Nextcloud Files is a good alternative for a general drive alternative apart from just photos and videos, is less featureful and smooth than Immich for just media but works better on low end hardware.
Dude, at least provide an actual link and not just a picture.
I didnt even realize at first. That’s wild.
I’ll consider this when my og pixel with the unlimited google photo storage dies.
I envy you so much, my OG Pixel broke down some years ago. I cry every time I think about it
Been using it for about 7 months.
After about 2 months I decided to completely move away from Google Photos and now I only use Immich.
This was a big move for me. I have over 90 000 photos and 1000 videos totalling over 200GB.
The performance is great even on spinning rust, though I am running it on a Ryzen 2700X and 32GB RAM. That said it’s only when the machine learning background tasks take off that that CPU horsepower is used. You really don’t need that much. The recommended specs are fairly small.
Since I first installed it, they’ve added an auto-OCR feature which is a godsend. I can search my entire library for text on a screenshot and it works really well.
Weirdly, the missing feature that really pissed me off on Google Photos and got me to move over was the lack of the ability to search for images not currently in any album. The search functionality is much better on Immich.
I think the only feature I’m missing from Google Photos is the non-destructive editor, and that’s coming real soon (the PR is already merged as of last week).
Sorting in Immich needs a lot of work still. The main thing I’m still missing from Google Photos is being able to manually sort images in an album.
The ocr and find similar images has been amazing for me.
And Apple Photos!
I finished transferring all my family members from Apple photos/icloud to my NAS (which is mirrored at my brothers place) yesterday.
All together we will save ~40 USD per month.
What’s your backup solution? That’s a lot of people’s memories you’re taking management of. I hope you have a good online storage solution for backups
I don’t know what þey’re using, but I’ve been using B2 and I’m exceedingly happy. I’m using just over 1.6TB and paying just over $6/m. I do incremental restic backups of 6 machines every night. Granted, only a couple have any significant changes every day, but my wife’s and my phones are set up upload photos and videos via PhotoBackup to - in our case - a server running Photoprism. We have photo sync to Google turned off on our devices.
B2 gets more expensive if you do a lot of reads, but since my use case includes only enough reading for restic to determine incremental diffs, it’s quite cost effective. I’ve done two full restores of a few hundred GB migrating machines from Debian to Arch, and a dozen selective restores of a handful of files via fuse mounting backups, and only þe full restores noticeably impacted my invoice, and it was still only tens of dollars þat monþ.
I really hope no major controversy comes up around B2, because þey’re one of a very few companies I truly enjoy being a customer of wiþ no reservations.
I can recommend Storage Box by Hetzner starting at 1TB for ~4EUR/month. Been using it for a year or so.
Oh, wow! That’s an amazing deal
Yeah that’s one of the ideas I have in mind. Currently it’s mirrored at my brothers place on his NAS and I am doing regular backups on external SMR usb drives.
I personally use prime for this, since even raw files are unlimited.
know what sits odd with me - and by “with me” i mean “find odd about myself “ - is that i don’t care. about backups of photos. i can directly tie it to my wife dying when i was 31, and having little digital collection then. so i have this odd “if my cloud dies who cares anyway” feeling i can’t shake. :/
I can understand that.
One of the best things I host.
If only memory wasn’t so damn expensive!
Agreed, but recommended specs are >4GB RAM which should be achievable even with a really old secondhand computer or SBC like a Raspberry Pi.
Immich fits on a RPi so not sure one needs a lot of memory for that.
I use Umbrel OS installed in my Rasperry Pi 4 and with Immich in it. But I don’t have a robust/automatic back up solution, I simply copy the Immich docker container into an external ssd drive quarterly. Any suggestion for automatic backups? I am interested in that mirroring option with a different NAS in a different location, what setup is needed for that?
Where are are the photos stored? Offsitee?
On the RPi microSD, on a USB stick, on a SSD,… entirely up what you have available and what you need.
Inneed, like, at least 500gb
That’s gonna set you back like £25
x3 for backups.
RAM is expensive, bulk storage like hard drives haven’t gone up as much. Yet.
Not sure where you are in the world, but 4tb drives are $80? Which like. $80 is a lot when you ain’t got it, but in computer terms it’s probably the cheapest part in the box
RAM’s expensive, storage has gotten pretty cheap, at least for HDDs.
Immich is developed by FUTO
https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
It’s not, it’s funded by FUTO but not developed by them. In fact Immich started development well before being funded by them, and the agreement gives full autonomy of the project to the devs. Here is the announcement
Different to most at least somewhat popular software futo is involved in, immich is foss. It’s AGPL licensed and community driven.
*funded by
That seems like a pretty biased article full of opinion, rhetorical framing and axe grinding.
What is your point? Not the point of the author, they clearly have a viewpoint. I mean why did you think it was relevant that we read what is essentially an opinion piece written like a tabloid article you’d see in a grocery store checkout line?
Ok, to save the rest of you the headache:
The author disliked how they were using ‘open source’ in the past. The author notes in the next paragraph that FUTO have addressed this complaint by linking their, multiple, responses and clarifying their position. The author does not mention or even address their current position, outside of name-calling and rhetorical framing in the link text.
Immediately after, we’re hit with the tl;dr summarizing everything afterward (thank god, because I was already tired of reading by this point). Unfortunately, there is more text.
The author then takes offense that FUTO claimed to give money to several organization. The scare quotes around “grant” are intended to sow doubt in your mind that the author couldn’t otherwise do with facts, words and explanations. Sarcasm and implied eye rolling are doing a lot of heavy lifting in this next section.
The first ““grant”” covered, is musl libc and, after after some research it was determined that FUTO, in fact, gave money to musl libc.
Devastating argument so far, let’s keep going.
Not deterred, the author quotes some text for people who want musl libc to list them as sponsors. This has nothing to do with FUTO claiming (correctly) that they they gave money to musl libc.
An example of the difference, in case it isn’t obvious to you, is that I can say I gave money to Doctors without Borders. If I actually gave money to Doctors Without borders then I’m telling the truth. If I want Doctors without Borders to list me as a sponsor on their site and advertising materials then I have to go through a different process. If I don’t go through this process, it doesn’t invalidate my donation.
In this case FUTO claimed that they gave money to an organization, and the records show that they did in fact give money to the organization. They did not go through the process of asking the organization to officially list FUTO as a sponsor. This is written as if it were an important distinction, but explaining why it is important is beyond the scope of this article, I guess. (I can use sarcasm too!)
Then the author lists a bunch of other projects many of which FUTO claims to have donated. I have also donated to many of these projects and, much like FUTO, they also don’t list me as a sponsor, hmm curious.
Undeterred by reality, the author moves on to character assassination.
Step 1 is to find a bad person, Curtis Yarvin will be the authors choice here. A few quotes to establish their fascist credentials and we’re on to the next step. Step 2 is to find a person from FUTO who has interacted with the bad person. Louis Rossmann once appeared on a show in 2022 and Yarvin was also on that show.
Through the logical power of guilt by association the author has now demonstrated why Rossmann is also bad. The next bit is to criticize Rossmann’s response. Sure, he may have disagreed with Yarvin during the debate and also afterwards wrote a comment further disagreeing with Yarvin but by simply yeeting the goalposts into the past, the author can attack Rossmann for not doing it sooner.
The last few paragraphs are trying to make a huge amount of hay out of this appearance. The author bravely takes a stand against fascism and implies that FUTO should reflect on the author’s opinions of fascism (the implication being that they are not and are therefore, possibly who would say?, fascists themselves).
So, my TL;DR from this article is:
FUTO is bad because they don’t claim to be open source despite not being open source. They also claimed to give money to organizations that they gave money to.
To make matters worse, one person who is neither a developer for FUTO or Immich, once went on a YouTube show 4 years ago with a fascist and didn’t disagree with them strongly enough for the authors taste. If FUTO didn’t want to be fascists, which the author never says only strongly implies, then maybe they should have sent Louis Rossmann back in time so that he could have denounced it more eloquently instead of in a follow-up comment.
As we all know, people who post follow-ups are insincere and should never be trusted.
In his follow-up, the author notes that FUTO has addressed most of the issues that he complained about. However since FUTO still has not explained why Curtis Yarvin still exists and what they are doing about it, combined with the fact that fascism is bad (Source), implies that they should reflect on the fact that fascism is bad.
Since this is not happening and FUTO has done nothing about Yarvin still existing I’ll leave the hanging implication that FUTO, fascism and Yarvin are related in some way.
Fascism.
THE END
Now to be fair it can still be good software. A fork would be nice tho definitely
Oh wow, thanks for that, I had no idea…
