Like most people, I've been on the Google Photos bandwagon for years now. Photos of trips, birthdays, receipts, and random food snaps have all been backed up to Google Photos. Initially, it was free and convenient as an add-on perk with my Pixel phone. Over time, I ran into the same problems as everyone else. While the perk disappeared, I was locked in, and my growing library pushed me towards ever-increasing subscription costs. It's the same game with Apple's iCloud Photos storage and even Microsoft's OneDrive. Of course, I'd been dumping photos on my NAS, but these services just made the viewing experience just better. While the convenience is undeniable, it came to a point where I started questioning myself. Why am I paying rent on my own photos when I already have a NAS, plenty of storage, and the will to find a better way? That was the first step towards migrating my entire digital library to Immich.

Immich is an open-source photo and video backup solution that runs on your own hardware. The app supports both Android and iOS via mobile apps, a web interface that resembles Google Photos, and offers essential features such as albums, timelines, AI-powered search, and facial recognition. Once set up, it is basically a replica of the Google Photos experience, with the biggest difference being that the files sit on your own disks instead of a data center, and there's no subscription service involved. Immich runs as a Docker container, making it a cinch to deploy on a Synology NAS, home server, or even a Raspberry Pi if you so choose.

Getting your photos out of the cloud

Exporting your photos from Google, Apple, and OneDrive

The hardest part about moving away from Google Photos is not finding an alternative. It is figuring out how to get years' worth of pictures out of Google's walled gardens. Trust me, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will all let you get your data out, but they don't make it easy.

Most users are probably using Google Photos. Google's method is called Takeout, and it provides a collection of zip archives containing images and accompanying sidecar JSON files. Your first step will be to unzip these files and place them in a common folder containing thousands of image files. The good news is that Immich understands EXIF data, so your timelines remain intact as long as you have set the correct time on non-connected devices, such as your camera. Apple's process for pulling down your photos is a bit more complicated. While you can batch download images from iCloud.com, for a full export, the Data and Privacy portal is a better option. Surprisingly, OneDrive is the easiest when it comes to exporting your images. Unlike Google Photos or iCloud Photos, OneDrive exposes the file structure. So, you can just navigate to your photos folder and either download it, or synchronize it using the desktop utility. The catch with all these export options is that any albums or collections that you've created online do not come along for the ride. That said, once done, you should have a folder or a few folders full of photos to sort.

Getting your photos into Immich

It's as simple as drag and drop

Your next step will be to move these photos into Immich. This can be achieved in a few ways. If your photo library isn't massive like mine, this is an easy way to dump your photos into Immich and let it sort them out. The CLI importer is another way to manage your photos. However, for everyone else, using Immich's upload folder utility would be the best approach. Here's how it works. Just move your photos folder into Immich's upload folder. Immich will then scan through all the photos and automatically catalog them into a sorted library. You can even set templates for folder structure. For example, I've established a year, month, and date hierarchy so that I can easily locate and move photos if I need to delve into the filesystem.

Keep in mind that Immich will create a copy of all these files, so it's a good idea to have ample space on your NAS. Additionally, processing all the files for metadata, creating thumbnails, and running face recognition is resource-intensive. The entire process will take a while. But once done, what you get is essentially a clone of Google Photos but running locally. From here on, the process becomes much easier. You only have to add fresh images to Immich for it to keep things organized. Similarly, the Immich mobile app automatically backs up your photos in the background, ensuring that all your photos are backed up.

Take back control of your photo library

There's no getting around the fact that pulling your library from cloud services and moving it into a self-hosted app is a time-consuming task. But ensuring that years of memories are in your control requires just a few hours of effort. I'd say that's worth it. The process is straightforward, except for getting your data from the cloud providers. And once done, Immich handles the rest.