Guides

Self-hosting means running services on hardware you own instead of relying on someone else’s servers. Your photos on your machine instead of Google’s. Your notes in your house instead of Notion’s cloud. Your email, your media, your files — all under your control. If that sounds appealing (it should), this guide covers everything you need to get started from absolute zero. Why Self-Host? Let’s get the “why” out of the way, because it matters. Self-hosting isn’t just a nerdy hobby — it solves real problems. ...

Immich is the best self-hosted Google Photos alternative available right now. If you’ve read our comparison of self-hosted photo tools and decided Immich is the one (smart choice), this guide walks you through the entire setup — from zero to a fully working photo server with mobile app sync. I’ve set this up on dozens of machines at this point. Here’s exactly what works. What You’ll Need Hardware Requirements CPU: Any modern x86_64 processor. Intel 10th gen or newer is ideal because of Quick Sync (hardware video transcoding). ARM64 works too — Immich runs fine on Raspberry Pi 4/5. RAM: 4GB absolute minimum. 8GB recommended. The machine learning container alone wants 2-3GB when processing. Storage: SSD for the database and application (even 50GB is plenty). Separate HDD/NAS storage for your actual photo library. GPU (optional): NVIDIA GPU dramatically speeds up face recognition and object detection. Not required, but nice to have. Software Requirements Linux server (Ubuntu 22.04/24.04, Debian 12, or any distro with Docker support) Docker and Docker Compose v2 A domain name (optional, but recommended for remote access) Quick Docker Install If you don’t have Docker yet: ...