Self-hosted photo libraries may need to work across many places
Personal photo ownership is not only about keeping the original image files. In real life, recent photos may stay on a phone, older archives may sit on a NAS or WebDAV server, Immich or may handle browsing, old or iCloud exports may remain separate, and backup drives may exist only for safety. Many photo apps treat this split setup as a temporary problem that should be solved by moving into one library.
A more realistic approach is to accept that photos can live in several places. The missing piece is management across those places. Useful features would include one search across sources, duplicate review, albums, favorites, archive or private marks, and migration paths that keep the organization work from being locked into one app.
The central question is what counts as the when photos: folders on disk, an Immich or database, Apple Photos or library state, exported metadata, sidecar files, or a mix of these.
Key points
- A personal photo library may be spread across phones, a NAS, a WebDAV server, cloud exports, and backup drives.
- Immich and can help browse photos, but their databases may become the only place where organization data lives.
- The hard part is managing search, duplicates, albums, favorites, and private marks across several sources.
- A good setup should preserve metadata and sidecar files when moving between tools.
- owners should decide what the is before importing into one app.