Immich (github) is a media library tool.

At some point I’ve lost my QNAP drives (both at the almost the same time) and wanted to check if I could replace the PhotoStation with an opensource tool.

Immich was one of the candidates but if has a major drawback for me. I dislike that it renames the files you upload/import/sync with it. Although it allows you to download them and the metadata it keeps (in a database) contain all the info and the result you get is the original filenames, you cannot suddenly stop using it and pick the file structure and use it. If you lose the database you have to manually rename and organize all files which can be practically impossible if you have several thousand images or videos in your library.

Still I wanted to try it so lets get into this.

  • First of all you need to decide where to store its configuration files and docker compose yaml.

setup location

mkdir ~/immich

  • configure the variables that immich need to start (read examples and config notes in immich site)

configure

Set your variable in a .env file like this:

# You can find documentation for all the supported env variables at https://immich.app/docs/install/environment-variables

# The location where your uploaded files are stored
UPLOAD_LOCATION=./library

# The location of an external library
EXTERNAL_PATH=/home/me/immich/workdir

# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v1.71.0"
IMMICH_VERSION=release

# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
DB_PASSWORD=sample-password


TYPESENSE_API_KEY=the_typeSense_key

# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_HOSTNAME=immich_postgres
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich

REDIS_HOSTNAME=immich_redis
  • finaly the docker compose file (which is slightly updated since I’m currently playing with traefik)

docker compose 

#
# WARNING: Make sure to use the docker-compose.yml of the current release:
#
# https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
#
# The compose file on main may not be compatible with the latest release.
#

name: immich

services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    command: ['start.sh', 'immich']
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.immich-server.rule=PathPrefix(`/immich`) || Host(`immich.docker.localhost`))"
      - "traefik.http.routers.immich-server.tls=true"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_default"
    volumes:
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ${EXTERNAL_PATH}:/usr/src/app/external        
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - 2283:3001
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: always
    networks:
      - default
      - traefik_default

  immich-microservices:
    container_name: immich_microservices
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends: # uncomment this section for hardware acceleration - see https://immich.app/docs/features/hardware-transcoding
    #   file: hwaccel.transcoding.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [nvenc, quicksync, rkmpp, vaapi, vaapi-wsl] for accelerated transcoding
    command: ['start.sh', 'microservices']
    volumes:
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ${EXTERNAL_PATH}:/usr/src/app/external
    env_file:
      - .env
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: always

  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    # For hardware acceleration, add one of -[armnn, cuda, openvino] to the image tag.
    # Example tag: ${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}-cuda
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends: # uncomment this section for hardware acceleration - see https://immich.app/docs/features/ml-hardware-acceleration
    #   file: hwaccel.ml.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [armnn, cuda, openvino, openvino-wsl] for accelerated inference - use the `-wsl` version for WSL2 where applicable
    volumes:
      - model-cache:/cache
    env_file:
      - .env
    restart: always

  redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: registry.hub.docker.com/library/redis:6.2-alpine@sha256:51d6c56749a4243096327e3fb964a48ed92254357108449cb6e23999c37773c5
    restart: always

  database:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: registry.hub.docker.com/tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.2.0@sha256:90724186f0a3517cf6914295b5ab410db9ce23190a2d9d0b9dd6463e3fa298f0
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: always

volumes:
  pgdata:
  model-cache:


networks:
  traefik_default:
    external: true
    name: traefik_default
  default:

Of course this means this particular docker compose depends on an existing running traefik Also it is important to check the related host line and adapt accordingly (like adding extra Host domain)

    - "traefik.http.routers.immich-server.rule=PathPrefix(`/immich`) || Host(`immich.docker.localhost`))"

upgrading it

And so you have it running, but immich is under heavy development as noted in the site and as a result it keeps changing quite often. it is really important that you check the release notes for breaking changes and incompatibilities with the mobile app you might have, before you initiate the simple upgrade process below.

  1. Get in the immich directory where the docker compose file is stored and do a docker compose pull
  2. when everything is pulled do a docker compose up --force-recreate --build -d will restart it to the latest version

important note : If you don’t change the docker compose file, you will only be pulling the immich updates, since the rest of the services (redis, postgresql) have their version pinned.