I’m moving my files off Big Tech’s servers and onto my own computer. I’ve decided to back up the 270GB of photos and videos I’ve taken over the years and move them from Google Photos to my PC.
I’ve realized that instead of backing up photos to the cloud, the cloud became the default storage for all my photos and videos, and I am not feeling calm about that.
Every company, Google included, can suddenly shut down, change its policy, or fall victim to a cyberattack. Then all my files will be gone. I’m to blame because I signed an agreement saying the company wasn’t responsible for my data.
I love Google Photos. I think it’s done an amazing job over the years, going from “just put your files here” to “here are a dozen exciting new ways to relive your memories.”
However, I started wondering what I’m paying for, and whether there’s a free alternative that keeps my memories with me instead of on somebody else’s server.
So I tried Immich, the leading self-hosted photo app, and took it for a spin.
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Setting it up is almost insultingly simple
It’s barely even an install
To set up Immich, all you do is spin up a single Docker container and point it at a folder. A few minutes later, you have a library.
No servers to rack, no networking to fight, nothing that needs a computer science degree to survive contact with it.
The setup was simple, and after I pointed it to the right folder, I opened a browser, went to my localhost, and there they were: all the photos and videos from that folder, arranged in a way that is familiar to anyone who’s used Google Photos.
I had to take it one step beyond.
I skipped the part where I did that myself, because I didn’t. I asked Mira to set it up while I went to make dinner, and by the time I sat down, it was running.
I gave it a home that was already doing three other jobs
It moved into a room I’d already built
Over the past few months, I have been building my personal work environment, where I can browse the internet, play YouTube videos, listen to music, and browse my photos and videos.
Because Immich is open source software, I grabbed it “as-is” and bolted it into my homemade environment, and it just works. No need to sign up for anything or get permission from anyone
The code is free to use, so I downloaded it from GitHub and made it a part of my setup. It’s the same instinct that had me ditch Google’s smart home setup for something local. If it can run on my hardware instead of someone else’s cloud, I’d rather it did.
Now that it’s there, I can use its built-in slideshow capabilities to make a screensaver showing family photos and videos.
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Two out of three, for free
It matched the two things Google actually built
Google Photos earns its keep with three tricks:
- It lets you search your library by describing a photo instead of naming a file
- It recognizes faces and groups people together
- It stitches old photos and videos into highlight reels you didn’t ask for but usually watch.
Immich, running on hardware I own in a room I control, does two of those three.
Search by description works. Face recognition works, grouping people across years of photos the same way Google’s version does. Both free, both local, both mine. And it works just as well.
It did an almost perfect job recognizing each family member and letting me name them across the entire gallery, in both photos and videos.
When I named them, it also grouped screenshots with that name, so my son’s report card appears along with his photos.
It had a little trouble recognizing our dog in all the photos, but she’s had several haircuts over the years and almost looks like a different dog, so I will let that slide.
It also uses the metadata that comes with each photo, meaning it not only groups photos by faces but also by dates and locations.
Each photo comes with a little map beside it, showing where it was taken. Maps zoom in pretty far, so photos taken from different sides of my house appear where they were taken. It’s impressive and creepy at the same time.
The context search surprised me in several ways. You can ask for pictures of you eating pizza, and it will organize them by how confident it is, so you with a slice of pizza appears first, then you eating something else, then someone else eating a pizza, then just pizza, and then just you.
When I searched for “the entire family,” it showed pictures that included our whole family, but it also included several pictures of an entire family of swans I’d photographed. Which was very sweet of it.
When I wrote “plant,” it showed pictures of my plants, then of pots, then random plants, and then a picture of a power plant I took.
Overall, I was impressed by its understanding of the context in the images and videos.
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The one thing it won’t do
The developers have already said why
The third trick — the highlight reels, the “memories” — is the one Immich has decided not to build, and it isn’t shy about saying so.
It’s the single most requested feature on the project’s GitHub, a discussion thread open since June 2023 with 218 votes and counting, and still the top unresolved request years later.
Multiple people in that thread say the same thing: It’s the one reason they still keep a Google Photos account running quietly alongside Immich, just for this.
In November 2025, one of the maintainers, who goes by bo0tzz, gave the thread its official answer:
The age of the feature request isn’t particularly meaningful. Fancy memories would be nice, but we currently have no plans to add it.
Twelve people gave that comment a thumbs down. None of them got a different answer.
Will I keep paying Google to keep that one feature? I don’t think so. If Immich didn’t do a very good job, I might consider it.
But so far, having my photos on my computer and being able to browse them as easily and efficiently as I do on Google Photos is enough for me to switch.
It’s not the first time a Google feature has become the reason to leave rather than the reason to stay. Google has spent years killing off the small conveniences that made its own products worth the trade-off.
I feel like I have gone back to how everything used to be. I am responsible for my own photos, and I might use Google Photos as a backup if something happens to my real gallery. I know, it’s a novel concept.