Immich Self-Hosted Photo Management: 2025 Complete Setup Guide

Immich Self-Hosted Photo Management: 2025 Complete Setup Guide

In the era of digital media explosion, everyone's phones and computers store thousands of photos and videos. How to safely and efficiently manage these precious memories while protecting privacy has become a challenge for many. Today I'll introduce Immich – a self-hosted photo and video management solution that helps you build a personal private cloud with photo backup and video storage capabilities comparable to commercial services. As of September 2025, Immich has earned 74,929 stars on GitHub, establishing itself as a leader in open-source media management.

What is Immich and What Problems Does It Solve?

Immich is a high-performance self-hosted photo and video management solution developed by the immich-app team and first released in 2022. As an open-source project built with TypeScript, Immich aims to solve three core challenges:

1. Data Privacy and Control: Escape third-party cloud service control over your personal media by storing photos and videos on your own server
2. Storage Cost Optimization: Avoid the high fees of commercial cloud services that increase with storage capacity
3. Cross-Device Access Limitations: Achieve seamless media synchronization and access across multiple devices

Simply put, Immich enables you to have a fully-featured, privacy-focused personal media library while maintaining complete control over your data.

Core Advantages of Immich Over Other Photo Management Solutions

Among numerous media management tools, Immich stands out with these key advantages:

1. Truly High-Performance Experience

Immich is specifically designed for handling large volumes of photos and videos, utilizing optimized data processing workflows and efficient storage structures. Even libraries with thousands of photos load quickly and browse smoothly – far exceeding many similar self-hosted solutions.

2. Commercial-Grade User Experience

Unlike some open-source projects that prioritize functionality over experience, Immich invests heavily in user interface and interaction design, delivering an experience comparable to Google Photos or Apple Photos while maintaining self-hosted flexibility.

3. Comprehensive Ecosystem

Immich offers web and mobile applications with automatic backup, selective synchronization, and other features, forming a complete media management ecosystem that meets user needs across different scenarios.

4. Active Development Community

As an actively developed project, Immich boasts a large contributor base and rapid issue response mechanism, ensuring continuous iteration and optimization to adapt to new technologies and user requirements.

Key Feature Highlights of Immich

Immich provides a rich feature set that makes it a comprehensive media management solution:

Core Photo and Video Management Features

• Automatic Backup: Supports background automatic backup on mobile devices to ensure photos and videos are never lost
• Smart Organization: Enables efficient searching through metadata, object recognition, facial recognition, and CLIP technology
• Albums and Sharing: Create personal and shared albums for easily sharing memories with family and friends
• Raw Format Support: Compatible with RAW format files from various cameras, meeting the needs of photography enthusiasts
• Metadata Viewing: Displays complete photo EXIF information, including map location tagging

Advanced Feature Experience

• Facial Recognition and Clustering: Automatically identifies and groups people in photos for easily finding all photos of specific individuals
• Global Map View: Intuitively view photo locations on a map based on geolocation data
• Memory Lane: Automatically generates "On this day" and similar memory content to relive precious moments
• Partner Sharing: Share selected photos with intimate partners to build a shared media library
• Offline Support: Mobile apps support offline access to synchronized photos for browsing without an internet connection

Management and Expansion Features

• Multi-User Support: Create separate accounts for family members, each with private space
• Flexible Storage Structure: Supports custom media file storage paths and structures
• Public Sharing: Generate secure links to share specific photos or albums with others
• OAuth Integration: Supports third-party authentication for enhanced security
• API Access: Provides API keys for integration and extending functionality with other applications

Practical Usage Experience with Immich

After actual deployment and usage, Immich has left a deep impression:

Deployment and Setup

Immich offers multiple deployment options, including Docker containerization, CLI tools, and support for various NAS platforms. The process is relatively straightforward – even users not familiar with self-hosting can complete installation by following the official documentation. For tech enthusiasts, advanced options like custom storage paths and backup strategies can be configured by modifying configuration files.

Daily Usage Smoothness

In daily use, Immich's performance is impressive. Mobile apps launch quickly, and photo upload and synchronization happen automatically in the background, making it almost unnoticeable. The web interface responds rapidly, with no noticeable lag even when browsing media libraries with thousands of photos.

Search and Discovery Experience

Immich's search functionality deserves special praise. Beyond basic date and location searches, its AI-powered object recognition and facial clustering features are extremely useful. I've found that even photos taken years ago can be quickly located through simple keyword searches.

Which Scenarios Are Best for Immich?

Immich isn't for everyone, but users in these scenarios will particularly benefit:

Privacy-Conscious Users

If you're highly concerned about personal data privacy and unwilling to store photos and videos on third-party cloud services, Immich provides the perfect alternative to keep complete control over your data.

Photography Enthusiasts

For photography enthusiasts with large collections of RAW format photos, Immich's raw file support, metadata management, and organization features will significantly improve workflow efficiency.

Family Users

Immich's multi-user support and shared album features make it ideal for family media management. Each family member can have their own space while easily sharing family event photos.

Tech Enthusiasts

Tech enthusiasts who enjoy self-hosting and DIY will appreciate Immich's open-source nature and customizability, allowing them to adjust and extend features according to personal needs.

Content Creators

For content creators needing to manage large volumes of素材, Immich provides efficient media organization and retrieval tools to help quickly find required materials.

Important Considerations for Using Immich

While Immich is powerful, there are several considerations when using it:

1. Active Development: Immich is still under active development, so you may encounter bugs or breaking updates – regular data backups are recommended

2. Storage Requirements: High-quality photos and videos consume significant storage space – ensure adequate hard drive capacity

3. Server Requirements: For optimal experience, use a moderately performant server, especially for AI processing like facial recognition

4. Backup Strategy: Don't rely solely on Immich as your only storage method – follow the 3-2-1 backup principle to ensure data security

5. Learning Curve: While deployment is simple, fully utilizing all advanced features requires some learning and configuration time

Conclusion: Why Immich is Worth Trying

In today's world where data privacy is increasingly important, Immich provides a media management solution that balances privacy security, rich functionality, and user experience. It not only frees you from dependence on commercial cloud services but also offers a feature set that rivals or exceeds commercial products.

Whether you're a photography enthusiast, privacy-conscious individual, or need family sharing capabilities, Immich can meet your needs. As an open-source project with over 74k stars, Immich's future development is promising.

If you're looking for a reliable self-hosted photo and video management solution, give Immich a try. Build your own private cloud media library and regain control of your digital memories.