Immich: Self-Hosted Photo and Video Management

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup platform designed as a direct alternative to Google Photos. With over 92,000 GitHub stars, it delivers a polished mobile and web experience for managing personal media libraries. Immich features automatic background backup from mobile devices, AI-powered face recognition, smart search, and a timeline-based gallery — all running entirely on your own hardware.

For anyone serious about owning their photos and videos, Immich provides a Google Photos-grade experience without surrendering your data to cloud providers.

Key Features

• Automatic photo and video backup from iOS and Android with background sync
• AI-powered smart search — find photos by describing their content in natural language
• Face recognition and clustering for browsing photos by person
• Timeline view with map integration showing where photos were taken
• Shared albums and partner sharing for family and group libraries
• RAW file support for photographers working with professional cameras
• Hardware-accelerated video transcoding for smooth playback
• External library support for importing existing photo collections from disk

Why Self-Host Immich?

Own your memories. Google Photos, iCloud, and Amazon Photos store your personal photos on their servers under their terms. They can change pricing, discontinue services, or scan your images. Self-hosting Immich means your family photos, personal videos, and private moments live on hardware you control. No corporate access, no AI training on your data.

No storage limits or subscription fees. Cloud photo services either compress your images or charge monthly fees for original-quality storage. With Immich on a VPS, your only cost is the server. Add as much storage as you need — a 200 GB disk costs a fraction of what Google One charges annually. Your photos stay at full resolution with zero compression.

Advanced privacy controls. Immich's face recognition and smart search run entirely on your server. Unlike cloud services where AI features require uploading images to external processors, Immich handles all machine learning locally. You get the same intelligent features without the privacy tradeoff.

Full data portability. Your photos are stored as regular files on disk. No proprietary formats, no vendor lock-in. Back them up, migrate servers, or access them directly via the filesystem. Immich's API also supports bulk export if you ever need to switch platforms.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	2 vCPUs	4+ vCPUs
RAM	4 GB	8 GB
Storage	50 GB SSD	200 GB+ SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Immich's machine learning features (face recognition, smart search) are CPU-intensive during initial processing. A server with 4 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM handles libraries of 50,000+ photos comfortably. Storage needs depend on your library size — plan for 2-5 GB per 1,000 photos at original quality.

Getting Started

Deploy Immich on your VPS using Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our deployment guide covers the complete stack including PostgreSQL, Redis, machine learning workers, and mobile app configuration.

Deploy Immich with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• PhotoPrism — AI-powered photo management with automatic tagging and face detection
• LibrePhotos — Self-hosted Google Photos clone with facial recognition and timeline
• Lychee — Lightweight photo management with album organization and sharing
• Piwigo — Mature photo gallery platform with extensive plugin ecosystem

FAQ

Can Immich fully replace Google Photos? For most users, yes. Immich covers automatic backup, smart search, face recognition, shared albums, and map views. The mobile apps (iOS and Android) support background upload just like Google Photos. Some features like Google's editing tools aren't included, but the core backup and organization experience is on par.

How do I migrate my existing Google Photos library to Immich? Use Google Takeout to export your library, then import it into Immich using the CLI tool (immich upload). The CLI preserves metadata, dates, and album structure. For large libraries, this can take several hours depending on your connection speed and library size.

Does Immich support multiple users? Yes. Immich has built-in multi-user support where each user gets their own private library. You can also set up partner sharing so family members can view each other's photos. An admin panel manages user accounts, storage quotas, and server settings.

What about video support? Immich handles video files alongside photos, including 4K content. It supports hardware-accelerated transcoding (Intel QSV, NVIDIA NVENC, VAAPI) for generating preview streams. Live photos from iOS are preserved as-is with their motion component.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.