Immich

What is Immich?

Immich is a self-hosted backup solution for photos and videos from your phone. It offers automatic background upload, timeline browsing, albums, face and object search, and shared libraries. It is the most credible open-source replacement for Google Photos.

Best for

Anyone leaving Google Photos who wants their memories on their own disk

Why choose Immich

Immich is the only self-hosted photo tool that comes close to being a true drop-in replacement for Google Photos. Mobile backup runs automatically in the background, the timeline feels native, and it does face recognition, object search and album sharing without any of it leaving your network. For most people the reason to move is not cost — it is that a photo library is the most personal data you own, and it should not depend on an account that can be locked without appeal.

Replaces

• Google Photos
• iCloud Photos
• Amazon Photos

Key features

• Mobile background backup
• Face and object search
• Timeline and albums
• Multi-user with shared libraries

What to watch out for

Immich develops at a pace that is exciting and occasionally exhausting. The project explicitly warns that breaking changes happen and that you must read release notes before upgrading — this is not software you set to auto-update and forget. Storage grows faster than you expect because thumbnails and transcoded video are stored alongside originals two to three times over. And machine learning features need real CPU or a GPU; face recognition on a low-power box will take days on a large library.

How to deploy

• Docker Compose

Getting started

The Docker Compose deployment is the supported path and the one to use — do not try to assemble the pieces by hand. Put the library on the largest disk you have and the Postgres data on fast storage. Configure the mobile app to back up over Wi-Fi only, or you will burn through a mobile data plan on the first sync. Most importantly: set up automated database backups before you upload anything. The photo files themselves are safe on disk, but albums, faces and metadata live in the database, and losing it means starting the organisation from scratch.

Project health

• GitHub stars: 115,372
• Last code push: 2026-10-01
• Open issues: 686
• Status: actively developed

Figures pulled from the GitHub API and refreshed periodically.