Switching from iCloud to Immich in a cleaner way
Hello ! Sorry if it's a duplicate, I searched through the documentation and this channel and didn't find any advice on this topic.
I have an Apple Photos account with arround 35.000 photos, across 10 years. I installed Immich with the objective to switch everything to it and stop paying for iCloud in the coming months. When I run the app on iOS, it rightfully scans my iCloud and starts uploading, but for it to be efficient I would need to let my phone plugged in with Immich in the foreground, which is not something I can do.
I also have a physical backup of those files on a NAS, that I have done a few days ago, so it's pretty up to date. I could just use this folder as an external library but my phone will still try to push my albums to Immich everytime I open the app.
So my question is simple : is there a way on iOS to only push the new photos to Immich and not care about other pictures ?
13 Replies
:wave: Hey @Anthony,
Thanks for reaching out to us. Please carefully read this message and follow the recommended actions. This will help us be more effective in our support effort and leave more time for building Immich :immich:.
References
- Container Logs:
docker compose logs docs
- Container Status: docker ps -a docs
- Reverse Proxy: https://immich.app/docs/administration/reverse-proxy
- Code Formatting https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/210298617-Markdown-Text-101-Chat-Formatting-Bold-Italic-Underline#h_01GY0DAKGXDEHE263BCAYEGFJA
Checklist
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7. :blue_square: tried an incognito window, disabled extensions, cleared mobile app cache, logged out and back in, different browsers, etc. as applicable
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Information
In order to be able to effectively help you, we need you to provide clear information to show what the problem is. The exact details needed vary per case, but here is a list of things to consider:
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- Logs from all the containers and their status (see above).
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Please paste files and logs with proper code formatting, and especially avoid blurry screenshots.
Without the right information we can't work out what the problem is. Help us help you ;)
If this ticket can be closed you can use the /close command, and re-open it later if needed.Not at the moment, no. Better sync is coming but no ETA yet
I'll keep an eye out for the new releases then, thank you very much 🙂
By the way, if someone is looking for a hack that seems to work, I created a new album named "Already Backed Up" with the 35.000 photos and I selected it as an "Excluded" Album, and it's now only backing up the photos that are not in that album.
Well in the sync settings there’s also a setting for ignoring iCloud Photos. I’ve never had it on so I don’t know how it behaves exactly but maybe that’s also what you’re looking for?
I tried that yeah, but it does not seem to work as well :
- If I disabled iCloud sync on the phone, it will just try to blast through every files in the phone (because yeah, I guess it can't see if it's already in iCloud)
- If I still have iCloud Sync enabled on the phone, it just does not work at all ?
iCloud sync being on does work
I just used it yesterday
it will literally download EACH iCloud stored photo and upload it to immich storage
one by one
download and upload, download and upload. there's a line in the app backup section itself that shows you it's pulling from iCloud servers
and remember it will only recognize a dupe after it downloads the image from iCloud and uploads it to the server. the server is the only place where duplicates are checked
I think your best bet is to do a full iCloud offload using whatever apple provides. I only know googles takeout
and then manually upload those items using a PC
and then moving forward just leave iCloud sync off
so it won't bother checking the iCloud crap
had to do all of this troubleshooting with my wife's phone
https://github.com/simulot/immich-go
this will help
Alright, I can try that ! Thank you very much 🙂
I wish I saw this immich go before I set my server up. tempted to wipe everything and start from scratch. imported about 650gb of Google takeout images/videos
spent 4 days deduping shit
25 years worth
I have 2-3 years pushed in Immich right now only, it's really tempting to do so, starting fresh.
do it do it
lol
i was forced to do it because my alumni unlimited photo storage on google was taken away after 15 years
so to immich i went
Did you go to school in Michigan?
Feel free to not answer that haha. Just also got mine revoked, so thought was odd timing
northwestern
it was a nice ride
@schuhbacca
i dont remember exactly when they switched over to google for aulmni crap
but it was definitely long enough for me to amass nearly 2tb of stuff on there
offloading that from takeout was... a challenge. thank goodness for cookies and jdownloader
50gb chunks lol
it was certainly simple to just give my wife my login info and all our assets would just sync for years
I've used https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader - and then use the CLI to upload, or just let this run and store it in an external library - this this will cehck for new photos ever hour or so, but its all configurable
theres a docker container for it: https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd