One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don't know.
I got the supporter for free, because I donated to them before they joined FUTO. I donate frequently to opensource projects. This is a good way to say thanks to the devs 😊
Even small donations are fine, so please donate to projects you enjoy 👍🏻
I didn't know they were giving supporter status to people who donated before they joined FUTO
You needed to connect your Github account once, the app checked if you donated, then you got the supporter status
Seriously everyone pushes Immich so hard I'm a little suspicious of it now :D
Edit: all right, all right, I installed it. It has a thing about not uploading all the pictures I give it, some error out. I have a feeling it is due to the library being on a NAS share.
The fediverse is small and the Immich dev is one of our own, not surprising that it's super popular
83k Github stars in under 4 years is definitely indicative of an excellent project
Github stars are indicative of nothing
They are indicative of something. That something is just not always “this project is good”.
It's just that good
I'll include mine to show that it's not unusual to support them! it's my favorite and most used self hosted project
What is it and what does it do?
Immich: Image Backup* solution — like Google Photos or Ente Photos but self-hosted.
*Backup in the sense of uploading your photos to a server you own. You should backup the database as well as your library with 3-2-1 method.
So wait, we hate FUTO but love Immich?
I don’t hate FUTO, but I distrust them.
On one hand, their operation is creepy and suspicious.
The extent of the FUTO “grant program”, at least in the case of musl libc, involved ignoring musl’s established process for institutional sponsors, quietly sending a modest one-time donation to one maintainer, and then plastering the logo of a well-respected open source project on a list of “grant recipients” on their home page. Rich eventually posted on Mastodon to clarify that the use of the musl name and logo here was unauthorized.
On the other, I like the idea of licenses that allow unrestricted private use and modification but forbid commercial exploitation. Those two situations are not equivalent. I realize this is an unpopular opinion in many FOSS circles, but we are already being exploited to death by the rich and powerful and they must not be entitled to the value of our collective free and voluntary labor. If we ever realize a society in which wealth and power is effectively capped for such entities, then I would change my tune. Until then, fuck them. Our collective software is for the collective, not for wealth hoarders and despots.
I find it wild in this day and age how questions like ("why do WE hate" such and such) are being asked in the first place, then answered through one person's opinion piece mindlessly linked from all angles. Please, for gawd sake, stop listening to random fedditors/redditors about what opinions you should adopt!
IMHO (<- there's a novel approach), the criticisms of FUTO are just as biased and political as FUTO themselves, and everyone should be sceptical of bias from all sides. Apparently, focusing on 'privacy, decentralization, and right to repair' - is being too political, and they're not allowed to have a philosophical take on what they imagine successful open source to be. (Incidentally, I'm not necessarily on FUTOs side, just pissed off at the nature of social media to obviate the need of critical thinking and make everything black or white.)
I mean sure but... did you read the piece linked? It backs up it's claims. Not gonna sit here and act like I verified every single thing linked in the piece but I checked a good handful and it seems pretty straightforward. FUTO is pretty sketchy at the very least, and there's good reason to consider them a fascist org
My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they're blown out of proportion, but they're still concerning).
You'll never find a perfect movement. Here's what FUTO seems to prioritize:
That sounds pretty good to me! I'd prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.
I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I'd run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that's what matters to me.
FUTO doesn't seem interested in getting involved in politics, they're merely musing philosophically, and their products aren't profitable, so it doesn't really matter to me what their political positions are.
Yes I read it when it first came out, and again after a recent update. It's very opinionated and I remain unconvinced the criticisms amounts to very much. At the least, certainly not to the point where words like nazi and fascist should be thrown around!
For example, I dislike Yarin's and Lunduke's politics but I did at least watched Yarin's interview. (Did you? It was boring, and entirely tech-oriented, nothing controversial at all.) But... trial by association I guess. And anyway, it's not the article itself I have a problem with - it's the borrowing of second-hand opinions as if they should be your own. Sometimes, it's prudent to reserve judgement (until 'verifying every single thing'), or criticise specific ideas, without leaping to ad hominem per consortium.
Immich is actually open source.
May I ask why do we hate FUTO?
they're wearing the clothes of "open source" but they run like a proverbial nazi bar: https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
Except the person who wrote that, regardless of the actual issues with FUTO, cannot be trusted and is an unreliable source.
I really would encourage people to not treat that guy as a real source, but use it as a starting point for evaluating his sources, such as they are, on their own merits.
The above post isn't the first I've heard bad about FUTO. GrapheneOS has also spoken out against them
I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.
I think it's a bit suspicious that they don't mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I'm guessing they wanted a "supporter" badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I'm guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they're uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.
Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.
Yeah, I read this article twice now, and the only identifiable wrongdoing on FUTO's part is donating to FOSS projects without using their "institutional practice"... Which is a bizarre complaint.
The article is rife with "something ain't right at FUTO", but fails to wrap words around that statement.
They've been featuring projects on their page that they display their donations on, projects that did not know or outright refused, without their consent or understanding.
Hmm. While I applaud Immich for existing at all, it kind of feels developed with not me as a user in mind. I have Terabytes of pictures I have taken over the couple of decades of my adult life. They are all neatly organized in folders on my NAS. There is no easy way to just tell Immich "oy, that folder structure? Turn it into albums" I am never going to manually put my 400k+ images into albums. And the folder view in the Android app is behind too many clicks to make it any fun using it.
I guess I have to wrangle with the CLI or something to turn my folders into albums.
But... why??? People use existing file structures. Make it easy for those to integrate into your app.
Nothing of the sort on the roadmap either. Unless integrating folder structures into Immich albums gets more user friendly, I am reluctant to support the devs.
I'll probably do it anyway because as I said, I'm glad the project exists.
Thanks.
Sounds exactly like what I need. I'll give it a try. Thanks a lot!
using it for some months now and it's pretty much perfect already. never looked back to Google photos.
I dont get the "server" vs "individual" support levels? Im an individual and I have a server...but presumably everyone buying immich has a server? Otherwise it's pointless? Or is it expected that I buy a server package, plus an individual package for each and every user?
I know it's OSS and so any and all donations are voluntary - just the naming here confuses me.
It is just Donation Tiers I think. Maybe the per user thing only hides the "Buy Immich" button for only that specific user.
I really want to use (and support) this, but my case would be the server running on a windows pc with great hardware for all the ML/AI stuff and SSD database storage, but all my media on a NAS. (I’m a flight sim addict, Linux isn’t an option or I’d do it in a heartbeat) Last time I tried, I got the server running in docker pretty easily, but could not for the life of me get my media connected. Any chance that process has improved?
FWIW you're probably looking for https://docs.immich.app/guides/remote-machine-learning namely removing the demanding tasks from the NAS.
One thing I don't get, if someone could explain it to me, is what's the point of immich over e.g. Nextcloud? Immich is just for photo and video, right? Why not just have a cloud file drive instead? To me, I feel like it's a waste to have both, since I use Nextcloud to both sync my PC and as a secondary backup, in which case I'd have two copies of my photos on my home server if I wanted to use Immich as well. Am I missing something or is it for people with different workflows?
Because it has a lot of photo specific features:
These are just the ones on top of my head, but you'll probably get the idea. If you just want to back up you photos then nextcloud is more than enough, but you'd probably enjoy the immich features once you used them.
Regarding the two copies: you can use immich on an external library, so you don't have to have to copies.
It's like asking why should I use paperless when I can just keep my documents as PDFs in my nextcloud.
Nextcloud is like Google drive, immich is like Google photos.
You'd typically prefer to look at your photo albums in Google photos instead of Google drive.
Same, just bought a server license yesterday!
I am a supporter and ordered the retro demo disk. Itll be here soon :)
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