[Feature] Backup & Restore via GUI

[DrSpaldo]

The feature

I was hoping that there would be an option in the GUI to backup Immich & restore once moving server, etc. The current method isn't very user friendly...

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

It's much better to use tried and tested tools for backing up the filesystem & database than for us to reinvent the wheel about that.

[dkerlee]

I’m all about tried and true methods. Can those methods get wrapped up and skinned into the Immich gui?

[dkerlee]

I’m sure there must be a reason for requiring a full external PostgreSQL database for this. But, what kind of speed or install size increase would we take if some version of PostgreSQL (or whatever) was just included with this docker? Backup and restore could be much simpler if you had control of the entire database machine right there.

[mmomjian]

You can try the all in one Docker image

[dkerlee]

Additionally, self-hosting puts the files and controls with the owner. The files Immich deals is are super important. If I’m going to go whole hog to Immich, (100% planning on it eventually!) these pics of my kids etc are the first irreplaceable files I’ll be self-hosting. There will be gobs of other people attempting to self-host their own irreplaceable files; all different skill levels and hardware. I know backup isn’t as glamorous as new facial recognition, but it’s going to be an essential part of client retention.

[DrSpaldo]

💯

[victor-marino]

+1 for this.

I'm considering moving my whole photo and video library to Immich, but since I would now be self-hosting, I would be responsible for making regular copies of everything in case of total failure (HDDs/house burning down, etc.). It's one of the main responsibilities you take on (or the benefits you give up) once you move from a cloud-based platform to a self-hosted solution.

It's not that I'm not capable of running the commands in the backup & restore section - I work as a software engineer and I'm comfortable with the command line. It's that the page is full of warnings, notes, tips, etc., looks like it could change with any update, and something tells me it would be really easy to screw up if I try to automate it with my own script. This gives me a bit of pause when planning the migration.

I think it would be really valuable if we could get a built-in, one-click export/import feature that removes all that friction and also allows us to schedule periodic exports to a folder of our choice.

Just my 2 cents!

Thanks for the excellent work people are doing on this... what an amazing piece of software!

[blublub]

+1 or better +10

Since a DB is involved this seems a bit tricky and I get the " we do not want to re-invent the wheel".
However the current approach is not easy or user friendly for "general folks"

One idea I have for such a backup option would be:
all images will be copied to a backup location, alongside with every image there is a sidecar file with all the db info (tags, persons, album gps, etc...) which was stored in immich

So if the backup gets imported immich can build a new database entries for each image using the sidecar file

[freak12techno]

+1 on that.

There's already an existing guide on backing up and restoring (https://immich.app/docs/administration/backup-and-restore/), however it isn't really suitable for non tech-savvy people and it 1) makes it extra complex and 2) as an Immich operator you have to reinvent the wheel if you need something custom.

My use case is: I want to be able to have periodic backups. For that. I'd need to automate the following:

1. backing up the service
2. uploading the backup to a system I am using (S3? FTP? whatever?)
3. maybe notify me somehow (via email or something) that the backup was done (or for sure let me know if it's failed)
4. remove older backups so it'd have N last backups

The only way to do it now I know is by writing a custom bash script that does it, which makes me reinvent the wheel basically and doing it on my own. (There's also the "borg" way of doing it, also found in docs: https://immich.app/docs/guides/template-backup-script/, but it also makes it way more complex for an end user than what I suggest below.)

Instead, here's how it might look like, this is somewhat similar to what HomeAssistant has:

• a user goes to admin page of their Immich instance, there's a "Backup and Restore" tab
• they can trigger the "Backup" method, which would make a dump in some specific format (maybe a zip file with some specified folder structure?)
• they are able to download the latest backup to a local PC
• they are able to upload a zip file done via the same method and restore it (that'd be actually handy if someone would need to migrate their Immich instance to another service)
• there's a way to set up a backup schedule
• there's a way to configure where the backups should be uploaded (and probably whether the local backups should be deleted once uploaded)

If Immich would be able to do something like this, that would be really awesome.

[freak12techno]

I'd also add the following thought: given that Immich is in rapid development stage and everything might change rapidly, I think that for now it's acceptable to have backups that might not be backward-compatible (e.g a backup done with Immich 1.1 can't be restored on Immich 1.2). Actually restoring them this way would be just deploying the older Immich version, restoring on it, then upgrading. This sounds like way less effort to set it up in order to have a proper backup solution compared to inventing something on your own.

Also this might be really important to have right now exactly because I saw a bunch of people on Reddit who are afraid to switch to Immich because it's in rapid development stage and everything might break, and setting up a backup solution being a lot of effort might really turn them off.

Having a built-in backup/restore solution (or maybe at least a backup solution and a script that does the restore which is not a part of Immich GUI, if a restore can take a lot of time to implement?) would show these users that their data is safe and even if Immich does some update that destroys users data in some way (or rather, seeing it happening way more often, them upgrading in a wrong way somehow causing this), they can easily get their data back.

One downside I see here is that the backup solution done this way should be tested extra carefully so it may never fail, because if people are trusting Immich claiming they have a backup system, and later something happens and the restore wouldn't work, causing them to lose their data, this would be a disaster for a project's reputation, compared to users done their backups wrong somehow and losing their data (because then it's their responsibility, not Immich one).

What do you think of that?

[blublub]

Data portability through XMP sidecars and such is absolutely a goal, but is distinct from a GUI backup/restore option.

no no really. If the GUI exports all images with a sideacard and can re-import them and add all the info into an empty database i would be "ok" - the only thing missing here would be the ML data I guess, but that would be good enough or 99,9% of ppl

[blublub]

I'd also add the following thought: given that Immich is in rapid development stage and everything might change rapidly, I think that for now it's acceptable to have backups that might not be backward-compatible (e.g a backup done with Immich 1.1 can't be restored on Immich 1.2). Actually restoring them this way would be just deploying the older Immich version, restoring on it, then upgrading. This sounds like way less effort to set it up in order to have a proper backup solution compared to inventing something on your own.

Also this might be really important to have right now exactly because I saw a bunch of people on Reddit who are afraid to switch to Immich because it's in rapid development stage and everything might break, and setting up a backup solution being a lot of effort might really turn them off.

Having a built-in backup/restore solution (or maybe at least a backup solution and a script that does the restore which is not a part of Immich GUI, if a restore can take a lot of time to implement?) would show these users that their data is safe and even if Immich does some update that destroys users data in some way (or rather, seeing it happening way more often, them upgrading in a wrong way somehow causing this), they can easily get their data back.

One downside I see here is that the backup solution done this way should be tested extra carefully so it may never fail, because if people are trusting Immich claiming they have a backup system, and later something happens and the restore wouldn't work, causing them to lose their data, this would be a disaster for a project's reputation, compared to users done their backups wrong somehow and losing their data (because then it's their responsibility, not Immich one).

What do you think of that?

The problem here is that for the devs a backup solution now mean they have to fix it all the time if it breaks - it is not only about backward compatibility, it about the feasibility to keep the feature running

Most post I have seen on redit are'nt about backup but about installin immich that keeps ppl from using it - installing still is something for "power users" who know IT - Immich will never get a real adoption besides "nerds" if that will not be adressed - I have also written that in another post, the most easiest way is probably to provide a linux VM, native installers would be even better though

[freak12techno]

they have to fix it all the time if it breaks

Agree, that's also part of what I meant by making sure it always works 100% correctly, and for sure it's difficult.

installing still is something for "power users" who know IT

Also agree with that, but that goes out of the scope of this discussion and should be resolved separately. One thing I'd say is IMO it's not only about the actually installing Immich, but also about maintaining it, and not having an out-of-the-box backup solution and having to do it your own way is also part of it being difficult (I'd even say more difficult than actually deploying, check out my comment on that above). There are likely people who'd like to install Immich to test it out and who have the knowledge on deploying it, but who are scared to switch to it permanently as a main photos solution due to the lack of a built-in backup solution that just works.

[nckrwlmn]

The people have spoken! Give us a built-in backup and restore in the GUI. I for one I'm also not switching over to Immich fully until this can be resolved better. I currently have a different service backing up my photos, and then using an external library to view the photos in Immich. This would be one big reason why, because there is no good way to back up, or restore an Immich set up. Anybody who has even heard about Immich has no problem deploying a docker compose file and getting it running, but backing up file systems is a different level of complexity, especially if you consider folder structure and things like that. I mean, I am tech savvy enough to start up the server and maintain and update that, but I just accidentally nuked my entire install the other day when I redeployed my docker compose from scratch. Now I specifically use Portainer because it is has a GUI and I don't have to deal with docker command line. That also means that I don't like Linux command line a whole lot either so I have no desire to get into that file system and back up the raw folder structure of Immich.

We can wait till Immich goes stable, but please give us this functionality.

[rollermy]

+1 to this feature.
I've installed Immich using Cloudron. Cloudron automates the backup the app to destinations like s3.
The only downside is that a backup is made each time the app upgrades and i'm left with multiple backups, of 200GB each. That ends up being expensive.

I'd rather have more control and have it built in with Immich.

[TommySharpNZ]

Yeah a set and forget backup option in the UI is the one thing missing before I can use Immich as my primary.
Even just an automated way to sync out all photos and a sidecar file for each to a network location that can then be used as a source if I need to rebuild my Immich instance.
My NAS has snapshots so that takes care of any kind of versioning of backups I might need.

[Ender-Wang]

Now enable db backup in GUI is supported (1.120.0+), restoring would come easy and soon, IMO.

[Saneckg]

How to change the path to save backups? I have a 2TB SSD drive. Immich takes up 1300 GB. One database backup takes up 800 MB. I just ran out of space on my fast disk. You need to be able to change the location where your backups are stored.

[bo0tzz]

https://immich.app/docs/guides/custom-locations

[DrSpaldo]

https://immich.app/docs/guides/custom-locations

I can't see it in that link?

[bo0tzz]

The new addition for the backups folder isn't on the released docs yet, but the idea is the same as for all the other paths.

[DrSpaldo]

The new addition for the backups folder isn't on the released docs yet, but the idea is the same as for all the other paths.

So why post the link if it doesn't answer the question?

[bo0tzz]

Because the pattern is identical and you should really be able to extrapolate from the other entries. Plus by now the backup folder has also been added there.

[UnidentifiedTag]

immich
App Version:
v1.137.3
Version:
1.9.12

no backup option to be found in the UI, as im using a hexos build of truenas i am finding this "shell" command line like thing really annoying and hard to use, i have already once tried to backup just the files i see in the immich dataset, when i went to restore the dataset immich ui all reset, couldn't see any of my photos, nothing, we who are not Linux Operating System genius need a ui way to backup and restore our images, right now im running with no backups of my images and its very scary

[freak12techno]

Chiming in with my 2 cents of feedback here, which I am pretty sure I've said above but want to highlight it as I consider it extremely important:

I do think I can consider myself an advanced user who's able to set up backups properly. But imagine a new person, who wants to deploy Immich on their host. As of now, deploying Immich itself is quite an easy task (literally just docker compose up -d), but setting up a backup solution is way more complex: you need to deal with backing up the database, the assets, and upload it to some external storage. And ideally, also test it to verify if it's working. If any of these steps are not working correctly (and I am pretty sure that a lot of people at some point have lost their data due to the backup system not working properly, see this for example: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-dot-com-database-incident/), then your precious collection is gone.

So that leaves users who don't have enough knowledge to set up a backup solution with the following options:

• set up Immich without backups at all, and risking losing their data if something goes wrong (and probably blaming Immich team for it, which we all don't want)
• avoid using Immich and waiting for it to have a proper built-in backup solution

Also even for those who's proficient enough to set up backups, there are many things that can go wrong (again see Gitlab incident for reference), potentially resulting in losing data.

I also saw a bunch of people on Reddit complaining about the backup solution not being present and this stopping them from migrating from Google Photos or whatever they're using now.

So I totally understand discouraging people from using Immich if they aren't able to set up backups for themselves, I also totally get that it's already in the roadmap, I just wanted to highlight that for some people it's extremely important.

[bo0tzz]

@UnidentifiedTag please stop posting lengthy LLM responses full of hypotheticals and attempts to plan "half-sprints" to deliver "MVP"s, it's not helpful.

[thoroughmas]

I'm all for an easy robust backup solution, but the devs have clearly heard the requests and have a plan, the rest is noise at this point.

[UnidentifiedTag]

May I make a quick observation? Some of the replies on backup & restore, while factually correct, come across as more critical than constructive to end users. I respect that there’s a roadmap, and I’ll take your points on board.

But if there’s nothing supportive to add, sometimes silence speaks louder than harsh criticism. I’ve shared my thoughts and given food for thought, so I’ll leave it here for everyone to reflect on. A quick search will show why backup & restore really matters.

And to anyone else with an opinion: please chime in freely, no one should feel labeled for simply caring about data safety.

[nckrwlmn]

Amen to all of this. This should definitely be done before the first stable release. It's a no brainer to see that. There are many people living very dangerously with their Immich library I would guess. They know how to spin it up and use it because it looks good, but it has no good recoverability.