Immich Is a Self-Hosted Google Photos With AI
Google Photos compresses your images and mines your data. Immich gives you the same experience — timeline, search, sharing, face recognition — on your own server.
What Immich Does
- Photo/video backup — automatic from mobile apps
- AI search — search photos by content ("dog on beach")
- Face recognition — automatic person grouping
- Timeline — chronological photo view like Google Photos
- Albums — shared albums with family/friends
- Maps — view photos on a map by GPS data
- Memories — "On this day" flashbacks
- RAW support — store original camera files
Quick Start
mkdir immich && cd immich
wget https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/.env
# Edit .env — set UPLOAD_LOCATION
docker compose up -d
# Visit http://localhost:2283
Immich vs Google Photos
| Feature | Immich | Google Photos |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | Unlimited (your disk) | 15GB free |
| Privacy | Your server | Google servers |
| AI search | Yes (local ML) | Yes (cloud) |
| Face recognition | Yes | Yes |
| RAW files | Yes | Limited |
| Cost | Free | $2.99/mo for 100GB |
| Original quality | Always | Compressed free |
Why Immich
- Privacy — photos never leave your server
- Unlimited storage — limited by your hard drive
- Original quality — no compression ever
- AI-powered — local ML for search and faces
- 40K+ GitHub stars — fastest growing self-hosted app
📧 spinov001@gmail.com — Self-hosted infrastructure consulting
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