Immich

App in the BluixApps catalog

What it is

Immich is the self-hosted Google Photos replacement — a high-performance photo and video management platform with mobile apps (iOS + Android), automatic phone backup, ML-based face recognition, object detection, smart search, and shared albums. Built for users who refuse to hand their family memories to Google.

Reached production-grade stability in 2025 with v1.x — the project that finally made "leave Google Photos" a non-painful migration.

What it's for

  • Family photo archive — mobile auto-backup, server-side organization, browse decades of history
  • Privacy-first photo storage — GDPR-compliant, on your own infrastructure, no telemetry
  • Shared albums for events — weddings, vacations, school groups, without Meta / Google account
  • AI search without cloud — "photos of dogs on a beach" via local CLIP model, no upload to Google
  • Multi-user households — separate libraries with shared spaces

Who it's for

  • Privacy-conscious families — Google Photos UX without giving Google ML access to your kids' photos
  • Photographers & videographers — self-hosted asset library with RAW support, fast browsing of large archives
  • Households with mixed iOS + Android — single backup target both platforms hit reliably
  • Journalists, activists, gov staff — source-protection workflows where US cloud storage is a non-starter
  • Storage-rich self-hosters — NAS or large-disk VPS owners wanting consumer-grade UI for personal media

Why teams pick Immich over alternatives

  • Real mobile parity — iOS + Android native apps with auto-backup, not a half-baked web shell
  • ML pipeline — face clustering, object detection, OCR, smart search via Open CLIP
  • External library support — point at existing folder structures, no forced re-import
  • Memories — "On this day", year reviews, photo carousels matching Google Photos UX
  • Active development — weekly releases, ~50k+ GitHub stars
  • AGPLv3 license — commercial use clear

Integrations

  • Native mobile apps — iOS (App Store) + Android (Play Store + F-Droid) with auto-backup
  • External libraries — read-only mount of existing /photos folder structures, no import needed
  • Object storage — S3-compatible backend for offloading originals (MinIO, Backblaze B2, R2, AWS S3)
  • Identity — OAuth (Google, GitHub, Microsoft, Authelia, Authentik)
  • Desktop sync — WebDAV protocol for any client (CyberDuck, FileZilla, native OS mounts)
  • ML providers — local CLIP for object/face; optional Whisper for video transcription
  • API — REST + WebSocket for custom integrations / scripts / dashboards

Notable users & community

  • 50k+ GitHub stars (one of the top self-host project of 2024-2025)
  • Featured constantly on r/selfhosted as "the project that made me leave Google Photos"
  • Strong Discord, active reddit, regular release cadence with public roadmap
  • Acquired by FUTO foundation (2024) — sustainable funding without compromising open-source
  • Multi-language UI maintained by community across 20+ locales

Tips & operations

  • Mobile auto-backup defaults to WiFi-only — explain to users to avoid mobile-data shock when phones backup gigabytes
  • ML container CPU-only OK up to ~50k photos — beyond that, GPU acceleration (CUDA) becomes mandatory for tolerable face/object processing
  • Use pgvecto.rs not pgvector — Immich >= 1.118 requires the pgvecto.rs Postgres extension; default Postgres image won't work
  • External library = read-only mode — useful for legacy /photos archives mounted without import; doesn't risk modifying files
  • Backup hook covers DB only by default — opt-in for the upload volume (originals can be 100s of GB; sized differently from app-state)
  • Enable HEIC transcoding — iPhone HEIC isn't browser-friendly; the ImageMagick fallback transcodes on demand if enabled

What we ship in BluixApps

  • Docker compose: Immich server + ML container + Postgres (with pgvecto.rs) + Redis
  • Pinned ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:v1.123.0, weekly upstream tracking
  • Storage volume at /usr/src/app/upload — sized per your VPS disk allocation
  • HTTPS via Let's Encrypt; mobile apps work via the same hostname
  • Admin user with random password on first boot
  • ML container runs CPU-friendly by default; GPU accel available on Dedicated tier
  • Backup hook covers Postgres + the upload volume (the photo originals — opt-in due to size)
Read this app's deep dive on bluix.app ↗

Get this app — pick a BluixApps plan

Same catalog. Scaling tenant isolation, white-label and support tier.

TierTenantsCatalogSupportWhite-labelMonthly
Stacks119 curated stacksStandard$19/moDetailDeploy
Starter10Full catalogStandard+$15–25/mo$49/moDetailDeploy
Pro25Full catalogPriority bugfix+$15–25/mo$149/moDetailDeploy
Growth100Full catalogPriority bugfix+$15–25/mo$349/moDetailDeploy
Scale500Full catalog7-day window+$15–25/mo$799/moDetailDeploy
EnterpriseUnlimitedFull catalogPriority 7-dayBundled$1,499/moDetailDeploy

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