immich-app/immich

What it is

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video management platform: you run the server yourself, point the mobile app or web UI at it, and get an experience comparable to a cloud photo service while keeping the library on your own hardware. It targets people who want to leave iCloud/Google Photos-style services without giving up automatic mobile backup, albums, sharing, metadata browsing and search.

The feature set is broad on both web and mobile: upload and view photos and videos, background auto backup when the mobile app is open, de-duplication, selective album backup, albums and shared albums, raw format support, EXIF/map metadata, search by metadata, objects, faces and CLIP embeddings, LivePhoto/MotionPhoto handling, 360-degree image display on web, partner sharing, facial recognition and clustering, "memories", offline support on mobile, and web-only admin functions plus API keys. The README links a full comparison of mobile versus web capabilities Immich feature table.

The stack is TypeScript on the server side (NestJS), with a Flutter mobile client and a SvelteKit web app, and the project is published under AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 license.

Try it before installing

A hosted demo is available with a public login, so you can evaluate the interface and workflows before deploying anything:

• Open the Immich demo.
• Sign in with demo@immich.app / demo.
• For the mobile app, enter https://demo.immich.app as the Server Endpoint URL demo instructions.

Self-hosting quick start

The README itself does not contain deployment commands; the official documentation holds the installation guides and the hardware/software requirements installation requirements, main documentation. A practical path is:

1. Check the requirements page for CPU, RAM, disk and Docker prerequisites.
2. Install following the documented Docker Compose procedure for your platform.
3. Open the web UI at the address of your deployment, create the first admin account.
4. Install the mobile app on your phone and set the server endpoint to your own instance URL.
5. Enable backup and wait for the initial upload to complete; then verify albums, thumbnails and search work.

Exact compose files, environment variables and upgrade steps are version-specific and live in the docs; follow them there rather than improvising.

Constraints and operational notes

• It is a server you operate: storage, backups, updates and uptime are your responsibility. The README explicitly recommends following a 3-2-1 backup strategy rather than treating the instance as the only copy 3-2-1 backup plan.
• Server-side search and machine-learning features (faces, CLIP, object search) have hardware implications; check the requirements page before sizing a machine.
• Mobile auto backup runs when the app is opened; it is not an always-on background daemon.
• Administrative functions and API keys are web-only; some features such as 360-degree display are also web-only, while offline support is mobile-only.
• AGPL-3.0 applies if you modify and redistribute or run a modified version as a network service.

HotRepo's take

The repository sits at roughly 118k stars and 7.5k forks, and appeared on the all-language daily list in early July 2026 with gains of 198, 475 and 470 stars across three recorded days, then again in mid-to-late August 2026 with daily gains between 128 and 175. On 2026-11-03 it recorded 112 stars in the TypeScript daily list at position 11. These are separate snapshots, not one continuous series, so they support "consistently active" rather than a single spike narrative.

The HN record is the more interesting signal: the 2023 launch thread, the v2.0.0 stable-release thread in October 2025 and the 3.0 thread in July 2026 each drew hundreds of comments. One recurring complaint is onboarding communication — a commenter on the 3.0 thread called it an amazing open-source project that "completely fails to explain to a newcomer what it is" HN comment — while users describing their own deployments report running it behind a VPN alongside other self-hosted services after moving off paid cloud storage HN comment. That mix of heavy adoption and unclear positioning is worth knowing if you are evaluating it for non-technical family members.