我的本地優先相片管理流程：Immich、Syncthing 與 rclone

After 4 years on Google Photos, I migrated everything to a self-hosted setup that gives me similar features with full data ownership. Here's the stack after 18 months of iteration.

The constraints I started with

• 50,000+ photos and videos (currently 280GB, growing ~30GB/year)
• Family of 4 sharing the same library
• Want to view/edit/share from any device (iOS, Android, web, laptop)
• Don't want to pay $100+/year for cloud storage
• Don't want my photos trained on by some AI model

The current stack

Storage: Synology DS220+ (8TB, RAID 1, ~5TB usable)
Photos backend: Immich (the best Google Photos replacement I've found)
Phone → NAS sync: Syncthing running on each phone
NAS → offsite backup: rclone + Backblaze B2 (encrypted)
Viewing: Immich iOS/Android apps + web UI

Total cost: $5/month Backblaze + the NAS I already owned. After 18 months: $90 total. Versus $100+/year to Google.

Why Immich, not PhotoPrism or PiGallery

I tried all three.

PhotoPrism is beautiful but slow on a Celeron. Face recognition took 3 days to scan my library. And the mobile apps are "functional but rough."

PiGallery is dead-simple but doesn't do face recognition, timeline is clunky, sharing is awkward.

Immich (github.com/immich-app/immich) hit the sweet spot:

• Fast face recognition (uses ML models on CPU but parallelized well)
• Clean iOS/Android apps that actually feel native
• EXIF data preserved
• Map view (if your photos have GPS)
• Sharing via signed links with optional password
• Search by face, by date, by location, by object (uses CLIP embeddings)
• Auto-upload from mobile
• Albums + Memories ("On this day X years ago")

Immich is a Google Photos clone in the best sense of the word.

The Docker Compose setup

version: '3'
services:
  immich-server:
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release
    container_name: immich_server
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "2283:2283"
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/immich/upload:/usr/src/app/upload
      - /volume1/photos:/usr/src/app/external:ro
    environment:
      - TZ=Asia/Shanghai

  immich-machine-learning:
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:release
    container_name: immich_ml
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/immich/cache:/cache
    environment:
      - TZ=Tokyo

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    container_name: immich_redis
    restart: unless-stopped

  database:
    image: postgres:14-alpine
    container_name: immich_db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=immich
      - POSTGRES_USER=immich
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<your-password>
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/immich/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

External library /volume1/photos is mounted read-only — that's where my "archive" of original photos lives, and Immich indexes them without modifying the originals.

Phone upload via Syncthing (not Immich's auto-upload)

I tried Immich's built-in auto-upload. It works, but eats battery on iOS and occasionally misses photos when the app is backgrounded.

Syncthing is more reliable:

• Runs in background on both iOS and Android (via Syncthing-Fork / Möbius Sync)
• Pushes to /volume1/phone-backup/<partner>/ on NAS
• A small cron job moves new files from there into Immich's upload dir

This way my wife's phone and my phone both auto-upload without either of us thinking about it.

Backup to Backblaze B2

#!/bin/bash
rclone sync /volume1/photos encrypted-b2:my-photos-backup   --transfers 4 --checkers 8   --log-file /var/log/rclone-photos.log

Encrypted client-side (crypt remote in rclone config). B2 only sees ciphertext. Cost: ~$1.50/month for 280GB.

I run this weekly via cron. Restore is slow but works.

What's missing vs Google Photos

• Google Magic Eraser (AI object removal): Immich doesn't have this. For me, I rarely used it.
• Google Lens-style search: Immich's CLIP search is close but not as polished. You can search "beach" or "dog" and get reasonable results.
• "Cinematic moments" (slow-zoom video): Immich doesn't auto-generate these.
• Free unlimited "storage saver" quality: Immich stores full quality. If you want to downsample, do it on upload.

If you use these heavily, Immich isn't a 1:1 replacement. For me, the local-first trade-off is worth it.

What I like BETTER than Google Photos

• True data ownership: I can export everything tomorrow if I want to leave.
• No AI training on my kids' faces: This was a bigger motivator than I expected.
• Free unlimited storage (within my NAS capacity): No more "15GB shared with Drive."
• Family sharing without paying: Google charges $30/year for 2TB shared with family. My setup is $5/month total.
• Original files preserved: Google sometimes downgrades original quality. Immich doesn't touch them.

What I'd do differently if starting today

1. Start with Immich. Don't waste time on PhotoPrism unless Immich doesn't work for you.
2. Buy a NAS with at least 8TB usable (more than you think you need).
3. Use Syncthing for upload, not Immich's built-in auto-upload. More reliable.
4. Set up rclone backup BEFORE importing all your photos. Don't be me, importing 50k photos then scrambling to set up backup.
5. Enable Immich's external library mode from the start. Lets you keep originals in a separate folder and not duplicate storage.

Hardware requirements

My Synology DS220+ (Intel Celeron J4025, 10GB RAM):

• 50k photos indexed: ~6 hours initial scan
• Face recognition: ~24 hours (uses ML container)
• Daily uploads (50-100 photos): instant
• Mobile app responsive: yes
• Web UI responsive: yes
• Search by object (CLIP): ~2-3 seconds per query

For larger libraries (100k+) or if you want faster face recognition, get a NAS with an Intel i5/i7 or add a GPU for ML inference.

Total cost over 18 months

Google Photos 2TB shared plan for the same period: ~$150 (similar).

The financial case isn't strong. The privacy case is. For me, that's enough.