I ditched Google Photos for Immich, but Google made the exit surprisingly painful
Android Police 2026-07-22 12:00:18
Context: The author, Oluwaniyi Raji, a tech content specialist, decided to switch from Google Photos to Immich, a self-hosted photo storage solution, due to Google's storage limit warnings and perceived anti-consumer practices. He found Immich to be a suitable alternative with features like map view, timelines, and facial recognition, and was able to successfully migrate his photo library after overcoming some technical challenges. The migration process involved using Google Takeout to export his photos, reprocessing the metadata, and dealing with duplicates.
Key Facts
- The author's photo library consists of over 1,000 images uploaded in the current year alone, making it too large to manage manually.
- Google Takeout exports photos in compressed archives that require an external drive to stage, and strips most of the useful metadata from each photo.
- The author used a community tool called Immich-Go, an open-source binary, to reattach the metadata to his photos during the import process, as the official Immich CLI required Node.js and additional terminal setup.
- Immich's import tool keeps the largest version of duplicate photos, but the platform also runs its own visual duplicate detection in the background for review.
- The author had to install Tailscale on his friends' phones and troubleshoot issues with battery-optimization prompts that kept pausing uploads, highlighting the need for technical expertise or support for non-technical users.