Immich is the first self-hosted app I've used that actually feels better than its cloud alternative

At a glance:

• Immich replaces OneDrive/Google Photos with a self-hosted photo/video storage service
• Offers faster UI, facial recognition, and multi-user support without subscription fees
• Runs locally so data never leaves your own server

Why Immich stands out in the self-hosting world

For over a year, João Carrasqueira has been running important services on his own server instead of relying on cloud alternatives. While many self-hosted apps require compromises, Immich is the rare exception that feels genuinely superior to its commercial counterparts. The photo and video storage platform has become one of his strongest arguments for getting into self-hosting in the first place.

Immich directly competes with services like Google Photos and OneDrive, but with a crucial difference: your data never leaves your own hardware. For João, the transition came from moving away from OneDrive, where all his personal photos and videos had lived for years. The switch wasn't about settling for a lesser alternative—it was about gaining something better.

A massive UI improvement over traditional cloud storage

OneDrive has gradually improved its photo handling capabilities, but the experience still suffers from sluggish loading times and cumbersome navigation. While Microsoft added a timeline view for browsing images, it remains far from ideal. Immich takes a different approach, borrowing heavily from Google Photos' design language to create something that feels both modern and responsive.

The default timeline view in Immich presents every photo in chronological order, allowing users to either scroll incrementally or jump instantly to any point in time using the scrollbar. This makes browsing through years of memories remarkably efficient. Album creation works similarly to OneDrive but with noticeably better performance and organization. Perhaps most surprisingly, Immich includes a slideshow feature that OneDrive's web interface lacks entirely—though Windows 11's Photos app can create slideshows from OneDrive content.

Beyond basic organization, Immich packs in features that enhance the self-hosted experience. Facial recognition identifies people in photos without sending data off-server, while optional AI capabilities like optical character recognition and duplicate detection add professional-grade functionality. These tools work locally, maintaining the privacy benefits that make self-hosting attractive in the first place.

Privacy, cost, and multi-user advantages

While Google Photos offers robust editing features built directly into the platform, João notes he uses these services primarily for storage after editing images to his liking. The real advantages of Immich lie elsewhere. Privacy is the obvious benefit—your photos and videos remain under your control—but the cost structure is equally compelling. Unlike cloud services that charge subscription fees once you exceed storage limits, Immich imposes no such restrictions. As long as your NAS has available space, you can add files indefinitely without paying more.

This becomes particularly valuable for families. Immich supports multiple user accounts that can all share the same disk space while keeping photos separated by profile. There's no per-user pricing or need to deploy multiple instances of the app. A single Immich server can accommodate as many accounts as needed, limited only by available storage. João and his wife maintain separate personal photo collections but also share albums containing pictures from both profiles, demonstrating the platform's flexibility for real-world use cases.

The gold standard for self-hosted software

Self-hosted applications often vary significantly in quality and usability, but Immich represents the gold standard. It combines beautiful design with powerful functionality, making it incredibly easy to view and organize large photo collections. Alongside Nextcloud, Immich stands as a primary reason to consider setting up a self-hosting server.

The platform's success demonstrates that self-hosted software doesn't have to feel like a compromise. With iOS and Android compatibility, robust feature sets, and genuine usability advantages over commercial alternatives, Immich proves that local-first solutions can deliver experiences that are not just comparable to cloud services, but genuinely better.