Google Photos is one of the best solutions for storing your photos in the Cloud. It enables you to upload, optimize and share your photos with anyone. But unfortunately there is no way to host your own Google Photo instance.. until now! Enter Immich!
The Google Photos integration on Android is seamless, and there’s even an iOS app that works great. Google Photos enables you to upload your pictures in original (high) quality, or their own storage saver format which slightly compresses your images. For many users this is the ultimate tool and there’s no replacement. But lately I found out about Immich which amazed me so much I already donated to the project.
The downside of Google Photos is, of course… using Google. Lots of privacy and security enthusiasts like to host their own photos for multiple reasons. One of them, which scares me the most, is complete account lock-out if you accidentaly upload content which is flagged inappropriate by Google. Also hosting all your photos in original quality can take up quite some space and therefore you’ll have to pay for Google One storage.
Numerous great alternatives have popped up such as Photoprism. But now there is Immich. Immich is a great tool specifically developed to be an alternative to Google Photos. Check out some screenshots of the UI.
Installation is easy. Check-out their documentation, or follow these instructions to host your own instance.
- Get the docker-compose file
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/immich-app/immich/main/docker/docker-compose.yml - Get the .env file
wget -O .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/immich-app/immich/main/docker/.env.example - Populate
UPLOAD_LOCATIONwith your preferred location for storing backup assets - Populate a secret value for
JWT_SECRET. You can use the command below to generate a secure keyopenssl rand -base64 128
Make sure to put quotes around the JWT_SECRET in your docker-compose file - Save the file, and run docker-compose up -d to launch!
- Open
http://<your-ip>:2283/in a browser to get started by creating an admin user. - Download the Android or iOS app.
Enjoy backing up your photos safely and privately on your own server!
