immich/README.md

Immich

High performance self-hosted photo and video backup solution.

Content

• Features
• Screenshots
• Installation
• Update
• Mobile App
• Development
• Support
• Known Issues

Features

⚠️ WARNING: NOT READY FOR PRODUCTION! DO NOT USE TO STORE YOUR ASSETS. This project is under heavy development, there will be continuous functions, features and api changes.

Features	Mobile	Web
Upload and view videos and photos	Yes	Yes
Auto backup when the app is opened	Yes	N/A
Selective album(s) for backup	Yes	N/A
Download photos and videos to local device	Yes	Yes
Multi-user support	Yes	Yes
Album	Yes	Yes
Shared Albums	Yes	Yes
Quick navigation with draggable scrollbar	Yes	Yes
Support RAW (HEIC, HEIF, DNG, Apple ProRaw)	Yes	Yes
Metadata view (EXIF, map)	Yes	Yes
Search by metadata, objects and image tags	Yes	No
Administrative functions (user management)	N/A	Yes
Background backup	Android	N/A
Virtual scroll	N/A	Yes

Screenshots

Mobile

Login with custom URL	Backup Settings	Backup selection	Home Screen	Curated search
Shared albums	EXIF info	Loading ~4000 images/videos

Web

Home Dashboard	Image view

Project Details

💾 System Requirements

• OS: Preferred unix-based operating system (Ubuntu, Debian, MacOS...etc).

• RAM: At least 2GB, preferred 4GB.

• Core: At least 2 cores, preferred 4 cores.

🔩 Technology Stack

There are several services that compose Immich:

1. NestJs - Backend of the application
2. SvelteKit - Web frontend of the application
3. PostgreSQL - Main database of the application
4. Redis - For sharing websocket instance between docker instances and background tasks message queue.
5. Nginx - Load balancing and optimized file uploading.
6. TensorFlow - Object Detection (COCO SSD) and Image Classification (ImageNet).

Installation

NOTE: When using a reverse proxy in front of Immich (such as NGINX), the reverse proxy might require extra configuration to allow large files to be uploaded (such as client_max_body_size in the case of NGINX).

Testing One-step installation (not recommended for production)

⚠️ This installation method is for evaluating Immich before futher customization to meet the users' needs.

Applicable system: Ubuntu, Debian, MacOS

• In the shell, from the directory of your choice, run the following command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/immich-app/immich/main/install.sh | bash

This script will download the docker-compose.yml file and the .env file, then populate the necessary information, and finally run the docker-compose up or docker compose up (based on your docker's version) command.

The web application will be available at http://<machine-ip-address>:2283, and the server URL for the mobile app will be http://<machine-ip-address>:2283/api.

The directory which is used to store the backup file is ./immich-app/immich-data.

Custom installation (Recommended)

Step 1 - Download necessary files

• Create a directory called immich-app and cd into it.

• Get docker-compose.yml

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/immich-app/immich/main/docker/docker-compose.yml

• Get .env

wget -O .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/immich-app/immich/main/docker/.env.example

Step 2 - Populate .env file with custom information

See the example .env file

• Populate custom database information if necessary.
• Populate UPLOAD_LOCATION as prefered location for storing backup assets.
• Populate a secret value for JWT_SECRET, you can use this command: openssl rand -base64 128
• [Optional] Populate Mapbox value to use reverse geocoding.
• [Optional] Populate TZ as your timezone, default is Etc/UTC.

Step 3 - Start the containers

• Run docker-compose up or docker compose up (based on your docker's version)

Step 4 - Register admin user

• Navigate to the web at http://<machine-ip-address>:2283 and follow the prompts to register admin user.

• You can add and manage users from the administration page.

Step 5 - Access the mobile app

• Login the mobile app with the server endpoint URL at http://<machine-ip-address>:2283/api

Update

If you have installed, you can update the application by navigate to the directory that contains the docker-compose.yml file and run the following command:

docker-compose pull && docker-compose up -d

Mobile app

F-Droid	Google Play	iOS

The Play/App Store version might be lagging behind the latest release due to the review process.

Development

The development environment can be started from the root of the project after populating the .env file with the command:

make dev # required Makefile installed on the system.

All servers and web container are hot reload for quick feedback loop.

Note for developers

1 - OpenAPI

OpenAPI is used to generate the client (Typescript, Dart) SDK. openapi-generator-cli can be installed here. When you add a new or modify an existing endpoint, you must run the generate command below to update the client SDK.

npm run api:generate # Run from server directory

You can find the generated client SDK in the web/src/api for Typescript SDK and mobile/openapi for Dart SDK.

Support

If you like the app, find it helpful, and want to support me to offset the cost of publishing to AppStores, you can sponsor the project with one time or monthly donation from Github Sponsor.

You can also donate using crypto currency with the following addresses:

Bitcoin: 1FvEp6P6NM8EZEkpGUFAN2LqJ1gxusNxZX

Cardano: addr1qyy567vqhqrr3p7vpszr5p264gw89sqcwts2z8wqy4yek87cdmy79zazyjp7tmwhkluhk3krvslkzfvg0h43tytp3f5q49nycc

This is also a meaningful way to give me motivation and encouragement to continue working on the app.

Cheers! 🎉

Known Issues

TensorFlow Build Issue

This is a known issue for incorrect Promox setup

TensorFlow doesn't run with older CPU architecture, it requires a CPU with AVX and AVX2 instruction set. If you encounter the error illegal instruction core dump when running the docker-compose command above, check for your CPU flags with the command and make sure you see AVX and AVX2:

more /proc/cpuinfo | grep flags

If you are running virtualization in Promox, the VM doesn't have the flag enabled.

You need to change the CPU type from kvm64 to host under VMs hardware tab.

Hardware > Processors > Edit > Advanced > Type (dropdown menu) > host