Immich is designed to be a high-fidelity, completely open-source alternative to proprietary mobile photo vaults. If older tools like PhotoPrism feel sluggish or lack smooth mobile backup integrations, Immich offers a lightning-fast, modern app experience that mirrors your phone’s native photo libraries perfectly.
Why Host Immich?
- Seamless Mobile Backups: Official iOS and Android applications let you automatically back up photos and videos from your phone directly to your self-hosted server in the background.
- Ultra-Responsive UI: Browse, search, and view thousands of photos with zero loading delays, thanks to a high-concurrency Node.js and C++ backend.
- Machine Learning Built-In: Automatically cluster photos by facial recognition, detect objects, and perform semantic searches (e.g. searching “dog” or “beach”) completely locally.
Getting Started
Immich maintains a highly structured, official Docker Compose setup. Because of its machine learning features, running it on a droplet with at least 2GB or 4GB of RAM is highly recommended!