Immich: the self-hosted Google Photos replacement
Immich gives you Google-Photos-style backup and browsing for your own photos and videos, on your own server. What it does, who it suits, and how to run it.
Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup platform built to feel like Google Photos — but where the photos live on your server and the mobile app uploads to it automatically. It has become the most popular open-source answer to "I want out of Google Photos."
What it does
Automatic mobile backup — an iOS/Android app watches your camera roll and uploads new photos and videos in the background.
A fast, modern web UI with a timeline, albums, favourites, search, and a map view of where photos were taken.
Faces and object search — on-device-like ML features (face recognition, "dog", "beach") so you can search your library by content, not just date.
Shared albums for families, and multi-user support with separate libraries.
RAW and Live Photo support, plus broad video format handling including transcoding for the browser.
Immich vs PhotoPrism
Both self-host photos. Immich is closer to a backup tool — it wants to be the destination your phone uploads to, and it models itself on Google Photos' UX and features. PhotoPrism is more of a library and search tool — excellent tagging and AI search over a collection you assemble. If your goal is "replace Google Photos including the phone backup," Immich. If your goal is "organise and search a big existing collection," look at both. See /app-hosting/photoprism for the alternative.
Where to use it
A home server or a VPS. Immich runs as a set of containers (server, machine-learning, PostgreSQL, Redis) so it likes at least 4 GB RAM, ideally 6–8 GB, and disk sized to your library — photos and video add up fast. ML features (facial recognition, smart search) are CPU-hungry; a bit more CPU or a GPU helps, and they can be turned off if you only want backup and browsing.
The one thing not to skip
Backups. Immich is a single place your memories live; treat it that way. Back up both the Postgres database and the upload directory, to somewhere that is not the Immich server. A photo library is exactly the kind of data you never get back.
How to get running
VPS or home server with enough RAM and disk; a domain and TLS for the web UI.
Deploy the official Docker Compose stack (server + ML + Postgres + Redis).
Install the mobile app, point it at your domain, and turn on automatic backup.
Let the first upload finish, then configure and test backups before importing everything.
Optionally enable facial recognition and smart search once the library is in.
Specs and the plan recommendation: /app-hosting/immich. Immich is AGPL-3.0.