Immich

Immich is an open-source photo and video library that you host yourself, on a home server or a rented machine, as an alternative to commercial cloud photo services. This is its official Android app. On its own it does nothing: you need to run an Immich server, which by the project’s figures takes a machine with at least 6 GB of RAM and two CPU cores. To try the app first, you can connect it to the project’s public demo at https://demo.immich.app (user demo@immich.app, password demo).

Backing up

• The app uploads new photos and videos from the albums you choose, when you open it and periodically in the background. Since version 3.0 the Android background backup can also work through your whole library.
• By default it uploads only over Wi-Fi, and you can limit background backup to when the phone is charging. Files already on the server are skipped.
• Once your photos are safely on the server, Free Up Space can delete the copies on the phone.
• The project’s docs warn that strict battery optimisation on some Android phones can stop the background backup, and they still recommend a proper 3-2-1 backup of your library: Immich shouldn’t be your only copy.

Browsing your library

A timeline of everything, albums and shared albums, sharing with a partner, memories, a map of where your photos were taken, and search by faces, objects, places and camera details. Face recognition and smart search run on your server, not on the phone. There is also a PIN-protected locked folder, a read-only mode, and two home screen widgets. Since 3.0 the app can serve as your phone’s gallery app too.

Things to know

• Keep the app and server in step. Immich says the app usually works with the current and the previous major version of the server, and recommends updating the app before the server.
• Why it wants location in the background: Immich can switch between your server’s home and internet addresses depending on which Wi-Fi network you are on, and Android only reveals the network’s name to apps with precise location access.
• The Immich team says it can’t see your photos. The map’s tiles and the check for new versions come from Immich’s own servers, which log IP addresses; both can be switched off in the server’s settings.

Why the file is so big

93% of the 179.6 MB file is native code, and it is there three times over: once each for 64-bit ARM, 32-bit ARM and x86_64 processors. A phone uses only one of the three. Inside, we found the Flutter engine the app is built with, the MapLibre library that draws its map, and Google’s Cronet networking library in its standalone form.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of Immich 3.2.4. Immich’s documentation lists a separate signing key for each of its channels, Google Play, GitHub and F-Droid, and this file carries exactly the F-Droid fingerprint it gives. Because the keys differ, switching channels means uninstalling first.
• F-Droid builds it without Google Play Services, so the phone’s location comes from Android itself rather than Google’s location service.
• Immich is led by Alex Tran, and FUTO has employed its core team full time since 2024. The project sells optional product keys to support development and says no feature will ever be put behind a paywall.
• It runs on Android 8.0 and later and declares 25 permissions.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.