Submitted 5 months ago by cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://immich.app/blog/sync-v2
cross-posted from: lemmy.bestiver.se/post/639591
Does the app clear storage space on your phone ever? Last I looked, it only mirrored pictures to Immich, so everyone’s phone eventually fills up storage. Had to stick with Nextcloud because it deletes after uploading.
You can, manually. Sounds worse than it is.
It doesn’t actively delete but there’s an option to delete from device
I’ve never had any issues with the old setup oddly enough, they talk like it barely functions lol
The app can be basically unresponsive (my experience) as it’s checking to make sure everything is synced. It’s gotten much better over the last few months and the beta experience was wonderful it just broke (app side) a few times and told me an asset wasn’t uploaded even though it was.
I had issues uploading big files to it due to it stopping uploading once app is minimized. As long as app is open on screen, it would upload files with no interruption. New version seems to fix this issue for me.
Interesting, background sync was completely broken on the new beta timeline for me. I had to open the app, and disable then reenable sync every time I had new photos.
Me too, and the new one I didn’t even realize this change happened. I saw there were no breaking changes, updated, and saw “oh, it isn’t synced anymore” so I reselected the folders, it ran a sync check on everything, which took a while, and everything works fine again.
I didn’t even realize there was a difference until now, but I guess there is a start/stop sync switch.
I’m using immich and really like it, but I’m not using the Android app. I have synthing on my phone, and I let syncthing send the photos to my server. Then Immich detects the files in the syncthing folder.
Is there any benefit to using the app? Or would using the app be basically the same thing that I’m doing now?
I’ve tried 3 or 4 times to set it up but I just can’t mount a folder within the same drive for immich to recognize. My next plan is install mint and immich on a separate drive and connect my photo drive as external to upload to immich.
The app let’s you see/search all your photos, I have a ton of photos not on my phone.
Ah, gotcha. That’s a use case I hadn’t thought of. Mine is just the photo backup for my current phone, so when I have my phone with me, I can see all of the photos on the phone itself.
The app is pretty similar to Google Photos. You can search locations, people, etc. It’s cool and works well enough, but I just use it as a secondary backup. Google Photos is still primary for me for now. I’d recommend giving it a try though. You can use the app without syncing anything just to see what it looks like first.
Anyone know of a good managed hosting (or vps) for Immich that doesn’t break the bank? I have about 5TB of photos/videos and I don’t feel safe without a remote backup. I played with self hosting and I really (really) like Immich but I keep Google photos/Drive just to ensure I won’t lose anything.
I use Netcup VPS
Wow, 7tb for $21/month. That’s much better than I’ve been seeing.
Layer 7 storage servers might be what you are looking for.
I have 10tb and just ended up getting a 8 bay Synology. Practically turnkey and the photo app is pretty nice. A work of warning. Once your photos get to around 7tb, the photo system sometimes crashes. I spoke to a dev at Synology and there is a fix coming.
There are products that will let you back up onto your buddy’s free space and vice-versa, but the simplest pricy thing you can do is to drop a NAS at a friend’s place and set up a VPN.
But maybe the monthly fee is okay for now. Maybe consider proton for files instead?
Reverse proxy if your home internet is decent.
50mbps upload is fine for me.
I had it running on a mini PC with 8tb of storage, but I couldn’t get the latency down to where I want it, so I moved it to a VPS.
Problem with that is there is no backup in case of flood/fire/tornado etc.
At such volume it is difficult to come up a service that does not break a bank. Storage is expensive.
Perhaps immich + monthly backups to S3 glacier.
Yeah it sucks because Microsoft charges $10/mo for 6tb.
If you’re fine with self hosting, you can just self host it and backup your local drives to a remote location. That’s what I do.
For backup software, I use Duplicacy. But Veeam, Borg, etc.. would work just fine. For images, since they’re just static files and you don’t really need a version history, you could get away with a scheduled rsync job. Though, technically that leaves you more at risk of ransomeware or something that overwrites your data.
For remote storage, I’d first consider a Hetzner storage box since they are flat-rate pricing and pretty dang cheap at $13/mo for 5TB. You might also consider StorJ, B2, S3, etc… I’d just stay away from any lesser known ultra-cheap storage providers.
Though, technically that leaves you more at risk of ransomeware or something that overwrites your data.
I rsync as well, but use snapshotting on the remote drives. So, a bad rsync would suck but shouldn’t really result in data loss. Ransomware on my local+remote server would of course be very bad…
Continue to self host, create a yearly backup on external harddrive which you keep offline at a trusted family members house.
I remember before, you could use crashplan to easily backup to a computer at a friend’s house and vice versa. Anyone know any similar tools? The biggest requirement would be that it’s easy enough to use that someone who doesn’t know what “self hosting” is can do it.
I do something similar — I have a raspberry pi and a HD, with daily rsync and snapshots (monthly retained indefinitely, weekly retained for a month, daily retained for a week). It’s at family’s house, connected to my home via WireGuard via a VPS. Tailscale (or anything really) would also work here.
It’s a great setup! Just have some watchdog reboot if it can’t talk to home (a simple cronjob with ping -c1 home.lan || reboot or similar).
Even our “slow” 35Mbps upload speed is way more than enough for incremental rsyncs of my Immich library. The initial sync was done in person, though.
Local storage on a VPS is expensive. Personally I self-host and send a backup to Backblaze B2 for offsite (using Rclone).
I use Borgmatic for incremental, deduplicated backups but make sure you save your encryption key somewhere you can access it if your house burns down.
Happy to share my experience. Pros: capable replacement for Google photos Face recognition, location map, etc Support for albums and sharing. Support for reading folders from local network
Roll the dice on these, YMMV ( there are not really cons to me but I work in tech and deal with far worse things)
Actively being developed. Good- things are fixed, new features added. Bad, have to update the server regularly , multiple times some weeks. Cost: free. You get what you pay for. There’s a donation cost, and I’ve been meaning to do that, but for free you may not get the help like for something you pay for. They do have an active community on Discord, so there’s that. Editing in mobile client only. Exposing to the Internet seems a bit tricky if you plan on doing it right ( securely) but you can use tail scale for external access, works fine.
I’ve been happy enough with it to turn off my google photo backup . Oh they do warn you to not to use this as your main backup since it’s under active development. Something what to consider. Hope this helps, happy to answer questions
The only caveat I see is updating the server/app regularly.
Updating is definitely recommended for sure but I find myself waiting between updates. I’m still running 1.134.0 and have been for a while just because I’m not having any issues and haven’t gotten around to it.
I agree with everything else here as I have had the same experience.
What’s tricky about exposing it to the internet?
Depends, if you’re ok exposing an open port to the Internet then its not tricky at all, assuming you know how to port forward and are not double natted. They warn you to not do this though. I second that warning.
This page explains the 3 main options docs.immich.app/guides/remote-access/
Ideally you’d just do a reverse proxy, which is the most complex option. Tasks include getting a host, cert, and setting it up.
I went with tail scale, it was easy but requires an additional client component on every device and one in the server.
If you’re just interested in the synch part, I’ve been using it without any issues for several months. Worked in a pixel 6a, upgraded to a pixel 8 pro and continued right where I left off
I’m really happy to see this post acknowledge speed issues where there are many items, 100k+. I have around this and have always found Immich to be laggy, while others say how it’s the fastest ever.
I will have to give it another go.
I don’t think this feature is live yet, looks like it still needs some internal refinement. At least nothing like this was mentioned in the last few changelogs.
I think you might be right. Others are talking about a rocky start but reading through the recent release notes it seems like a potentially unrelated issue with a release of a new timeline.
Any users here mind sharing their experience?
Immich is great. The iPhone app is not trustworthy with syncing photos and always freezes. It will get there eventually, if you have the patience for crashes on the iOS app. In fact, for the last week the app just hangs on open, which usually means I need to re-install the app and all that. I have a large library of over 60k photos/videos and an older phone, which doesn’t help. Despite these issues, it’s still great. Every other feature works flawlessly. I haven’t tried this new update but I am hopeful and glad they are pushing forward with cleaning up syncing!
Running minipc with immich pointed to NAS drive with photos. I had issues with uploading files in the background on previous version but it seems to be fixed right now.
The Android app finally works the way you’d expect it. The UI no longer lags due to syncing. Syncing is much faster and more reliable.
I’ve tried 3 or 4 times to set it up but I just can’t mount a folder within the same drive for immich to recognize. My next plan is install mint and immich on a separate drive and connect my photo drive as external to upload to immich.
I’m on version 1.143.1
About 30k photos and 2k videos
The web interface was great, the android app (pixel 8) was very slow. Even local assets were slow.
Since update, its way faster. Feels really good, responsive, low latency. Sync and backups have been no issue at all.
Sync on android turned itself off after updating, but I turned it back on, selected the same folders to watch and it processed for a few mins and then everything continued to work with no issues.
As long as you keep the apps up to date both on your devices and the server, I’ve had zero issues with it!
I just wanted something similar to Google photos which i could set and forget, other than being a bit lazy with managing my NAS, it’s been flawless! Plus it’s the benefit that my data is staying with me 🥰
Well after reading this I just went to open the app and it now things none of my tens of thousands of photos are synced to the server, yet the sync icon at the top says there’s nothing to sync. So… not great today lol
You might have to sign out and then in again. There was a bug with the initial release that caused this kind of behavior
I run it on a VPS. Works great across oceans. Biggest gripe is that it doesn’t load local content first. It checks online and then pulls from those thumbnails. So if you have a weak or slow connection, then you’ll get a spinning wheel of death or assets that don’t load properly.
kossa@feddit.org 5 months ago
Question for the Immich users: if I have two users A and B, who share all pictures. Can user A create an album with pictures from user B? That doesn’t work with Nextcloud and is grinding my gears!
happydoors@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yes, you can. You can share an album and collaboratively each add to it or you can share the entire library and take photos directly out of theirs and add to a new album. So I believe you can accomplish what you want. Just tested it with my wife and I’s accounts.
kossa@feddit.org 5 months ago
Awesome, thank you. Then I’ll give it a try, that would solve a headache of several years.