How is the storage template engine supposed to work?
Hello everyone! Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere—I couldn’t find a definitive answer on GitHub, in the issues, or on Discord. I’ve read the storage-template docs (https://immich.app/docs/administration/storage-template) and everything else I could find online, but I’m still puzzled by how this feature works in practice. I’ve set up Immich several times, and I’m not sure whether this is intended behavior, an issue with my setup, or simply my own unrealistic expectations. Please enlighten me!
My docker-compose.yml: https://cloud.taking.pictures/s/qGG8cxSKgZQsAHS
From the docs and the UI, I expected the storage template to:
* Replicate any album structure I create in Immich (via web or mobile) into my filesystem, according to my template settings
* Automatically apply changes to the filesystem whenever I move a file between albums or add a file to an album
* Essentially run the “migrate storage template” job on every asset change, so that my filesystem always (near real-time) mirrors my album structure
What I actually see is that no replication occurs unless I manually trigger the migration job in the web UI. In the logs, I only see this output when I run it manually—I had hoped it would run automatically whenever I move an asset or edit an album:
Is this the intended behavior? If automatic triggering isn’t supported, could I instead use the Immich CLI in a cron job to run migrations at regular intervals, so that my filesystem stays in sync at all times?
I would greatly appreciate your insights on this matter.
Thank you in advance!
7 Replies
:wave: Hey @HolyMacarony,
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If this ticket can be closed you can use the /close command, and re-open it later if needed.It runs nightly
(I think)
Definitely not on every change
You could use the API to run it more often, like hourly. I wouldn’t do it every minute. It’s not that optimized
Thank you for your answer, Zeus. I just want to be sure that the “migrate storage template” job is triggered automatically at least once a day. Otherwise, keeping the filesystem in sync with the album structure would require manual intervention every time, which would quickly become tedious. Is there any documentation or resource that outlines the scheduling of this and other periodic jobs in Immich so I can confirm how often they run?
And i guess it is this API call you are referring to? https://immich.app/docs/api/send-job-command/
I would just wait 24-48 hours and check on disk, or you can monitor the logs
Yes i'll do both. Thanks!
all jobs runs at midnight, except from the storage migration job, that one isn't scheduled.
in the meantime you can create a daily cron job to force it
Thank you! That’s exactly what I thought. I already did that, and it worked flawlessly. Isn’t that something that should be integrated into Immich natively as well? Otherwise, you’ll never have consistency between your album structure and the filesystem unless you trigger it manually.