12  Memories

Note

Immich at memory.dunn.dev — a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos and iCloud Photos.

12.1 Why Immich

  • Immich is the most complete self-hosted photo/video platform: mobile apps, ML-based search, facial recognition, shared albums
  • Active upstream with rapid development; the project has reached a scale where it’s genuinely competitive with commercial options
  • OIDC support means family members log in with their Authentik credentials
  • The mobile app handles automatic photo backup from iOS and Android

12.2 OIDC integration with Authentik

  • Immich configured as an OIDC relying party against Authentik
  • Family members authenticate once via Authentik; Immich creates user accounts automatically
  • Per-user storage quotas configurable in Immich

12.3 Quadlet deployment

  • Pod: immich-server + immich-ml + PostgreSQL + Caddy sidecar
  • ML container runs facial recognition and CLIP-based search indexing
  • ZFS dataset: /zfs/tank/memory (SAS pool for bulk photo/video storage)
  • Pod publishes 127.0.0.1:8441->443; Envoy routes memory.dunn.dev via SNI

12.4 Storage layout

  • Upload library on ZFS with per-user directories managed by Immich
  • ML model cache stored separately from user uploads
  • PostgreSQL data on the same dataset (vector embeddings for search are large)

12.5 Mobile app configuration

  • Family members install the Immich mobile app, point it at memory.dunn.dev
  • Automatic background upload replaces iCloud/Google Photos backup
  • Shared albums replace shared iCloud albums or Google shared libraries
  • The onboarding experience is: install app, sign in with Authentik, enable auto-upload