Replace Google Photos with Immich on an old PC

What Immich does

Immich has two parts: a server that runs on a computer in your house, and an app for iPhone and Android. The app uploads new photos and videos to the server in the background, the same way Google Photos does. From a phone or any web browser, you get:

• A scrolling timeline of everything, plus a map view of where photos were taken
• Face recognition, so you can name people and see every photo of them
• Search by what's in a photo, like "birthday cake" or "red truck"
• Albums you can share with family members who have their own accounts
• Multiple users, each with their own private library

All of that runs on your own hardware. Nothing goes to an outside company, and there's no storage plan to outgrow. When the drive fills up, you add a bigger one.

What your old PC needs

That's a good fit for the small business mini PCs that sell cheaply used, or a desktop from the last ten years with a memory upgrade. A few things trip people up:

• Very old processors can't run the machine-learning part, which handles faces and smart search. Since version 3 it needs a chip with a feature set called x86-64-v2. AMD Phenom II and Core 2-era chips don't have it. Most Intel and AMD processors from the last 12 years or so do.
• The database must be on a local drive. Immich's documentation is firm on this: not a network share, and not a drive formatted NTFS or exFAT. Put the photos wherever you like, but keep the database on the computer's own Linux-formatted SSD.
• Proxmox users: Immich's docs recommend against running Docker inside an LXC container. Use a virtual machine instead.

Immich runs on Linux. If the PC is new to Linux, Ubuntu Server or Debian are good starting points, and my home server guide covers the basics of setting up the machine itself. Hard drives for photo storage are pricey in 2026, so here's what to know about recertified drives if you're tempted.

Install Immich

Immich runs in Docker, which packages the app and everything it needs. On Ubuntu or Debian, Docker's own install script sets it up:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh

Then make a folder for Immich and download its two setup files:

mkdir ~/immich-app && cd ~/immich-app
wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env

Open the settings file with nano .env and change four lines:

1. UPLOAD_LOCATION: the folder where your photos will live, such as /mnt/photos on a big drive.
2. DB_DATA_LOCATION: where the database lives. Leave the default if it's on the computer's SSD.
3. DB_PASSWORD: change it to a long random password. Immich's docs recommend letters and numbers only.
4. TZ: your time zone. In Kansas, that's America/Chicago.

Save with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X. Then start it:

sudo docker compose up -d

The first start takes a few minutes while it downloads. Then open a browser on another computer and go to http:// followed by the server's address and :2283, for example http://192.168.1.50:2283. The first account you create becomes the admin. Add accounts for other family members from the admin settings.

Back up your phone

1. Install the Immich app from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Enter the server address, the same one you used in the browser, and sign in.
3. Tap the cloud icon at the top, choose which albums to back up (usually Camera or Recents), and turn on backup.
4. Let the first upload finish on Wi-Fi with the phone plugged in. A big library can take a night or two.

Don't delete anything from Google Photos or your phone until you've checked that everything arrived and you have a backup of the server.

Bring over your Google Photos

Photos only on Google's servers, not your phone, need to come out through Google Takeout (takeout.google.com). Select only Google Photos, and pick the largest file size so you get fewer pieces to download.

Takeout has a quirk: it stores each photo's date and location in a separate small file instead of inside the photo. Upload the photos directly and many end up on the wrong date. A free community tool called immich-go reads the Takeout files, puts the details back together, and uploads everything to your server.

Reach it away from home

Don't open a port on your router to put Immich on the internet. Use a private VPN instead. Tailscale is the easiest: install it on the server and on your phone, and the Immich app connects from anywhere as if you were home. It's how I reach my own homelab from outside, and my home server guide has more on setting it up.

Back up the server

This is the part people skip, and it's the part that matters most. Moving off Google Photos means you're the backup plan now.

• Immich backs up its database on its own, every night at 2 AM, keeping the last 14 copies in a backups folder inside your upload location.
• It doesn't back up your photos. You need to copy the whole upload location (photos and those database backups) to somewhere else on a schedule.
• Follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your photos, on two different kinds of storage, with one kept outside your house. An external drive at a relative's place or an encrypted cloud backup both count.
• Test a restore once in a while. A backup you've never restored from is a guess.

One more habit: read the release notes before you update. Immich moves quickly, and once in a while an update needs a settings change. To update, run sudo docker compose pull and then sudo docker compose up -d from the immich-app folder.