Can I use it without self-hosting?

There's a public demo at demo.immich.app you can browse, but the project is designed to be self-hosted for actual use.

Does it support multiple users?

Yes, including administrative user management, partner sharing, and public album sharing.

Is there a mobile app?

Yes, with automatic backup of the camera roll, offline viewing, and support for RAW formats and Live/Motion Photos.

How does search work?

You can search by EXIF metadata, detected objects, recognized and clustered faces, and CLIP-based search, on both mobile and web.

Do I still need a separate backup strategy?

Yes. The README explicitly recommends following a 3-2-1 backup plan for your photos and videos regardless of using Immich.

immich: Self-hosted photo and video backup with facial recognition and search

Immich is a self-hosted platform for backing up, organizing, and browsing your own photos and videos instead of relying on a cloud provider's photo service. A mobile app automatically backs up your camera roll when it's opened, and a web interface lets you browse, search, and manage the same library, with support for multiple users on one instance. It's built for people who want to own their photo storage (on a home server, NAS, or their own cloud VPS) without giving up the conveniences of a commercial photo app, and it's released under the AGPLv3 license.

Key features

Automatic mobile backup: uploads photos and videos from the mobile app automatically when the app is opened, with duplicate prevention and the option to back up only selected albums.
Search by metadata, objects, faces, and CLIP: find photos using EXIF data, detected objects, facial recognition and clustering, or natural-language-style search, available on both mobile and web.
Multi-user support with sharing: administrative user management, partner sharing, and public link sharing of albums.
Format and asset handling: supports RAW formats, Live Photos and Motion Photos (backup and playback), and 360-degree image display on the web.
Organizational tools: albums and shared albums, archive and favorites, stacked photos, folder view, a global map view of geotagged photos, and "memories" that resurface photos from previous years.
Access control and integration: OAuth support and API keys for programmatic access, plus a user-defined storage structure for how files are laid out on disk.
Offline mobile access: the mobile app supports offline viewing of your library; the web client does not.
Wide language support: the interface is translated into many languages through a community-maintained Weblate project, with the README linking translation status and separate localized README files for languages including Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Turkish, Chinese, Ukrainian, Russian, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malayalam.

Ideal use cases

Immich fits people and families who want to move off a commercial cloud photo service while keeping the automatic-backup experience they're used to, typically running it on a home server, NAS, or a self-managed VPS. It also suits small teams or households that want shared albums and partner sharing without a third party hosting the underlying data, and anyone who specifically wants face and object search over their own photo library instead of trusting a cloud vendor with that processing.

It's not the right fit if you don't want to run and maintain a server yourself. Self-hosting means you're responsible for your own storage, backups, and uptime, and the README itself warns to always keep a proper 3-2-1 backup of your photos and videos regardless of what tool you use to view them. It's also not a general file storage or document tool. It's built specifically around photo and video libraries, so if that's not your primary need, a general self-hosted storage tool would fit better. Non-English-speaking users and communities are also reasonably well served given the number of languages the interface has already been translated into.

Installation

The README doesn't include installation commands directly. It points to the documentation site for setup, at https://docs.immich.app/install/requirements for requirements and installation steps. A hosted demo is also available at https://demo.immich.app (login [email protected] / demo) if you want to try the web interface before installing anything, and the mobile app can point at that same demo server for testing.

Since Immich runs as a set of coordinated services rather than a single binary, self-hosting it means following the documented setup for your platform rather than a single install command. Check the linked requirements and installation guide for the current, platform-specific steps. For a look at what's planned rather than just what's shipped, the README also links a public roadmap, and translators can find guidance for contributing new or improved translations through the developer documentation.