I tried to see if Immich could replace my favorite Google Photos features and here's how it went

For a while now, I've wanted to move away from Google services and also test out more open-source and self-hosted software. Immich meets both these goals by being a Google Photos alternative that I can self-host on my own device. In fact, some people argue that Immich is better than Google Photos.

But for me to truly move away from Google Photos and reclaim the money I spend on a Google One subscription, Immich would need to include some of my favorite features — from allowing automatic syncing from my smartphone to providing great highlights and memories that I can look through in the app. Immich has these features, but I tried them out to see how well they can replace Google Photos.

Automatic syncing from my smartphone

Set and forget

Immich has an Android and iOS app that you can use to back up photos and videos from your smartphone, but my question was whether it could do this in a convenient way. When I first started using the app to back up media from my phone, it took a while to realize that I didn't have to start a manual backup — I could adjust the settings to allow the app to work in the background.

Once I had my first batch of files uploaded, backing up new photos and videos was seamless. Within the app, you can also select when you want Immich to do uploads. For example, you can set it to only upload when you're connected to Wi-Fi or when your phone is charging.

My only note is that Immich should make these options a bit more obvious since it wasn't immediately apparent that I could use something other than a manual backup when I selected the folder I wanted to save on my instance. Other than that, the automatic backup feature works great.

Facial and object recognition

For the people, pets, and places I love

When I first set up Immich in Dawarich to add some media to my Google Timeline data, I hadn't done much research into the software. This meant that I was pleasantly surprised when I came across Immich's facial and image recognition features.

The app accurately identified different faces, even picking up faces from videos I had saved. It was also able to identify my mother's face, both with and without her sunglasses on. It did miss identifying one of my nephews, but there were only two photos of him in the set of photos I uploaded, so I put it down to this.

The one noticeable drawback of Immich's image recognition algorithm is that it doesn't pick up individual pets. In Google Photos, I was able to group all images of my cats under their names: Loxi and Black Velvet. But that option doesn't exist in Immich. That said, I was still able to find images of each of my cats by using the terms "black cat" and "white cat".

There were occasional issues with accuracy, though, especially if you scroll down the results or you don't have any images featuring the search term. For example, when I searched for "dog", rather than simply returning a not found error, all my cat images were included. Similarly, when I searched for "sea", the results became less and less accurate as I scrolled down.

I hope, though, that as I upload more images to my Immich instance, it will provide more accurate results. Google Photos accurately returns images of dogs when I search for the term, but it also has a collection of over 40,000 images to choose from — and even then, it still includes some images of cats.

Highlights and memories

Reliving good moments

While I originally signed up to Google Photos to back up my photos, I've come to love the notifications it sends me to look at memories and collages. Most of the time, these images are from trips I've taken or simply aggregated images of my cats from certain time periods.

I was glad when I found out that Immich also has a memories feature, but I had trouble accessing it. The issue is due to a recent update that requires you to manually create a job for memories to be generated. Once I implemented the fix, I managed to get my first highlight.

However, having a more limited set of photos to work with, the Immich memories feature didn't include as many pictures as I'd hoped. But I'm still glad the feature is there, even if it occasionally requires a nudge. I've now requested an export of my Google Photos images to see what my Immich service can do with a larger set of photos and videos.

Immich surprised me

While I knew that Immich is a good open-source alternative to Google Photos, I didn't realize how much it would impress me. I do find Google Photos a bit more convenient to use, but the difference isn't stark enough that it justifies paying for a Google One subscription each month.

I look forward to uploading more images to my Immich instance and further experiencing the benefits of the tool. I may even decide to host Immich on my Synology NAS for more convenient access.