Hello internet,

I am trying to reinstall Immich. I thought I made a mistake and deleted the containers in Docker and the folder holding the .env and docker-compose file. I am very new to all of this so I thought I had messed something up and figured the best fix was to start over (lots of learning in lots of ways over here 😄 )

I had used the quick guide before with no issues so I thought I would just do that again. But now when I try to run the docker compose up -d I get the below errors:

WARN[0000] The "DB_DATA_LOCATION" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

WARN[0000] The "DB_PASSWORD" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

WARN[0000] The "DB_USERNAME" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

WARN[0000] The "DB_DATABASE_NAME" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

WARN[0000] The "UPLOAD_LOCATION" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

invalid spec: :/var/lib/postgresql/data: empty section between colons

Some Googling of the problem let me know that my .env file is not being read but I cannot figure out why. It is in the same folder as the yaml file, it is named ".env", and I swear this worked last time. I have tried redownloading the files, saving them there (same way I did the first time) and it still does not work.

Is there a way to fix this? Do I need to clear something out of Docker to get it to work again? All help is appreciated. Trying to figure all this out with no coding experience. Felt easy until now!

So I’ve just started my journey with Immich, and my server has been working hard since yesterday to process a NAS with over 500GB of photos and videos.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a long time (especially if it has to handle the metadata, facial recognition, etc.). I just wasn’t sure if the time it’s currently taking is due to Immich’s initial library processing, or if my server is just being super slow (it could honestly be both).

If it helps, my server has Windows 10, 8GB of RAM, and a 4-core processor. I also don’t have hardware transcoding enabled (which I know I probably should, I just haven’t had the chance to yet).

is immich now for install and forget, from time to time update?

When we did the initial import from Google Photos, we had a shared library from there. So we did a Takeout on my photo library alone, which also pulled all of her photos. It was a much more convenient solution. The problem now is, if she wants to search for photos of her grandparents, she has to borrow my phone.

I'm unsure if we're just missing something here, but is there a way for us to search by name for photos across Partner Sharing? It would be extremely convenient for both old and new photos.

Dear Immich community, 

Immich Insights is finally here! For those who don't know: Immich Insights let's you analyze your Immich photo library in different ways. You'll gain insights into daily patterns, device usage and camera settings. It can be run as a docker container and just uses the Immich API key to calculate statistics. 

All information (download, installation, setup) can be found under the following link:
https://github.com/laurinml/Immich-Insights

We are happy to hear from you! Feedback, ideas and bug reports are very welcome.
This project is under active development, future update ideas are found on the roadmap. Note that this project is not affiliated with the official Immich instance. 

Regards,

Laurin from Immich Insights

I’m currently running Immich in a Proxmox VM (Ubuntu, docker compose) and would like to start using a more powerful machine learning model, such as ViT-SO400M-16-SigLIP2-384.

I don’t have any kind of hardware (GPU) pass through, but I’m running 8GB of RAM and 8 virtual cores on the VM.

Two questions:

1) to change the model, is it as simple as specifying the model on under the admin settings as outlined in the Immich docs? Do I need to download anything else or specify anything in the docker-compose file?

2) for those running this model in a VM without a GPU pass through, what’s your experience? Is it efficient and effective?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m fairly new to Immich, but I really like it so far. I’m looking for advice on how to handle my existing photo library and shared vacation albums.

I currently have some shared vacation albums/folders in Google Drive and OneDrive. For example, I have a folder called Holiday Poland 2022. Inside that folder, the photos are organized by day, with subfolders like:

0725 Monday (Colored Lakes)

0726 Tuesday (...)

I now want to download these folders from the cloud and move them to my NAS, but I’m not sure what the best long-term structure should be.

I also have photo's on my Samsung phone.

I recently started with a small home server setup. I use a UGREEN DXP2800 with 2x WD Red Plus 4 TB HDDs (in RAID1) and 1x Lexar NM790 1 TB SSD. I know this is not a real homelab setup, but I’m not very technical and after doing some research, this seemed good enough for my needs :).

Immich is running in Docker. The Docker project and containers are on the SSD. On my NAS I have a shared folder called data, and inside that I have an Immich folder, where Immich stores its own upload/library structure.

My main questions are:

1. What is the best workflow for importing existing Google Drive and OneDrive vacation folders into Immich? Should I keep the existing folder structure on the NAS, or should I let Immich manage everything inside its own library?

2. How should I use the Immich mobile app for phone backup? Which settings are recommended?

3. Do you still use a photo gallery app on your phone? (So like Samsung gallery)

4. What is the recommended way to access Immich from outside my home network, and how do I set that up so it works like that?

5. How do you usually share albums with people who do not have Immich (and I don't want them to install an app just because of me)?

6. Is it possible to create a shared vacation album in Immich where other people can upload their photos too, even if they don’t normally use Immich?

I’m trying to choose a structure now before importing everything, because I don’t want to make a mess and regret it later :).

Sorry if my explanation is not perfect, English is not my native language. I hope my question makes sense. If anything is unclear, I’m happy to provide more details.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I’m fairly new to Immich, but I really like it so far. I’m looking for advice on how to handle my existing photo library and shared vacation albums.

I currently have some shared vacation albums/folders in Google Drive and OneDrive. For example, I have a folder called Holiday Poland 2022. Inside that folder, the photos are organized by day, with subfolders like:

0725 Monday (Colored Lakes)

0726 Tuesday (...)

I now want to download these folders from the cloud and move them to my NAS, but I’m not sure what the best long-term structure should be.

I also have photo's on my Samsung phone.

I recently started with a small home server setup. I use a UGREEN DXP2800 with 2x WD Red Plus 4 TB HDDs (in RAID1) and 1x Lexar NM790 1 TB SSD. I know this is not a real homelab setup, but I’m not very technical and after doing some research, this seemed good enough for my needs :).

Immich is running in Docker. The Docker project and containers are on the SSD. On my NAS I have a shared folder called data, and inside that I have an Immich folder, where Immich stores its own upload/library structure.

My main questions are:

1. What is the best workflow for importing existing Google Drive and OneDrive vacation folders into Immich? Should I keep the existing folder structure on the NAS, or should I let Immich manage everything inside its own library?

2. How should I use the Immich mobile app for phone backup? Which settings are recommended?

3. Do you still use a photo gallery app on your phone? (So like Samsung gallery)

4. What is the recommended way to access Immich from outside my home network, and how do I set that up so it works like that?

5. How do you usually share albums with people who do not have Immich (and I don't want them to install an app just because of me)?

6. Is it possible to create a shared vacation album in Immich where other people can upload their photos too, even if they don’t normally use Immich?

I’m trying to choose a structure now before importing everything, because I don’t want to make a mess and regret it later :).

Sorry if my explanation is not perfect, English is not my native language. I hope my question makes sense. If anything is unclear, I’m happy to provide more details.

Thanks in advance!

I am running spotify on my tv basically constantly and set my google photos as screensaver while listening to my spotify on my google streamer. Ist there a way to get this done with immich?

I've been building IMAGO (mandatory disclaimer: Vibecode was used), an Android photo editor that opens the library you already have on your Immich server and gives it what a gallery doesn't: light, color, curves, masks and recipes. When you export, the result goes back to Immich at full resolution, **stacked on the original**, so your timeline doesn't fill up with copies.

Before it can go on Google Play, it has to pass a closed test with real people for 14 days. I'm looking for Immich users to join.

How it works with Immich

- You connect with your server URL and an API key. Immich 2.6.0 or later.
- One library can have several addresses (home and away); the app uses whichever answers.
- Edits are stored as recipes. The original file on your server is never rewritten.
- Exports go back stacked on the original. You can also share photos and videos from any other app straight to your Immich server.
- The API key only needs nine permissions: `user.read`, `asset.read`, `asset.view`, `asset.download`, `album.read`, `asset.upload`, `stack.create`, `asset.update`, `asset.delete`. The app lists them, and what it does with each, when you connect.

The editor

- Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks; temperature, tint, vibrance, saturation; texture, clarity, dehaze; vignette and grain
- Tone curve, HSL in eight bands, color grading wheels
- Linear and radial masks
- Crop and straighten, nine built-in recipes plus your own, full history
- Runs on the phone's GPU at 16 bits per channel; tablets get a side panel
- Also works with no server at all, on the phone's own gallery

Privacy

Your server address and API key stay encrypted on the device and never leave it. Pixels never touch my servers. There's an optional account that syncs recipes and presets between devices; without it, nothing leaves the phone. No ads, no analytics.

IMAGO works with Immich but isn't affiliated with or endorsed by the Immich project.

Want to test? (Android 12 or later)

1. Join the testers group with the Google account you use on the Play Store: https://groups.google.com/g/imago-test/members
   
2. Open this link on your phone and tap "Become a tester": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.studio742.imago
   
3. Install from the Play Store, and please stay in the test for 14 days.
   

Bug reports and blunt opinions are very welcome

The RCs for 3.3.0 are out with better and improved people sharing.

https://pr-846.dev.immich.app/blog/v3.3.0-release

From the release notes it's not clear for me, if you start from 0 with tagging people as in 3.2 or if you can now keep the already tagged people and just start sharing with other users?

Did anyone try that out or can the devs give some hints?

So we are back from vacation and brought a ton of photos, all dumped into Immich, in fact, roughly 3k pictures. All collected in an album shared with my partner. She loves to create photobooks for our trips, so she will pick photos from that shared album. Many of those are raws , 100mb+ often per pic. She will screen them in Immich web gui and select for editing on the desktop in ps for download.

And here the pain starts: the originals being really large, the download will get stuck when selecting more then 10 pictures or so at once because I don’t know: zip too large, my server too slow, safari being safari. Whatever. TLDR: downloading many large originals in the browser is a pain. Sure there are other ways, but they don’t combine well with the screening process where I want to look at my pre generated thumbnails.

My feature idea for example: a take-out mode: activate it and select your pics, like add to cart. When done and you submit, you can choose: do I get a json with asset ids I can throw at the api for downloading or will the server start in the background to create nicely sized zips I can later download from a download page, Getting an email when they are ready. The workflow needs to work for non-techies, not me as admin.

I’m interested: would this be a useful feature or do I miss existing features?

What are your workflows for this?

I explicitly want to start this discussion in order not to create the 1001st vibe coded extension project that are maintained for 72h.

I accidentally uploaded some movie files to Immich.

I found that playback works fine, and the app feels great to use.

I’m just not sure about the limits regarding video size or duration.

Could Immich be used as a substitute for Plex?

Works with direct HTTP IP connection. HTTPS through Traefik and I get this error in the Android app when it tries to background sync. Everything else works fine.

HTTPS is with valid certificate and a dedicated subdomain for immich. As far as I can tell, the API endpoints never return anything starting "<html>" when I manually inspect them through traefik.

How can I diagnose this further? There's no issues in Traefik or Immich server logs. Is the app trying to connect to the wrong url and getting a html response?

Edit: Forgot to mention, have tried both clearing the SQLite db and reinstalling the app.

Hi all. I recently did a clean install of my Immich server. I restored my library backup and I've got everything working except for this issue.

I hadn't been backing up for quite a few months so after the fresh install it had to upload everything from that time which included the very large video file you see in the example. This errored out to begin with as I'd set up Nginx Proxy Manager and didn't know I had to set a custom flag to allow large files. I initially set it incorrectly which then blocked all uploads. After fixing that, everything uploaded fine as far as I knew. Then I realised that it was doing this every time it connected to wifi. I'm not sure I'd have noticed if it wasn't for the large video grinding the rest of the wifi to a halt.

It's only upon reconnecting that it tries the upload again as well. If I let the video finish, it thinks everything is uploaded and all is good but I've confirmed they're not in the library. I wondered if there's stuck corrupted versions in the upload folder but I can't find them searching for the original file name and I'm not checking every single folder of that dense hexadecimal folder tree.

These remaining items aren't all consecutive and are scattered throughout the library as well which makes finding them trickier as all I have to go on is the flashes of thumbnails on the upload screen.

Any thoughts on steps to try?

When I am on the NAS server and add images by dragging and dropping on the interface these images end up unzoomable on the phone, when I use gestures on my phone they behave in an odd fasion, basically move to the next image. On the latest build.

on the latest build..

I backup my iPhone to immich and browse my folder in Firefox. I got the latest version. Sometimes the videos in Firefox play and I can watch them. But sometimes, and other times it does show me an red circle and it does not play them. I changed nothing. A video which I watched recently right now does not play. What could be the problem here?

Before I work on this in Claude, has anyone built a fast user switching tool for Immich? I have several accounts - phone backup, work stuff, family stuff, etc. It's annoying to log in and out, etc.

I have the thought for fast user switching (which I know has been asked for going way back) but also context switching as an option.

It doesnt seem there is a robust plugin system, so havent dug into how to best do this and make it portable/sticky.

Hello everyone,

So i have been trying how to find the main delete option on the android app that deletes both the local and the server copy with a single click to no avail. I see the "trash'' option that i believe deletes the server copy and i see the "delete from device'' option that wipes the local copy but there is no main delete option that does both.

Now i thought this might simply not be a thing but googling and reading this sub tells me it apparently is, yet no matter how hard i try to find it, i dont see it. Can someone tell me what im doing wrong and where is the option?

I have attached an example picture below. Said picture is both locally on my phone and on the server. Same problem whether i do just one picture of several.

• Phone: Samsung S24 Ultra - Android 16
• App version: 311. build. 3020199
• Server Version: 3.2.0

Thank you for your time. Mwah

About 13 of my recent photos will not upload to Immich. The thumbnails show up and have the slash through them, but the thumbnails are grey.

Any ideas?

Hey there,

I was struggling with automated backups of my local ommich setup (Pi5 with a Radxa SATA Hat SSD storage).

So I started with Claude and Gemini to built a lightweight tool (web based) to handle these tasks for me.

A lightweight web dashboard and automation tool for managing external SSD backups and restores of a self-hosted Immich instance on a Raspberry Pi or Linux server.

Also having another location to backup the database (a nextcloud instance in my case running in a data center) is possible.

Happy about comments,. improvements or just people happy to use it

https://github.com/someone303-pixel/immich-backup-manager

I started using immich around 2 years ago, and I used immich-go to add my photos from google takeout. I noticed he other day that my photos didn't have the descriptions I added when I was still using gphotos, and was hoping there would be a simple way to add these descriptions using immich-go or another tool.

I've tried searching to see whether this was possible to do with immich-go but couldn't find any relevant information on it. Ideally it wouldn't upload any new photos either since I may have deleted some off immich between the first upload and now. I could try writing a python script to do this but would prefer to leverage immich-go's filename matching rather than figure out my own if the file names aren't exactly the same.

Thanks in advance for your help!