this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Well yeah you could go on the site and select whatever photos and hit download I suppose.
There's no way to do that for your entire library. Also I assume that would not retain the Immich-specific metadata like the ML object tags and the "people" tagged in the photos.
You should have a backup solution for your server that should cover this, without that you should probably stick with managed photo backup services.
Thats...why I'm asking?
...is that not what Immich is?
Are you paying for Immich somewhere? Then you'd have to trust the administrator to back your data up. I had assumed you were self hosting and by managed services I meant like Google Photos, or indeed someone else's Immich setup.
No.
Not doing that for reasons that shouldn't need explaining.
If you're self hosting then you could just copy all the files from your server onto an external drive. I have to say that's not a great backup solution though, and you should learn more about administration of Linux servers so that when things break you can fix them. I wouldn't rely on it as a safe solution to your photos otherwise.
I'm not looking to become a sysadmin, thanks. I just want somewhere to safely store and organize my private photos.
I don't know how to access the filesystem and copying the library folders would not back up the metadata.
A great backup solution would be what I mentioned elsewhere. Just put a button to export it to a flash drive or an encrypted file server.
And that's fine and understandable. But I don't think that Immich is for you. It's not consumer-grade software. It's a piece of Linux server software that requires occasional maintenance and administration. We haven't seen a breaking update in a while but Immich does occasionally release updates where things will break if you don't dig in to the config files and reconfigure it.
If they implemented a proper backup system I wouldn't have to worry about it breaking. That's why I want it.
There's nothing else I need to access the backend for.
Give me the angry downvote all you want but, you are administering a system, you are literally a sysadmin
"I want to be an F1 racer but I don't wanna learn to drive"
That's what I heard you say
@Ulrich @bdonvr It will indeed be hard to use Immich without some technical knowledge at the moment. The documentation explicitly warns that the software is changing fast and might break a few things.
I'm sure that some day they will have a paid hosted tier that will de-risk the technical aspects such as backups and resilience but thats not here yet.
Perhaps you could take a look at Ente Photos for a non-Google, privacy friendly (and encrypted) photo hosting solution.
https://ente.io/
I obviously have "some technical knowledge" as I was able to launch a server and install Immich. I just don't understand why everyone seems entirely opposed to making things easier.