For several years now, I’ve been hosting a nextcloud server for my family which I have used to share and keep backed up a large photo library, along with other shared files. Nextcloud of course also offers other apps that we rely on like the password manager.
This setup has worked well enough but the nextcloud apps for sharing and managing (and enjoying) photos are less than delightful. They keep getting better and I thought I could wait for them but if I am serious about getting my family to get off big tech then I need to offer them a viable alternative to icloud.
So I recently I decided to take a closer look at immich which I have been hearing good things about, also at the nextcloud community conference and fediday in Berlin last month. @bhanu recommends immich too, so it must be good!
Installing Immich
Installing Immich on its own server is a piece of cake using the Quick start | Immich instructions. Initially I installed Immich on its own separate server because of its high server spec requirements and because I wanted to take it for a spin. But then I realized I want to install it directly on the same server with my nextcloud at hetzner, because:
- my nextcloud server specs are beefy (2 vCPU, 8gb ram, 520gb volume that can be increased as needed)
- the existing photos and videos I want to add to immich are already on the nextcloud server, and can be added to immich as external libraries
- I can simply include immich paths in the nextcloud backups that are already set up and working
I realize I am taking a risk here but so far it seems to be working well! Both nextcloud and immich are easy to maintain and keep updated, and performance has been fine. I did turn off all nextcloud apps besides passwords, files, and euro office.
Adding Immich as second app behind nginx alongside Nextcloud
By adding immich to the same server, I needed to depart from the vanilla Nextcloud AIO installation, by installing nginx and use that to provide access to both immich and nextcloud on separate sub-domains. This worked fine but took some extra effort with help from an AI bot. Here’s the runbook.
Account management and SSO using nextcloud
Single sign on is provided via nextcloud’s OpenID Connect app, which means that I don’t have to add/invite family members to also create separate accounts. It works seamlessly. Here’s the runbook.
External libraries from nextcloud → Immich
At first, I mounted the external libraries as read only. But then after a few days of testing Immich features I am really happy with how well it works, and decided to go ahead and give Immich read/write access. This allows me to fully manage the library in Immich, including deleting photos I don’t want anymore as well as editing the “sidecar” details for each image including title, description, and tags.
Immich iphone app and no more icloud backups
Immich provides an iphone app which I’ve been using as a drop-in replacement for Photos. It’s possible to view and manage photos on the phone itself and upload them to Immich, and then also view and manage the photos you have access to on the Immich server.
This means that you can safely turn off icloud backups if you have not done so already. I’ve already had that turned off (and deleted all my photos from icloud) years ago since I started using nextcloud to managing my photos.
You can also delete the Nextcloud App on the iphone, unless you want to be able to access other shared files on the phone which I decided I did not need. This will also simplify things on the syncing/uploading side because now you can just use the Immich app to upload your photos.
