Automatic File Migration from Uploads to Permanent Storage

[tcarlsen]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Problem Statement

Immich is an excellent solution for automatic mobile photo backup, but currently, there is no built-in mechanism for organizing and relocating uploaded files to a permanent location.

I consider the upload folder as a temporary backup space, where photos are initially stored before I manually curate and organize them into a long-term photo archive. However, moving files manually breaks metadata associations (albums, people tags, object tags, etc.), since Immich treats moved files as new assets rather than recognizing them as existing ones.

Current issues when manually moving files:

• Immich does not track relocated files → If files are moved manually, Immich treats them as new uploads, losing all metadata, album assignments, and AI-generated tags.
• No automation for file organization → I must manually clean up the upload folder, which can be tedious for large libraries.
• No way to define a custom folder structure → It would be useful to organize files based on date, album, location, or custom rules.

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Proposed Solution: "Organized Storage Management" Feature

I propose adding a feature that allows users to automatically move uploaded files based on predefined rules while retaining all metadata.

1️⃣ Auto-Move System Based on File Age

• Enable auto-relocation for files older than X days (e.g., move files older than 30 days).
• This process runs periodically in the background and moves files from UPLOAD_LOCATION to a permanent storage location without breaking metadata.

2️⃣ Customizable Folder Structure for Storage

• Users should be able to define an organized folder structure for moved files:
  • By date: /YYYY/MM-DD/IMG_1234.jpg
  • By album name: /Albums/Family Trip/IMG_5678.jpg
  • By location: /Europe/Denmark/Copenhagen/IMG_9012.jpg
  • By a combination of rules: /YYYY/MM-DD/{Album}/{Location}/{Filename}

3️⃣ Retain Metadata When Moving Files

• Immich should track file movements internally to ensure metadata (albums, people tags, AI tags) remains intact after relocation.
• A possible implementation:
  • Track files by unique hash instead of file path.
  • If a file is moved, Immich updates its database with the new path rather than treating it as a new upload.

4️⃣ UI-Controlled "Move Files Now" Option

• Users should be able to manually trigger a file move from Immich’s UI with a "Move to Permanent Storage" button.
• Users select which files/albums to move, and Immich handles the process while maintaining metadata.

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Why This Would Be a Valuable Addition

✔ Prevents metadata loss when organizing files outside Immich.
✔ Automates storage cleanup, reducing manual effort.
✔ Enables structured file organization with customizable folder naming.
✔ Enhances long-term photo management for users with NAS setups.

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Im looking forward to hear your feedback on this idea and how best to implement this while maintaining Immich’s simplicity and performance. 🚀

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[zackpollard]

Hey, we already have a storage template system as you can see in our documentation. https://immich.app/docs/administration/storage-template/

[tcarlsen]

I appreciate the response, but I believe the core of my request was misunderstood.

Storage Templates only define the folder structure for uploaded files, but they do not handle moving older files to an external, permanent storage location (External Libraries).

The reason I want this feature is that I (and many others) use the upload folder as a temporary backup space, where I can review my photos before they are permanently stored.

Right now, everything uploaded from my phone is instantly placed in Immich’s storage structure, but I don’t want all of my phone’s photos to be part of my long-term archive.

📌 Key problem:
• I often take temporary photos (random screenshots, reminders, etc.) that I don’t want in my long-term storage.
• Instead of manually sorting every image before upload, I prefer to clean up my photos inside Immich before they are moved.
• After X days, the remaining photos should be automatically moved to a permanent storage location (External Libraries), while keeping all metadata (albums, AI tags, etc.).

Storage Templates could be part of this, helping define the structure of the moved files, but the core feature I’m requesting is an automated relocation process based on file age.

Could you please reconsider this with this workflow in mind?

[zackpollard]

To me it sounds like your proposed solution is exactly what we have in the storage template system right now, but with an option to set a delay of 30 days or something configurable? I'm not sure why you want to move to "external libraries" specifically, that's not what they are for, you can just mount the storage template folder to your permanent storage location instead.

[tcarlsen]

Thanks again for your response!

Storage Templates can only be applied within UPLOAD_LOCATION and are hardcoded to UPLOAD_LOCATION/library/{user}.
• That means each user gets their own separate storage, and there is no way to move their files into a shared family album.
• If I wanted to move files to my existing NAS photo structure, Storage Templates would force them into a subfolder under admin, which is not how I want them stored.

This is why I need an actual file moving feature:
✅ The /upload folder acts as a personal backup for my whole family (each person only sees their own photos).
✅ After X days, I want photos to be moved to a shared storage location that all family members (and other apps) can access.
✅ This move needs to be physical (not just organizational) and must preserve all metadata.

Storage Templates do not allow this because:
❌ They only control structure inside the upload folder, not across different storage mounts.
❌ The base path cannot be changed, so all files remain under UPLOAD_LOCATION/library/{user}.
❌ Files cannot be physically moved to an external location after a certain time.

Would it be possible to extend Storage Templates or add a new feature that allows automatic file relocation after X days, while keeping all metadata intact?

- ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload     # personal upload/backup folder 
- ${LIBRARY_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/library      # shared library folder

[zackpollard]

This is a pretty complex use case and not something I think we will want to support. For one, external libraries currently can't even be shared with multiple users. What you're asking for would be incredibly complicated to pull off properly with a nice user experience, and realistically is very niche. We are eventually going to add something called "workflows" to Immich which will allow you to do a lot of custom stuff, as well as have external plugins. This is a future item on our roadmap, but potentially could be capable of doing what you're asking with some work from you or some other developer making an external plugin. However I don't see this ever being part of Immich core, apologies.

[Whitehawk2000]

Thank you for this honest answer. Sadly this makes me the decision to not mess around with immich anymore really easy. And i really wanted Immich to become my goto organisation tool.

Real Folder organisation (subfolders/ external libraries...) has never been a niche. Its been the main and basic way to store Photos. This needs to become the basic way again and all other functions can be additional for every users needs.
Storing Photos like a timeline has become popular, only because big companies did not gave us other functions, just to bind us to their shitty services.
Even Synology Photos/Photostation was capable of managing custom folders/libraries 10years ago with no problem.

The way the storage templates works is nice, but really restricted yet. It should work with external folders/libraries and should be able to manage subfolders. Maybe add custom categories? As an example: category "Birthday"/albumName/....

Many people are waiting for these functions, because it is part of nearly every discussion i read. I still hope it will become reality, because everthing else in Immich is really promising.

[timbatog]

+1 for this feature.

Many professional photographers use Lightroom or alternative editing tools as a core part of their workflow, so have images coming in FROM Lightroom exports, in addition to photos coming in from their mobile devices. As the OP suggests the Uploads folder is really seen as temporary cache/backup usually on a fast non-redundant SSD (large, fast SSDs are expensive) before the move to much cheaper spinning-rust, redundant, backup location. This integrates Immich into an existing backup workflow that is well established and tested, which would surely increase adoption by other photographers.

It would be nice to have the ability to move images and maintain the computationally expensive metadata - re-doing this for 200,000 photos is not a cheap prospect. These images could then be stored on External Libraries and accessed/shared in just the same way as they are under Uploads.

What is the currently proposed solution for those of us who need to ‘free up’ space on the Uploads location and move files to redundant and cheaper storage locations that are already part of our backup workflows, short of manually copying an incurring the regeneration of ALL metadata costs?

[pauvt]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Storage templates are great — I can organize photos as YYYY/Album right from the app.

The problem comes with shared albums. Instead of all my holiday photos in one folder, I end up with:

Person1/YYYY/Album
Person2/YYYY/Album

Not very convenient for using the photos elsewhere.

I could use one shared account so everything lands in the same directory, but that’s not ideal either.

It seems I’m not alone — many users want a way to bridge the gap between uploads and the external library, or at least organize uploads while accounting for multiple users.