Migrate Existing Google Photos to Immich using ImmichGo and Google Takeout!

[@MichaelHumbles]

Well as I slowly move away from Google services I can at least still appreciate their algorithm which brought me here. Thanks for the video, hopefully this makes my transition a bit easier.

[@ChuckBuilds]

I am currently on that journey! What file service are you using? Nextcloud just isn't doing it for me right now

[@MichaelHumbles]

@@ChuckBuilds My needs are met with a network share and VPN when I need them remotely. When I eventually get situated on new hardware and OS (Debian 12+Docker) I may look around for a file service

[@ChuckBuilds]

@@MichaelHumbles Yep, Tailscale & Samba is what I'm leaning on. Looking at Syncthing but the jury is still out on if I'll keep it around.

[@TanujRao]

@@ChuckBuilds moved from Nextcloud to Seafile for a while now, super fast and it meets all my needs without doing all the extra stuff nextcloud hub does.

[@jajajajajaja867]

Amazing, gonna do this tomorrow. I have about 12k photos on iCloud and 30k on google photos. Can’t believe how well made Immich is and how it works so beautifully. It will automatically download any iCloud Photos not stored on the device to upload them to my server during the backup process. Once this is done then I’m gonna move all my google takeout photos and have them all stored safe and sound in my home server. Exactly what I wanted

[@xandexer99]

Very helpful video! I'm a noob, and I'm really glad I found your video to help me migrating my photos from Google Photos to Immich. Keep up the good work man!

[@miguelfonseca1980]

same here ;) thanks

[@nushankodikara]

Hey Chuck, I don't know how but you released this video as soon as I needed it

[@ChuckBuilds]

I'm glad to hear it!

[@BUDM4N789]

this is too true

[@susovitd]

Same here

[@lemihari5861]

Same🙏

[@GregTheGuitarist]

Thank you so much! 😁 After severalk hours of troubleshooting your video has showed me that.. I have been using source code instead of the release version compiled .exe file 😅 No wonder I had trouble to run the .go files without Go lang installed on my system.. Once again, big thanks!

[@ge0law]

awesome guide. still waiting for my google takeout links to download my photos, but I've been looking to de-google now for a while. Found immich today and already pulling from my iphone/icloud, so no more manual backups.

[@amithimani8163]

Nice work chuck , I used Synology photos for my backup.

[@KevinXavier-vq3bg]

fantastic effort, friend, much appreciated 👌🤝👍

[@rkbest9783]

Hey Chuck, great tutorial.

[@itov1590]

OMG I'm speechless.

[@ChuckBuilds]

Hope it worked for you!

[@JeffKogut]

I have Immich running on Unraid in a docker, pointed to a share called 'Pictures'. 1. Will Immich-go upload .jpg files to this specified 'Pictures' location? Will they all dump into the root? 2. If it does, does it incorporate the .json metadata into the .jpg? Will it also copy the .json file? 3. Or, does this just always read from the takeout-*.zip files every time you access one of the photos from within Immich?

[@ChuckBuilds]

Good questions Jeff, First I want to say I'm not an expert or even that well versed in ImmichGo so with that: 1. Immich-Go interacts with your Immich container and based on your description will put it in the Pictures share. Immich-go won't know the difference between your root and other shares, it just talks to immich and says " here ya go, you know where to put these". 2. I'm not entirely sure about this. I am not familiar with .json files being associated with my images. I checked my immich libraries and don't see any .json - but my meta data on the photos is correct. 3. No, It processes and copies each one. You can delete the takeout archive when you are done. (i'd probably save it as a backup!) Immich should sort and store it in your photos share.

[@jojokispotta]

Could you share the time it took for the second command (without dry run) to run? We can get an estimate of 100gb-150gb photo upload. I understand that thumbnail and post-processing will take a separate time.

[@ChuckBuilds]

It took like 15 minutes to run when checking the non-cut recording. Depends on your internet speed, disk speed, and destination. Shouldn't take too long though

[@sike1451]

Thanks for the Video!

[@lemihari5861]

ThankYou Man! This is SuperCool🎉🎉🎉

[@guilhermearaujo8749]

Thank you bro! you save me a lot time!

[@zaclavcanski5195]

I have Immich running on my unraid server. When setting up Immich, I created separate directories for each of my family members for our google photos that I have downloaded from takeout. My question is, is it possible to when using immich-go to upload the google photos albums, photos and video into specific directories instead of having all the photos in the import default location? I have mapped the Path:/import to /mnt/user/Media/GooglePhotos/ where there are 4 folders, one for each of our family members. The other Path:/photos is mapped to /mnt/user/Media/ImmichPhotos and that only has library which was default. When we login and start uploading photos from our mobile devices, will Immich create a folder for each user? Thanks.

[@ChuckBuilds]

That's an interesting use-case! I honestly am not sure how to accomplish that, I would suggest checking the immich github and support channels on that

[@HOWYOUDOIN884]

What is the advantage of self-hosting? I just want to find something better than GP which is just to have folders instead of just albums. Want to be able to MOVE files between folders.

[@ChuckBuilds]

The advantage is you have control of your photos and data, no additional fees, and aren't reliant on a 3rd party company. The disadvantage is that it's in active development and will have the occasional issue or you might not be able to get 100% uptime

[@l0gic23]

Thanks for covering this!

[@guimondcloutier]

Can we use this in the same casaos server with 2 different Google photo accounts abd keep the pictures separate?

[@ChuckBuilds]

I would think so! You could just run 2 containers with different file paths

[@HistoryAmazigh]

Thanks Chuck. I have a (stupid) question: so i have been struggling to uplaod my existing (local) library to immich (ive read about the cli but my knowledge level isn't there yet). Is it possible to use the above method by zipping my existing photos and renaming the folder az takeout-xxx ? Or the google zipfiles do contain some necessary files for this to be achieved? Thanks again

[@ChuckBuilds]

That’s an interesting approach. I’m not sure, I don’t see why not as long as you follow the same file structure for albums. How are you hosting Immich, is the intake folder not working?

[@smaiderman2]

Hi! Thanks for the video. Will this method keep all metadata?

[@ChuckBuilds]

I think so! Not positive on “all” but it retained date and locations

[@sale666]

How did you mount the ntfs drvie to immich?? Im using portainer still camt make it work

[@ChuckBuilds]

I think you’d just add a volume in portainer, not necessarily mount a whole drive. I’ve been using Unraid for this so I’m not immediately sure on how that would work

[@sale666]

@@ChuckBuilds so the drive is mounted to a volume and than you mount this volume in containers od choice this should be the general idea right?

[@FreeWind6]

This is a really useful video! Thanks! But I didn't understand it a bit. If I run this command 2 times, will it copy the photo 2 times and make duplicates? Or will the program check the files for duplicates and not copy them again?

[@ChuckBuilds]

It'll check for duplicates and won't copy them again. The first time I ran was a dry run to make sure it didn't have errors then the second time was the real run.

[@RobertDawson85]

Great video and Very helpful thank you

[@codys846]

it worked so easy thank you for the video

[@EdgardoFlores-nk1lb]

amazing video a lot of information, do you now how can i do this in a ubuntu server?

[@ChuckBuilds]

just run docker or portainer

[@EdgardoFlores-nk1lb]

I already have it running just wanted to transfer my google photos but I don’t know how to use the Immich go

[@EdgardoFlores-nk1lb]

@@ChuckBuilds i follow everything in your video but when i run the command all it does is give me this error the image file C:\user\xx\Desktop\immich go\immich-go.exe is valid, but is for a machine type other than the current machine

[@FurtzBR]

i got stuck in cmdlet, it says windows can find it in terminal, someone help?

[@ChuckBuilds]

I'm not really sure what this means. What are you trying to do that causes this error?

[@lukekahms1672]

I had the same Problem, running it as admin was successful

[@MaticResnik]

i got this back: invalid character '

[@ChuckBuilds]

Not sure what is causing that. I’d make sure you don’t have any invalid characters in the file path but can’t say much more than to maybe try again?

[@nachete9752]

Great video, thanks!

[@jasonp9951]

What if we already have a file structure set up? I am trying to import from a synology (because synology photos sucks). I thought to try "upload -dry-run -create-albums -use-album-folder-as-name takeout-*.zip" but not sure about the "takeout-*.zip" since their isnt a zip file, they are all uncompressed. Should I go up one level and load from the master folder? Thanks for any help!

[@jasonp9951]

I am thinking I may need the Linux installer and to go through ssh to my synology for this to work for me, keep getting "not recognized cmdlets" on windows

[@ChuckBuilds]

@@jasonp9951 If they'r aren't compressed and they're not coming from Google Photos, I'd try to use the Immich CLI : immich.app/docs/features/command-line-interface

[@paulmardis8973]

Thanks for the vid!!!

[@RonieRuas]

Amazing! thanks a lot!

[@slow_Jo]

is there a solution for iCloud photos?

[@ChuckBuilds]

It’ll import from your iPhone, I think you just need to have them on your device temporarily

[@miguelfonseca1980]

I really love this video , but I have a question if you or anyone can help me. If you user immichgo I saw in the dry run it removes the duplicates and that is amazing, but have you by mistake tried to upload the same files (like 2 or 3 files) tha you know it's already in immich , will he still upload them or say it's already on the server ? Cheers

[@ChuckBuilds]

I just tested this, it will process the upload then Immich says it skipped it because it is a duplicate. Hope that helps!

[@miguelfonseca1980]

@@ChuckBuilds thank you very much for the info 🙏

[@SLmDonDada]

I'm getting zero albums created after following this method. I'm not sure why. I ran the script with dry run option and then without. I got a few "can't stack image" errors at the end but everything else seemed to upload great (thanks!). I re-ran the upload a 2nd time, didnt get the errors, immich saw nothing new or of a better quality than existing assets so it did nothing....and didnt create albums again. re-creating albums would be too painful for me. any advice ?

[@ChuckBuilds]

I'm not sure why that would be. How is it structured in your google take out? I found this setting in the immichgo github " -create-album-folder Generate immich albums after folder names (default FALSE)." If you have folders for albums, maybe try setting this to TRUE

[@SLmDonDada]

@ChuckBuilds I think I figured out my problem. When I go on google takeout there is no button to include the albums... not initially. Today I went to do takeout, got distracted, came back 10 mins later and the "include albums" button magically appeared. For some reason, I have to wait some time for that option to show up. I'm downloading it all again now to see if it will be included this time.

[@SLmDonDada]

apparently that was not the problem. Uploaded the takeout files that supposedly now included album info but still zero albums created on immich. I'm gonna keep trying more of the options with the script that are shown on github

[@goodcitizen4587]

Great! Sub'd!