Immich - Selfhosted Google Photos - Using Your Own Directory Structure

A brief overview Immich. Installing the all-in-one docker image on your own server. How to use your own read-only directory structure with external libraries.
Immich Documentation - immich.app/docs/overview/intr...
Immich All-In-One - github.com/imagegenius/docker...
00:00 - Introduction
00:59 - A Look at My Own Instance of Immich
02:59 - Setting Up the Immich Compose File
11:51 - Immich External Libraries
14:24 - More on Settings
18:46 - Adding New Containers to the Monitoring System
20:20 - Adding Immich to Our Dashy Dashboard
21:29 - Separating the Compose File

[@iStig34]

Thank you for making this! It helped me finally get Immich setup with external libraries, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the volumes in the compose file & the external library setup in Immich.

[@somedaysoon33]

Great! Glad this helped, thanks for commenting.

[@tuliogrin]

Amazing work. I was following your steps since the begining of OMV installation :D . I will start over again, just to follow every single thing that you have made :D. Safety and helpful

[@somedaysoon33]

Thank you for the comment, always enjoy hearing from people that find these videos helpful!

[@LebedotNaPero]

Nice guide, thank you!

[@simon1234567ful]

Weirdly, I do not get the "external path" field in immich... any idea if this is due to an update since then? don't know how to get all my photos in otherwise.

[@jeenaparadies]

Very cool, I'm thinking to mount my Synology folders via SMB or something to my server and let it work on my server. What I wonder is, do you reuse the same postgres for all your services? I have about 7 services running on my server which use postgres, and when I use docker then each of them wants to spin up it's own postgres instance, which seems really wrong to me.

[@somedaysoon33]

Yeah, that's how I do it, I only run a single mariadb and single postgres container to cover all my services that require those database types. That's actually the reason at the end of the video I separated the database and redis containers out into their own compose files.

[@RhettThompson-zf1uc]

Great videos, thank you! I was able to set up immich, but when it generates thumbnails and such, they seem to be being store on my OS drive, which is not where I have the docker container folder. I have the docker container folder with immich on a separate drive with more storage. Is there some other setting that I missed within the compose file to make sure that all of the data created within immich is actually stored within the ./docker/immich/?

[@somedaysoon33]

Without looking it up, I believe the thumbnails are stored inside the container in /photos so make sure to bind mount that like ./docker/immich/photos:/photos Hopefully that works for you.

[@RhettThompson-zf1uc]

@@somedaysoon33 Thank you, this worked!

[@marcomoraschi3537]

I saw almost every your video in this playlist. My hero! I like so much your architecture, is really straightforward. I've never seen any other videos about the structure of immich and for me as for you is crucial. And then the question. External library is so usefoul in particular if you have yet your own structure for your hundred of thousands of pic and vid. BUT the automated system of upload can manage duplication. There's some workflow that can achive all these features?

[@somedaysoon33]

That's a good question... I also suffer from having duplicate photos with external libraries and was thinking about fixing it. I do not know how right now, but I'll look into it and if I find a good solution, I will let you know.

[@marcomoraschi3537]

@@somedaysoon33 I'm testing immich CLI, it has hash calculation, but I'm afraid it will upload photos in his own strange kind of structure. As for now external libraries have rescan library, remove offline files, and free to use directories but no deduplication. internal libraries have deduplication, but not the others. Merge of features is absolutely needed, no rescan and no dedup LOL.

[@marcomoraschi3537]

... and I've just installed digikam (docker) working on the same volumes ... try and catch what's the limit that break the immich database.

[@senthilrajanr1]

Tailscale is giving me lot of headache. I think I need docker networking video. I tried to use the remote machine learning option provided by immich. I spin a docker container with immich machine learning in my laptop and connected to Tailscale and my raspberry pi connected to Tailscale which runs immich. So I tried to use the Tailscale ip of my laptop for remote machine learning but the docker container inside my raspberry pi is not able to connect to my laptop. If I curl the laptop immich ML url then I am able to get response but not inside from raspy docker container. Any idea?

[@senthilrajanr1]

I need to somehow connect Tailscale network and docker network bridge

[@IbrahimYounes]

you already lost me at "ssh into our server and head to folder" Can you help us and show us an extreme biggenere step by step for window. pleaaaase !!

[@iamhyrumharris]

At 6:53 is /import/tony/camera an actual location or do you make these up? I'm not sure if im supposed to create a /import folder

[@somedaysoon33]

You can pick any location you want to mount your pictures inside the container, just as long as you know to reference it in the application correctly. The left side of the colon is where the pictures actually are on your server and the right side of the colon is where those pictures are going to be mounted inside of the container and where the application is going to see them when you give it that location. You do not need to make any directories; your pictures will just be there when the container spins up.

[@iamhyrumharris]

Dude awesome, thank you! Definitely subscribed

[@ownerdirector4168]

Hey, does it create copies from the extarnal storage? Will it duplicate files?

[@somedaysoon33]

@@ownerdirector4168 No, it just reads the files from that location; however, it will generate thumbnails and video previews. The thumbnails and video previews will end up somewhere inside the /photos location.

[@ownerdirector4168]

@@somedaysoon33 Got it. Thanks. I was confused from their docs. So "assets" are thumbnails.

[@v000000000000v]

1:33 what is that dog in the middle right lool

[@somedaysoon33]

😂😂😂

[@senthilrajanr1]

Thank you so much, I have been following your guide and installed immich. I am seeing some machine learning related error in containter logs. [Nest] 186 - 04/01/2024, 10:16:15 PM ERROR [JobService] Unable to run job handler (faceDetection/face-detection): Error: Machine learning request for facial recognition failed with status 500: Internal Server Error [Nest] 186 - 04/01/2024, 10:16:15 PM ERROR [JobService] Error: Machine learning request for facial recognition failed with status 500: Internal Server Error at MachineLearningRepository.predict (/app/immich/server/dist/repositories/machine-learning.repository.js:23:19) at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5) at async PersonService.handleDetectFaces (/app/immich/server/dist/services/person.service.js:257:23) at async /app/immich/server/dist/services/job.service.js:147:36 at async Worker.processJob (/app/immich/server/node_modules/bullmq/dist/cjs/classes/worker.js:394:28) at async Worker.retryIfFailed (/app/immich/server/node_modules/bullmq/dist/cjs/classes/worker.js:581:24) I am wondering the docker image you have used in this video(github.com/imagegenius/docker-immich/pkgs/container/immich) has ML server? because when i looked the compose file given by immich , their docker compose looks entirey different and i see the machine learning section there in their docker compose file github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml

[@reesewilson]

1:32 One scary dog

[@AinzOoalG0wn]

"Using Your Own Directory Structure" not quite. Yes you can import from your own directory, BUT, it doesn't KEEP the same structure. Example. If you had a folder for cats and another for dogs, when you add the external libraries it will simply BUNDLE THEM altogether into 1 single big library. So they aren't keeping their original folder directory structure previously. If you want to make them in their separate folders (its called albums in immich), you have to create the a a new album then add the pictures MANUALLY for each and EVERY1. Basically if you had them already sorted in their own folders, you can scrap that since that gets ignored, and they expect you to redo it again but using albums in immich from scratch. But with photoprism, in the album creation they can import based on EXISTING folders to then create ALBUMS based on those quick and easy. That is much better than what Immich does. there are currently unofficial methods to do this with immich, but officialy? not yet afaik

[@somedaysoon33]

Yeah that is true, there is no directory view in immich like there is in PhotoPrism. Personally, I use immich for the timeline view, easy sharing between users, and the image detection and search features. If I want to find a file through my directory structure, I'm going to use my samba shares and actual file manager. And this can even be done with good file managers on a phone... well on Android anyway, I recommend Material Files. Not sure about iOS. But yeah, if a directory view is something that you want in this type of application, then PhotoPrism has it. I run both, but really haven't looked at PhotoPrism for a couple years. At the time it lacked features for users and easily sharing between users. Right now my PhotoPrism instance only holds the photos for my partners late father who was a photographer. It works great for that use case.

[@AinzOoalG0wn]

@@somedaysoon33 agreed. to get around this would be to then use file explorer smb to view via the folder directories. but it still feels a waste. Would be nice to be able to do that from Immich as well because it has a nicer ui. but from a practical standpoint, that is the solution at least for now. Or to use photoprism. or, to use the unofficial immich method to achieve the same thing as what photoprism already supports. That is the situation. Like you said, you can then just limit what you use immich for to say, running smart search of facial search. But as for directory sorting, you would just simply fallback to file explorer smb in windows 11 for that purpose. Setting up albums in immich is just too much trouble for me x-x;