Would this flow work with Immich & Syncthing to copy images and auto upload and delete?

⁨33⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Mir@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I would like to upload new images to Immich from my phone and delete them later on, so I was thinking about this flow:

I will Sync files to the server using Syncthing
I will Copy files from the Synced folder to an Immich Consume folder, (not sure how to copy only new files (maybe use created date)). Then delete images that are older than 30 days which will remove them from my phone.
I will upload to Immich using Immich CLI (?) which will use the delete after upload flag.

Basically:

(1)

Camera, Screenshots, etc =Syncthing=> SyncthingImageConsume/{Folder}

(2)

{Script on SyncthingImageConsume}

SyncthingImageConsume/{Folder} =CopyNewFiles=> ImmichConsume/{Folder}

Then delete older than 30 days.

(3)

{Script on ImmichConsume}

Upload to immich and then delete

would this work? and is there a better way to do it? any tips?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

barbara@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Better ways to upload images to immich?

Maybe it’s a weird idea but did you try immich’s upload feature?

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t want to manually upload pictures, I want new photos to be uploaded to Immich automatically and deleted from my phone after 30 days.
  
  Also the Immich backup on android is very limited, I can’t find all folders in the list it’s giving me
  
  source
  - ShortN0te@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Why not file a bug report when it does not find all your photos?
    
    Also may file a feature request to delete photos after set period from your device via immich?
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just set up something similar a couple weeks ago because I wanted to upload named album folders as albums into immich.

Workflow is: Syncthing to sync phone folder to folder on unraid server. 2nd syncthing instance to sync above folder to “photo albums” folder Immich-go cron job runs hourly to upload photo albums folder to immich

I used immich-go because the CLI upload with album tag kept failing and apparently it’s a common issue so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ immich-go worked first try.

Now all my photos are uploaded as albums with no manual input:

Image

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you. First person to not advise me to use something other than immich for this. And thanks for the heads up about the CLI, can you share the upload script?
  
  source
  - couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure… I’m on unraid…
    
    >cd /mnt/user/appdata_docker/immich/immich-go ./immich-go -server=http://192.168.20.1:8080 -key=IMMICH_API_KEY upload -create-album-folder -when-no-date=FILE /mnt/user/photo_libraries```
    
    source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Can you tell me about the syncthing set up, how do you have the folders set up to sync?
  
  for instance I have DCIM with folders inside it, do you sync the whole folder or for each folder inside it like “Camera, Screenshot” etc?
  
  source
  - couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Image
    
    A picture if that makes it easier
    
    source
  - couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I created a specific folder to move family photos to that syncs with the server, because i use my phone for work pictures too and I don’t want those to end up on my immich timeline. So I manually move photos to that folder, but that’s the only manual intervention for me.
    
    I set up the album handling the way I did because my wife spent a lot of time sorting stuff into folders and she wanted the organized folders to carry over to immich.
    
    I do separately sync the DCIM folder to server with syncthing as well, just as a backup, but those don’t go to immich.
    
    So for immich destined items it looks like:
    
    Manually move pics to phone “family photos” folder
    
    Syncthing-ext syncs phone folder “family photos” to server folder “syncthing_folders/my_family_pics”. (Also syncs phone folder “DCIM” to server folder “syncthing_folders/phone_pics_backup”)
    
    Syncthing-int (second syncthing instance on different port, so syncthing-ext and syncthing-int see each other as different devices and can work on the same folders) syncs server folder “syncthing_folders/my_family_pics” to some other designated server folder to work with immich… for example “photo_libraries/my_family_pics”
    
    The script I shared runs on server folder “photo_libraries/”
    
    It’s set up this way because I have syncthing-ext syncing with a bunch of external devices and this way i can funnel just the photo folders into one photo library folder to run the script on.
    
    If you have more questions it’s cool… I never get to talk about this stuff with anyone who appreciates it 😶‍🌫️
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Esca@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I understand you. I also don’t use the auto upload feature as it’s creating more problems for me to solve than what it fixes. I already had Syncthing running anyway so I currently use that combo (except I manually sort through my photos on a semi-weekly basis before I upload it to Immich).

If you want, I can cook up a little Python script you could stick into Cron to do all the tasks you described. I haven’t worked with the Immich CLI yet but I’m sure I can figure it out. Send me a message if you’re interested. I will probably use it myself as well.

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  (except I manually sort through my photos on a semi-weekly basis before I upload it to Immich).
  
  I think that would be a better approach if I weren’t very lazy, I think even after the initial run I could do that since I don’t take lots of pictures but I was thinking about a fire and forget sort of thing.
  
  If you want, I can cook up a little Python script you could stick into Cron to do all the tasks you described.
  
  Thank you so much, I asked ChatGPT and it generated the bat file below (since I’m using Windows) do you think this would work?
  
  @echo off REM Change directory to your photos folder cd /d "C:\path\to\your\photos\folder" REM Sync files to backup folder robocopy . "C:\path\to\your\Camera_Backup" /mir /xo REM Delete files older than 15 days forfiles /p "C:\path\to\your\photos\folder" /s /m *.* /d -15 /c "cmd /c if @isdir==FALSE del @file" REM Upload assets using immich cli immich upload "C:\path\to\your\Camera_Backup" -r -a --delete
  
  source
  - Esca@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ah, I am not familiar at all with Windows, so I honestly wouldn’t know. Does the Immich CLI even work on Windows?
    
    But going off by the comments and the parts I understand, I guess it could kinda work, assuming that the arguments are all correct. Although, it will try to upload all photos every time, regardless if Immich already has them or not. Which is not ideal but I believe Immich will filter out duplicated photos. But it’s worth checking if it’s indeed smart enough to do that.
    
    For the Immich command it will upload the files to an album called “Camera_Backup”. Not sure if that’s what you want. If not, then remove the -a flag. If you want to upload it to a specific album, then instead add ‘-A albumname’
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why such a mess? Either use immich with its upload or use syncthing (I use the latter).

Immich sucks in providing folder based albums, but excells in phone photo backup and sync!

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I want to use immich mostly for viewing
  
  source
  - rambos@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You can use external libraries in immich. You just point to any folder on your disk and you can see everything, but can’t edit files. Timeline, maps, face recognition, search,…everything works and you can still keep folder organized images.
    
    Personally I use both. Auto upload everything from my phone (camera, screenshots, etc) and also using external library as folder structured pictures from nextcloud. It doesn’t create albums automatically tho
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There are better options for viewing… Imho
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
rambos@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Feels like you want a regular Immich auto upload and a custom script that deletes old images from your phone. I can’t help with that script, but maybe also I missunderstood what is your goal

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  More or less yes. Except that the auto upload is limited I can’t figure out why most of albums aren’t showing
  
  source
  - rambos@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Don’t expect albums in immich after upload. Immich will just put everything in timeline (by default) and you should make albums manually.
    
    Also, make sure you have exactly the same app version as server
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Lifebandit666@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Could Rsync help? In OMV I can Rsync shares and it will check the folder I’m syncing to and just upload new files.

So you could Syncthing to the server folder then Rsync that folder to your Immich at xam every day, then just manually delete things from your Syncthing folder occasionally.

source
- Mir@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Oh that might be perfect. I will look into it, thank you!
  
  source