📷 Photo management Open source Privacy ★★★★★
Immich
Open-source Google Photos alternative
Overview
Immich has grown rapidly since 2022, reproducing timelines, search, share links, and face clustering for self-hosters.
Mobile apps auto-upload in background; multi-user libraries work well for families on NAS or VPS.
Docker Compose deployment is standard; hardware requirements exist but you fully control data and access.
Scores
Privacy 5/5
Ease of use 3/5
Features 5/5
Value 5/5
Google Photos — comparison
Closest feature and UI match to Google Photos self-hosted—face recognition, sharing, and auto-upload without Google’s ML pipeline.
Pros
- ✓ Google Photos–like UX lowers learning curve
- ✓ Face recognition, smart search, map view
- ✓ Android/iOS auto-backup apps
- ✓ Fully open source and self-hosted
Cons & caveats
- − Requires server, storage, and ops knowledge
- − ML jobs consume RAM on large libraries
- − No official managed hosting—you maintain it
Best for
- NAS and homelab owners
- Families who want private shared libraries
- Google Photos users wanting familiar UI
Not ideal for
- People who refuse server management
- Users who want instant turnkey cloud
Specs
- Pricing
- Self-hosted — Software free. You pay for server/NAS, power, and storage expansion.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Data location
- Your server or NAS. Cloud egress can be zero by configuration.
- Platforms
- Self-hosted · Docker · Android · iOS · Web
Google Photos風UI顔・物体認識自動バックアップ共有アルバム
Migration from Google Photos
- 1 Google Takeout original-quality ZIP archives
- 2 Bulk import via Immich admin Upload or CLI
- 3 Wait for face recognition jobs; verify people labels
- 4 Point mobile apps to Immich and disable Google Photos backup
Setup steps
- 1 Fetch Docker Compose template and configure .env
- 2 Start PostgreSQL, Redis, and Immich containers
- 3 Create admin user; set reverse proxy and HTTPS for remote access
- 4 Register server URL in mobile apps and enable backup