Immich Install with Docker - Fastest Method

Check What You Need First

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup platform — free and open source — and the official way to run it is Docker Compose on a Linux server, an old PC, a mini PC or a NAS that supports Docker. The machine must stay on: a laptop that sleeps every evening is a bad photo server. Storage is what you will run out of first, so plan room for your full photo library plus roughly 10-20 percent extra for thumbnails and transcoded video.

About 4 GB of RAM is the practical floor; the machine learning container is the hungry part, so 6-8 GB is noticeably happier. Confirm Docker and Docker Compose are installed and working:

docker compose version

Create the Folder and Download the Two Official Files

Never copy a random docker-compose file from a blog or forum post — versions drift, and a stranger's file can pin you to an ancient build. The official files always live on the project's GitHub release page. Create the folder and move into it:

mkdir ./immich-app
cd ./immich-app

Download the compose file and the environment template:

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

Edit the .env File — the Only Configuration That Matters

The .env file holds the few values Immich cannot guess. Open it:

nano .env

Set UPLOAD_LOCATION=./library — where your original photos and videos will live; point it at your biggest, most reliable disk. Set DB_DATA_LOCATION=./postgres for the database, and change DB_PASSWORD to a long random password. Uncomment TZ and set your timezone (for example Asia/Kolkata) so photo dates and scheduled jobs line up. Leave IMMICH_VERSION and everything below the marked line alone for a first install.

Start the Stack

One command starts everything. Docker downloads the container images and starts them together; the first run takes a few minutes depending on your internet speed:

docker compose up -d
docker compose ps

The second command checks that everything came up — you should see the server, machine learning, database and Redis containers running.

Open Immich and Create the Admin Account

Open Immich in a browser on the same network — it answers on port 2283:

http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:2283

Click through the welcome screen and register. The very first account created becomes the administrator — so do this step yourself, immediately, before anyone else on your network finds the page. Then install the free Immich app on your phone, sign in with the same server address, and turn on automatic backup.

Know the Four Containers and the Rules

The compose file runs a small team, not a single program: immich-server is the brain — web interface, API, uploads, albums and search; immich-machine-learning is the eyes — face detection, face recognition and smart search; the PostgreSQL database is the memory — every photo's name, date, album and face data lives there, while the originals are files; and Redis is the messenger passing jobs between the server and background workers. Knowing this split matters later: if search breaks, you check machine learning; if photos vanish from the timeline but the files are still on disk, you check the database.