Docker Compose [Recommended]
Docker Compose is the recommended method to run Immich in production. Below are the steps to deploy Immich with Docker Compose.
Step 1 - Download the required files
Create a directory of your choice (e.g. ./immich-app) to hold the docker-compose.yml and .env files.
mkdir ./immich-app
cd ./immich-app
Download docker-compose.yml and example.env by running the following commands:
wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env
You can alternatively download these two files from your browser and move them to the directory that you created, in which case ensure that you rename example.env to .env.
If you intend to use hardware acceleration for transcoding or machine learning (ML), you can download now the config files you'll need, in the same way:
wget -O hwaccel.transcoding.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/hwaccel.transcoding.yml
wget -O hwaccel.ml.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/hwaccel.ml.yml
Step 2 - Populate the .env file with custom values
Example .env content
.env content# You can find documentation for all the supported env variables at https://immich.app/docs/install/environment-variables
# The location where your uploaded files are stored
UPLOAD_LOCATION=./library
# The location where your database files are stored
DB_DATA_LOCATION=./postgres
# To set a timezone, uncomment the next line and change Etc/UTC to a TZ identifier from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List
# TZ=Etc/UTC
# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v1.71.0"
IMMICH_VERSION=release
# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
# Please use only the characters `A-Za-z0-9`, without special characters or spaces
DB_PASSWORD=postgres
# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich
- Populate
UPLOAD_LOCATIONwith your preferred location for storing backup assets. It should be a new directory on the server with enough free space. - Consider changing
DB_PASSWORDto a custom value. Postgres is not publically exposed, so this password is only used for local authentication. To avoid issues with Docker parsing this value, it is best to use only the charactersA-Za-z0-9.pwgenis a handy utility for this. - Set your timezone by uncommenting the
TZ=line. - Populate custom database information if necessary.
You can edit docker-compose.yml to add external libraries or enable hardware acceleration now by following their guides.
Step 3 - Start the containers
From the directory you created in Step 1 (which should now contain your customized docker-compose.yml and .env files), run this command:
docker compose up -d
This starts immich as a background service (per the -d flag), ensuring it restarts after system reboots or crashes (per the restart fields in docker-compose.yml).
If you get an error unknown shorthand flag: 'd' in -d, you are probably running the wrong Docker version. (This happens, for example, with the docker.io package in Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS.) You can correct the problem by following the complete Docker Engine install procedure for your distribution, crucially the "Uninstall old versions" and "Install using the apt/rpm repository" sections. These replace the distro's Docker packages with Docker's official ones.
Note that the correct command really is docker compose, not docker-compose. If you try the latter on vanilla Ubuntu 22.04, it will fail in a different way:
The Compose file './docker-compose.yml' is invalid because:
'name' does not match any of the regexes: '^x-'
See the previous paragraph about installing from the official Docker repository.
If you get an error can't set healthcheck.start_interval as feature require Docker Engine v25 or later, it helps to comment out the line for start_interval in the database section of the docker-compose.yml file.
For more information on how to use the application, please refer to the Post Installation guide.
Downloading container images might require you to authenticate to the GitHub Container Registry (steps here).
Next Steps
Setting Up Optional Features
You can set up the following now:
Upgrading
It is important to follow breaking updates to avoid problems. You can see versions that had breaking changes here.
If IMMICH_VERSION is set, it will need to be updated to the latest or desired version.
When a new version of Immich is released, the application can be upgraded and restarted with the following commands, run in the directory with the docker-compose.yml file:
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
To clean up disk space, the old version's obsolete container images can be deleted with the following command:
docker image prune
Immich is currently under heavy development, which means you can expect breaking changes and bugs. Therefore, we recommend reading the release notes prior to updating and to take special care when using automated tools like Watchtower.