rest, I would just do it at the hard disk level I suppose.

kyriakos 3y ago

Setup is easy, the problem is local storage as opposed to cloud storage for the photo library

rpgwaiter 3y ago
Is that a problem? That's kinda the whole point. It's docker, so you can make a cloud drive mountpoint with rclone on the host, then mount that path inside of docker if you really wanted to I imagine most people running immich also have a good amount of local storage
- earthling8118 3y ago
  Setting it up in a way that is sufficiently robust is non-trivial. It's not unworkable but we shouldn't underestimate it.
  - ein0p 3y ago
    Setting things up in cloud in a way that prevents some proverbial NSA analyst from beating off to the naked pictures of your wife without you knowing, on the other hand, is impossible. Why this learned helplessness? Is this “hacker news” or “layperson news”?