fshr

The musings of a grumpy hairless ape

Photo Storage

Introduction

I run Immich for local home photo storage. This is not a replacement for using Apple iCloud, but as an additional copy of my/our photos in case there’s ever any issue with iCloud, or at some point the US Administration decides that the American people are the only ones allowed to use US services and iCloud vanishes.

Immich Setup

Hosting

I currently host Immich on my NAS as a set of four Docker containers managed via the Compose Manager Plus Docker Compose plugin:

  • immich-server
    • Main Immich server
  • immich-machine-learning
    • Provides services for facial recognition, OCR, etc.
  • redis
    • Used internally by Immich for task management (I think)
  • database
    • Postgres database dedicated for Immich

Compose Files

The compose files I use are slightly modified versions of the official Immich Unraid compose files:

docker-compose.yaml

#
# WARNING: To install Immich, follow our guide: https://docs.immich.app/install/docker-compose
#
# Make sure to use the docker-compose.yml of the current release:
#
# https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
#
# The compose file on main may not be compatible with the latest release.

name: immich

services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    devices:
      - "/dev/dri:/dev/dri"
    # extends:
    #   file: hwaccel.transcoding.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [nvenc, quicksync, rkmpp, vaapi, vaapi-wsl] for accelerated transcoding
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the media storage location on your system, edit the value of UPLOAD_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/data
      - ${EXTERNAL_LOCATION}:/external
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - '2283:2283'
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    # For hardware acceleration, add one of -[armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, rknn] to the image tag.
    # Example tag: ${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}-cuda
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends: # uncomment this section for hardware acceleration - see https://docs.immich.app/features/ml-hardware-acceleration
    #   file: hwaccel.ml.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, openvino-wsl, rknn] for accelerated inference - use the `-wsl` version for WSL2 where applicable
    volumes:
      - model-cache:/cache
    env_file:
      - .env
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: docker.io/valkey/valkey:9@sha256:3eeb09785cd61ec8e3be35f8804c8892080f3ca21934d628abc24ee4ed1698f6
    healthcheck:
      test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
    restart: always

  database:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/postgres:14-vectorchord0.4.3-pgvectors0.2.0@sha256:bcf63357191b76a916ae5eb93464d65c07511da41e3bf7a8416db519b40b1c23
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
      POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS: '--data-checksums'
      # Uncomment the DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD' var if your database isn't stored on SSDs
      DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD'
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the database storage location on your system, edit the value of DB_DATA_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    shm_size: 128mb
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

volumes:
  model-cache:

.env

# You can find documentation for all the supported env variables at https://docs.immich.app/install/environment-variables

# The location where your uploaded files are stored
UPLOAD_LOCATION=/mnt/user/Immich-Library
EXTERNAL_LOCATION=/mnt/user/Immich-External

# The location where your database files are stored. Network shares are not supported for the database
DB_DATA_LOCATION=/mnt/user/appdata/immich_postgres/data

# To set a timezone, uncomment the next line and change Etc/UTC to a TZ identifier from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List
# TZ=Etc/UTC

# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v2.1.0"
IMMICH_VERSION=v2

# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
# Please use only the characters `A-Za-z0-9`, without special characters or spaces
DB_PASSWORD=<burp>

# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich

The main changes are to include device support to passthrough the Intel iGPU for hardware assisted transcoding and adding an additional mounted folder for an External library location.

File Locations

On my NAS I have two top-level shares configured for Immich (as in the .env above):

  • An Upload (i.e. main library) share under /Immich-Library
  • An External library share under /Immich-External

This separation allows me to share the external library over SMB for uploads, while keeping the main library location secured.

Importing Photos

I currently have a reasonably large iPhotos library of around 50k photos and 2k videos.

To import this into Immich I’m using a two stage process with osxphotos to export from iPhotos to a local USB HDD, and then the Immich CLI running in local docker to import from that USB HDD into Immich.

This gives me the advantages of both being able to control how and when I do exports and imports, plus ending up with a 3rd copy of my photos on the USB HDD.

I trigger the export and imports with a set of scripts:

export.sh

#!/bin/bash

year=2014

printf "\n"
printf "### Exporting for year - $year #################################################\n"
printf "\n"

osxphotos export .  --touch-file --export-by-date --download-missing --use-photokit --exiftool --keyword-template "{label}" --sidecar XMP --update --from-date "$year-01-01" --to-date "$year-12-31" --save-config osxphotos.toml

printf "\n"
printf "### Finished for year - $year ##################################################\n"
printf "\n"

import.sh

#!/bin/bash

year=2019
URL=http://<burp>:2283/api
APIKEY=<burp>

printf "\n"
printf "### Importing for year - $year #################################################\n"
printf "\n"

docker run -it -v "$(pwd)":/import:ro -e IMMICH_INSTANCE_URL=$URL -e IMMICH_API_KEY=$APIKEY -e IMMICH_RECURSIVE=true -e IMMICH_UPLOAD_CONCURRENCY=5 ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-cli:latest upload $year/

touch ./log/$year-import.log

printf "\n"
printf "### Finished for year - $year ##################################################\n"
printf "\n"

run.sh

#!/bin/bash

usage()
{
    echo "usage: zzrun.sh -y year | [-h]"
}

runexportimport ()
{ 
    printf "\n"
    printf "### Exporting for year - $year #################################################\n"
    printf "\n"

    osxphotos export .  --touch-file --export-by-date --download-missing --use-photokit --exiftool --keyword-template "{label}" --sidecar XMP --update --from-date "$year-01-01" --to-date "$year-12-31" --save-config osxphotos.toml

    printf "\n"
    printf "### Importing for year - $year #################################################\n"
    printf "\n"

    docker run -it -v "$(pwd)":/import:ro -e IMMICH_INSTANCE_URL=$URL -e IMMICH_API_KEY=$APIKEY -e IMMICH_RECURSIVE=true -e IMMICH_UPLOAD_CONCURRENCY=5 ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-cli:latest upload $year/

    printf "\n"
    printf "### Finished for year - $year ##################################################\n"
    printf "\n"

    touch ./log/$year-import.log
}

##### Main

year=
URL=http://<burp>:2283/api
APIKEY=<burp>

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Your command line contains no arguments"
    usage
    exit
fi

while [ "$1" != "" ]; do
    case $1 in
        -y | --year )       shift
                            year=$1
                            ;;
        -h | --help )       usage
                            exit
                            ;;
        * )                 usage
                            exit 1
    esac
    shift
done

runexportimport

All three scripts run the export/import tasks on a per-year basis, this is to allow me to easily batch the tasks (so I don’t put too much load on either my MacBook or NAS). The import/export scripts just have a script variable which I can set to the year I’m exporting/importing; the run script will take a year at the prompt and do both an export and import for that year.

Immich Configuration

Immich has a fairly standard configuration, other than the changes made to support hardware transcoding and the external library I haven’t made any configuration changes from the defaults.

Posted/Updated on 2 April 2026

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© Paul Fisher 2026 / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / Disclaimer