How to Self Host and Install Immich Photo Server on Unraid

We all love self hosting. Immich allows you to have a cloud like photo service that is hosted on your own server in your #homelab. In this video we walk through how to install the Immich docker container along with the Redis and Postgress containers that are needed to run. We also walk through how to automatically upload photos from your mobile device directly to Immich.
Time Codes:
00:00 Into to Immich
02:23 Install Redis, Postgres, and Immich
09:30 Immich UI
11:13 Importing Existing Photos
14:52 Limiting CPU Cores
16:03 A Few Considerations
18:38 Automatic Upload from Mobile App
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[@JackPepal357]

This took me way too long to figure out but they recently changed the container. They allow PostgreSQL14, 15, or 16 but you need the vector extension. The easiest way to do this is to download the regular postgresql14 from the apps page then go back and edit the container. In there you change the repository to say "tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.1.11" from there it will redownload and have the vector extension.

[@kskoba1]

thanks a ton for this, hope the comment gets upvoted so others see!

[@RalfsFav]

It would be nice to have an updated video for this pgvector topic. I think a lot of unexperienced users will get confused.

[@VCS-jevenhouse]

Thank you! I got stuck here as well...

[@TheDadNerd]

Thank you for posting this! This is the correct way now with the change. I pinned your comment so that others can find it easily.

[@NhatLinhNguyen82]

It still does not work for me. Do i need to do something else as well? Immich was working before. I am quite unexperienced user. EDIT: I put into another field, not REPOSITORY thus did not work. Fixed it now, so far so good.

[@laurikvo]

Thank you so much for this video. Followed through and got it working nicely. Also thanks for the comment section for some helpful comments as an added support. I'm currently in the process of scanning my photo library of tens of thousands of pictures I have took over the years. This feels like a breath of fresh air and feels really solid in terms of features vs. ease of use (though I wish the setup would be just all-in-one container but I do understand it may be hard). Time will tell how well the machine learning features will work but I'm really eager to see how this performs. Hope they can keep this cool project going! Definitely trying to support them in this journey.

[@jonathandoe7490]

Subscribed, thank you for doing this in my opinion there have been a shortage of unraid creator content. i needed this.

[@TheDadNerd]

I appreciate that! More unraid content coming soon.

[@SteveHartmanVideos]

This app is fantastic. After playing with it a bit, I became a sponsor. I'd love to see it catch on more. I'm currently spec'ing out a new server build using NVME as the /thumbs and /uploads and then HDD for the originals. They are actively improving the software with updates.

[@SirotkaSlo]

Mind telling me how to do this? I assumes there is no option with immich to have originals on HDD and everything else on the pool.

[@AnFv86]

Can you tell us how do you have done?

[@paulgoodwin3640]

Great Video! One workaround to have the ability to delete photos and maintain better control over things is to create albums from the web interface when you are on the system you've pooled your files on. If you add an album and "add files from computer" it allows you to then delete the photos. Also this worked much better since i had all my photos organized into folders. If importing as instructed in the video, you basically had to start from scratch again with organizing into albums. Another lesson learned is you should have all your photos organized and oriented correctly before putting them on Immich (lack of editing). Thank you so much! I can see this being a great long term solution!

[@DivinaFarms_James]

I just got this up and running last week and am very impressed how quick things load. I'm now on a mission to collect, consolidate, and organize all family photos and videos and setting up a cloud backup with backblaze b2.

[@TheDadNerd]

I’ve been extremely impressed with it too. I personally use Duplicacy to backup certain shares (including photos) to Backblaze and it has been rock solid for years.

[@DivinaFarms_James]

@@TheDadNerd I'm testing out the CloudBerry container, now MSP360 Backup, per your previous video but it looks like it's an annual sub fee though they have a free version that just doesn't have compression or encryption. I'll test out Duplicacy next in my testing. Using the Czkawka container to help remove duplicates photos as part of the photo consolidation.

[@DivinaFarms_James]

@@TheDadNerd What's the reason you switched from CloudBerry to Duplicati?

[@TheDadNerd]

About a year after I made the CloudBerry video I was looking for a project and saw a lot of buzz around Duplicacy so I started playing around with it and found the UI FAR superior to CloudBerry. Both get the job done but I chose the UI convenience.

[@JackJones1]

@@TheDadNerd could you do a video on your Duplicacy setup? Thinking of doing the same.

[@UltimateArts13]

Great video! I could not have done this without you.

[@jeromeb75]

Really like the way your video is and the way you presented it. Thanks for it very usefull content. Please continue. Big up from south of France

[@nl4771]

Great series of videos, I appreciate the work you are putting into them.

[@TheDadNerd]

I appreciate that!

[@maxcarter5922]

Wow, so impressed, just followed your guide and I really enjoy Immich! Thanks a bunch!

[@maullah001]

Thank you for another clear and instructive video. I like your step by step directions( really helpful for a novice like me). I will start experimenting with immich now. Please keep on making more videos related to interesting apps on unraid. 😀

[@TheDadNerd]

Appreciate that and glad it helped! Will definitely continue to put out videos on unraid related topics.

[@NoahBershatsky]

Very helpful! I’ll be working on this tonight!

[@raydavid7736]

Hello, How do you reach your unraid immich library from the internet, using the browser or an app? maybe show an example on how to set it up? would love to learn!!

[@donglobal]

Vry nice video, and a great explanation of how to set up Immich and use it.

[@shalamigri]

For now, I'm linking to my existing photo and video libraries to Immich using the External Libraries feature. I don't want to lose my folder structure that I've built over many years.

[@krisaore]

How do you reach your unraid immich library from the internet?

[@zaclavcanski5195]

I have been looking for a solution to move away from as paid service to store my personal photos on my unraid box. The video was great. Came across a few issues but ended up working it now. My question that I have is, when we use the app to take photos how it differentiates between family members? I know for the external load, I have created separate folders by create the variables in the docker and mapped them to each family members profiles so when they do the upload from google or icloud it will load them into their own folders. Is the app smart enough to create a folder for each family member to move the photos from their phones into their library? Again, great video.

[@GAMMAFahrzeugeGmbH]

Could you show how to configure immich that i can create shared links to send to my friends?

[@satyamgaba]

did you get nvidia gpu to work with immich?

[@Michaelgehtdichnichtsan]

Hello, I have actually done everything as described, but I can't access the web interface at all. Do you not have to do the steps from immich's instructions with Compose.Manager and .env and .yml? Can this have anything to do with the WebUI or should it always work and the other steps would lead to other errors?

[@julianrios8223]

Having the same issue just seeing connection refused

Thanks for an excellent tutorial!

[@mickysanz]

Why is the storage showing the same size as the Docker image? It was showing the same for you too, but after the cut, it seems to be taking up the full storage of the array. I haven't been able to solve it despite having set all the paths (photos, import, etc.) to folder paths within the array. Any help, please?

[@mickysanz]

When using the /photos route in the container, it correctly detects the available space in the array, but if I change it to another one (for example, /fotos), the error occurs. I suppose it will be necessary to apply a global variable to the config so that the route can be modified correctly, right?

[@frankniethardt1813]

Man, that is such a Google Photos clone. Love it... :) I guess if you want to have individual users, you have to limit the import path even more. So that every user only imports its own photos...

[@maidstone53]

Great video, thanks so much!

[@rickjames-lx4gl]

Hey man quick question, I am getting a User has no external path set. After adding the /import external library. Unraid app is set up exactly like your video

[@Frozensoft]

Its called /libraries now

[@Bk13kvi]

GREAT VIDEOS!! Could you make a video on duplicacy for online backup with Unraid? Allways struggled to link my Unraid shares to google drive/dropbox...

[@TheDadNerd]

Thank you! Happy to do one with Duplicacy. I use it with Backblaze B2 as the cloud destination. For me that has been the easiest and cost efficient. Especially in the case of data loss, Backblaze will ship you a hard drive with your data so you don’t spend days/weeks downloading your data. I’ll check into google drive to see if it would be worth documenting. My recommendation now is Backblaze. Either way I’ll do a Duplicacy video though.

[@neilquinn]

Would immich make sense on OpenMediaVault instead of Unraid?

[@eddyparker10]

Question I accidently typed the wrong repository and out of the sudden Postgress was unistalled from unraid. When I installed it again, I had to start Immich from scratch (Getting Started) message. Is there any other way I can recover my older acccount? Thank in Advance!

[@obi_1_kanobi761]

I was wondering if you ever got the GPU acceleration working?

[@K1LLA_KING_KONG]

Im new to immich, seemed good as I explored it. But this is the biggest gripe I have. I have many albums organised in windows folders/user share (unraid). I assumed the import feature would import from the root folder and create albums of the sub-folders. But it just uploads them all without any separation. Heres how it should work, 2 options: 1. Automatically create a folder structure or albums based on the folders from the external libraries. /import/cats creates: cats album 2. Add multiple external libraries that upload directly to a chosen album. external library name: Dogs creates Dogs album And if you didnt want an album, you would just delete the album, leaving the media in the main library

[@BluelightGaming1]

If like to know if you still do ham radio or if you lost interest. Saw your video from 2 years ago but no follow up.

[@SirotkaSlo]

Is this a better option than using docker compose?

[@momento83]

Great video! I've successfully installed the system, and it's running smoothly. I have a question regarding the external library. I currently have a Synology NAS connected to my Unraid server, and I've been using Synology Moments. However, it's quite slow due to the NAS hardware limitations. My plan is to utilize The Immich on my Unraid server, which has more resources and a faster cache. I intend to use the NAS for secondary long-term storage in RAID. I added my Synology NAS as a new external library and ran the import by rescanning all library files. The process is now complete, but I'm hesitant to delete the external library because I received a warning: "Are you sure you want to delete this library? This will DELETE all 40342 contained assets and cannot be undone." Am I correct in understanding that the system didn't actually import my files but rather added the external library to the pool? This wasn't my intention; I want to move/merge/migrate my 200 GiB photo library with this system and no longer use Synology Moments.

[@TheDadNerd]

You are correct, if you added it as an external library it do not do any moving of the files, it simply indexed them where they are currently stored. Meaning if you delete them off the NAS they will truly be deleted and you will not have another copy with Immich. What you are likely looking for is their CLI import tool. I have not personally used it yet but it allows you to bulk import and copy a folder of photos into your immich library it it puts them wherever you told the container to store new photos.

[@Akbar_Friendly_in_Cherno]

Is the search function working for anyone? When i search for anything I get "Failed to search (500 - Internal Server Error)" Also I'm not getting any face matching.

[@JrgenSkullestad]

Hi, same here.. just set this up last night and went here looking for anyone with the same problem

[@Akbar_Friendly_in_Cherno]

@@JrgenSkullestad there was an update issued today. I also had to manually define a path in the container template for /config/machine-learning

[@xraargu6212]

Feels like this is for one user. What do I do with /photos and /import if I already have multiple users on my system with their own photo libraries? Will the immich app just create multiple folders for different users under /photos? How would /import be handled? I assume I do not want to point /import at my existing photos if I have another user on the system.

[@nalthaq]

I am having the same issue. Would creating multiple paths work for different users?

[@kilbeam99]

How can I set immich up to use my Intel QuickSync for transcoding?

[@Frozensoft]

I am not sure why, but when I try to access the Web Ui for the first time it just refuses to connect. Almost like it's not recognizing anything.

[@sidewind131258]

Have you solved the problem ? I'm stuck as well

[@SteveHartmanVideos]

yes, please do an update with QuickSync or Nvidia GPU to explain why and how to use GPU. I'm not sure what that would do for me, other than speed up the import process by building proxy or low res versions of the videos as they are imported.

[@TheDadNerd]

It would mainly be for the transcoding task for videos

[@WDELLAVECCHIA]

Great video, I can't seem to get WEBUI to load, i keep getting error page, any ideas?

[@egovista1991]

check log. prob still installing and aborting in a loop

[@FlyingSucuk]

Thanks so much, without you, i would not able to do it :D Could you please show us how to enable Quicksync ? i would love to get this working

[@TheDadNerd]

Glad it helped! I don't have an intel system to show Quicksync unfortunately.

[@FlyingSucuk]

@@TheDadNerd i got it working ... for others: under "Extra Parameters" put in [MinusMinus]device=/dev/dri (in front 2x - Minus)

[@DW-dm5ur]

i have a question how do you update immich on unraid! i used the template so its not like i can update the docker compose

[@TheDadNerd]

At the bottom of the docker tab where it shows you all of your docker containers there is a check for update button and then an update button once it has checked.

[@DW-dm5ur]

@@TheDadNerd you da man

[@kristjanpirc537]

Does it work on ubuntu?

[@OGH3294]

It would have been awesome if It could work with Google coral TPU. I have been using it for the last month running on my RPi4 since the main proxmox server motherboard died .

[@TheDadNerd]

I agree, those Corals are super useful for projects like this. You can go to their github and see if someone has requested it as a feature and if not you can add it.

[@CodenameDuchess1984]

clear instructions, the must have updated the immich because now it requires postgres15, but it had the same vars so no different than your video

[@TheDadNerd]

Interesting, I just went and checked their latest documents (immich.app/docs/install/unraid) and they are stating to install postgres14 specifically. "In order to install Immich from the Unraid CA, you will need an existing Redis and PostgreSQL 14 container, If you do not already have Redis or PostgreSQL you can install them from the Unraid CA, just make sure you choose PostgreSQL 14." But I am glad you got it working!

[@martinlabat8163]

No, you can use postgres14, there was an issue with the community template README

[@MikeCabralcapsyweb]

has anyone got immich cli to work with this? i am strugling to import my library to immich

[@johnrussell5823]

I have tried this four or five times with no joy at all. My current version of unraid is 6.12.8 :(

[@KeltonNickerson]

Space invader has a postgres instance

[@johnrussell5823]

thanks for the info but I need a good video on how to do this I am new to all of this @@KeltonNickerson

[@jiantjon]

Their logo font is stupid as hell, but I love the app itself.

[@paul8891481]

ERROR [ExceptionHandler] password authentication failed for user

[@birdnes]

got the same error

[@aijokker]

Immich is sold now, find something else