How to set up Immich on Saplo (your own gallery instead of Google Photos)

Google Photos' free limit is 15 GB shared with Gmail and Google Drive, which is enough for a few months when your phone records videos in 4K. After that, you start paying a monthly fee for additional gigabytes, indefinitely, forever. Immich is an open-source photo and video gallery. It offers the same automatic phone backup and facial recognition, but on your own Box, where you pay once for the infrastructure instead of monthly for storage. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set up Immich on Saplo.

Why Immich on your own Box instead of Google Photos

Google One's paid plan, above the free 15 GB, has two features that are particularly painful for a large photo and video library:

• the fee increases with each gigabyte - 2 TB in Google One costs about $10 per month, indefinitely, and only grows with more phones in the family,
• your photo library trains someone else's AI model - photos and metadata remain on Google servers, beyond your control.

Immich is the same automatic backup from your phone and the same face recognition and content-based photo search that you host on your own Box. Zero monthly fee for gigabytes, data stays on your infrastructure, and the only limit is the disk space of your chosen plan.

Requirements

Immich is the most demanding recipe in the entire Saplo catalog, so the requirements are correspondingly higher than for a typical application:

• Box with Docker running (the engine automatically enables it during installation from the catalog, container nesting is required, which Saplo has by default),
• minimum 4 GB RAM free on the Box, because Immich deploys four containers at once: server, machine learning, database, and Redis,
• minimum 30 GB of disk space to start, and the library grows with each backup, so it's worth getting a Box with extra space right away,
• domains or subdomains *.saploapp.pl included in the price of every plan.

Four containers at once is significantly more than for most applications in the catalog. The server handles the API and upload, the machine learning container performs facial recognition and content-based image search, the database is its own PostgreSQL with the pgvector extension for embeddings, and Redis holds the queue for background tasks like thumbnail generation. The engine has a shared database only for MySQL/MariaDB, so for Immich, the database and Redis are their own containers alongside the server, using the same pattern as for Paperless-ngx or Baserow.

Step-by-step installation

1. In your Saplo panel, go to the App catalog and select Immich (under the "Business" category).
2. Choose a Box with at least 4 GB RAM, where all four containers will be hosted, and a domain or subdomain for your gallery.
3. Confirm the installation. The engine downloads four Docker images at once (server, machine learning, pgvector database, Redis). This can take longer than a single-container application on a new Box, and it exposes the server under the specified domain using nginx with free SSL.
4. The engine waits for the server and machine learning containers to actually start before considering the installation complete. This is because the four containers start in parallel, and the database must pass its health check before the server connects to it.
5. Once finished, you will find the IMMICH-SETUP.txt file with the gallery's address in the App catalog on your Box.

First configuration

Immich, unlike Grafana or MinIO, doesn't generate a password upon installation because there are no default login credentials to change. You create the administrator account manually, yourself, the first time you visit the page.

1. Go to the gallery address from the IMMICH-SETUP.txt file.
2. In the Getting Started form, enter your email, password, and name. This will become the first and only administrator account, no one else has access to it, so do this immediately after installation, before someone else does.
3. Install the official Immich mobile app (iOS/Android) and log in with the same email and credentials as in your browser. From there, automatic photo and video backup from your phone begins, just like with Google Photos.
4. Wait for the first library import. Face recognition and content-based photo search work immediately, but the machine learning container's AI models are downloaded only with the first real task, so the first large import will take longer than subsequent ones.

Immich on Saplo vs. Google Photos

FAQ

Does Immich require more resources than other apps from the catalog? Yes, this is the most demanding recipe in the Saplo catalog. Four containers at once (server, machine learning, database, Redis) require a minimum of 4 GB RAM and 30 GB disk space, much more than a typical single-container application.

Is there a default admin password to change? No, Immich doesn't automatically create any account. You set up the administrator account yourself in the "Getting Started" form when you first access the page, by providing your own email and password.

Does the mobile app work the same way as Google Photos? Yes, the official Immich app for iOS and Android connects to your gallery address and automatically backs up photos and videos from your phone in the background, exactly like Google Photos.

Why does Immich have its own database, while other apps share a common Saplo database? Immich requires a PostgreSQL vector database with the pgvector extension for searching by image content, and the engine has a shared database only for MySQL/MariaDB. Therefore, the database and Redis run as their own containers next to the server, using the same pattern as with Paperless-ngx.

Is data in Immich automatically backed up? This depends on your Box plan. Backup works at the entire Box level, including the photo library and database, it's not a separate function of Immich itself.

We've described how application hosting works on Saplo and what one Box can fit alongside Immich on a separate page.

If you have questions about setting up Immich on your own Box or connecting the mobile application for automatic backup, write to us, and we'll help with the initial configuration.