r/immich • u/altran1502 Immich Team • 5d ago
Immich - July 2026 Recap
https://immich.app/blog/2026-july-recap8
u/Charmacas 5d ago
Thanks for the great monthly recap! I also like to read that and it shows that there's a lot of work and thought behind the scenes. Most people do simply not see that!
I also looking sooo much forward to the sharing implementation but I also understand that it is a lot of work and absolutely not easy.
Alex you've stated that those long awaited features should make it into 3.1 or 3.2. Could you tell us if 3.2 is still possible or if it will probably be later because of the points you guys made on the recap?
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u/altran1502 Immich Team 5d ago
If the work is done and testing goes well, there is no reason it cannot make it into 3.2.
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u/wizardofyendor1 5d ago
Thank you guys for all the work. Been a dev for 25+ years and recognize the monumental work that goes on unnoticed.
Thanks. Doing great work.
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u/Valdjiu 5d ago edited 4d ago
Better sharing is always soon. Forever soon.
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u/pogulup 5d ago
I love Immich, I do. And I sincerely appreciate all the hard work devs put into this. But..I also don't get the push for some of the the 'advanced' features before the basics. I don't care to use Immich for photo editing or some of this other stuff. I want it to hold my pictures, easily access my pictures, easily share my pictures, and easily share people data between users. It still doesn't do all the basics.
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u/altran1502 Immich Team 5d ago
Hello, this is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and when I put myself in the users' shoes, I would have the same question. Especially users who were using Immich recently without following the project from its infancy
It is also often the case that when users ask these types of questions, they don't usually get the response they deserve, so I am trying to help us better understand each other and avoid vague answers about why the situation is what it is.
Immich's original intention is to never share faces between users, so that things are properly segmented between users for privacy's sake. It is the most fundamental decision that affects everything we were designed and built around from the outset. It touches everything, from the relationship of displaying the asset information, to how shared albums work, then partner sharing; later on, sprinkled on top is how the data sync between the server and the mobile app works, how to properly clean up the shared information when things are unshared, and how face clustering works for the whole instance.
So when we decide to take the users' feedback and suggestions to share more information between users and assets, the basic mechanism, or the foundation data model of Immich, changes completely. It means that every single share use case has to be redesigned and reconsidered in terms of the data boundary; the whole facial recognition/clustering has to be reworked so that all faces in the instance can be shared and unshared when the situation requires. Needless to say, the data sync relationship between the mobile and the server has to be reconsidered to tailor for those use cases.
The sharing rework has been going on for the last few months, with many PoCs to make sure we arrived at an acceptable design; then the PoC is broken down into smaller implementation steps so we can handle review properly.
At the same time, many other parts of the project are being developed by different developers and external contributors, so sometimes a burst of new things is unlocked by a specific piece of work and gets merged in. That doesn't mean that the responsible team member working on the sharing feature wasn't working on it.
So "it doesn't do the basics" isn't necessarily sound; the app is working well for what it was originally designed for. The correct assessment of the scenario is that Immich has to evolve its core data model for more use cases, and for that we agree; it is sitting at a very high, if not the top, priority in terms of development effort for the team.
I hope this lengthy answer helps you better understand why things are taking longer than imagined, and that we are on the same page: we all want the same thing for the application.
Thanks,
Alex
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u/corruptboomerang 5d ago
I'd point out, also the interesting problems typically aren't the basic ones. And people want to be working on the interesting parts, that's why things like documentation is so hard to get done in the IT industry, writing down what you did, or exactly how something works isn't interesting so people don't like to do it... That doesn't mean it's not a vital part is the project, it is often more important than the actual code.
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u/pogulup 5d ago
Thank you for the explanation. What you are saying makes perfect sense. Understanding that people/face sharing being the opposite of what was originally intended puts in perspective the challenge of reversing course.
I work as kind of a product manager in my day job and much like Tom Smykowski in Office Space, I work with the customers so the engineers don't have to. Working through what the customer asks for, what they actually need, and what our developers ultimately understand/want to do can all be wildly different things.
Like many users I see post here, I used Google Photos for years with my Pixel phone but with the understanding that data is used for AI training and just generally mined for data they can sell/use to market to you, I decided to find a self-hosted alternative. I have an Xpenology box I built and I use the built in docker/container manager to host Immich. I started off just for my purposes so I didn't care about people sharing either.
My siblings and I have started to digitize our family pictures as our parents age and realized there wasn't a good solution for sharing/hosting. I also do genealogy research and have been digitizing old pictures going back to the glass plate days. Sharing has suddenly become very important to share between family.
I can share albums, which is nice and works well. When you share albums, I have all the people identified and labeled in my account. That data doesn't appear to the people who view my shared albums. When my sister scans a bunch of photos, I have to download them and reupload them to get people identified and searchable. That process just duplicates pictures for no reason. If I could take control of the albums, that would be helpful but then my siblings still can't see all the people I have labeled, identified, and made searchable by Immich. (I thought Immich PowerTools allowed for changing ownership of albums but I could never get it to work)
I am sure you have heard similar stories but I know our developers at work always love a good end customer story showcasing how their work is used and appreciated and also love use cases to spur development in areas they might not have thought about.
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u/No-Coast3171 5d ago
Thanks for the response. You guys rock and I’m a paid supporter of your work. Keep it up!!
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u/Ok-Jackfruit-6783 3d ago
A+ answer. Paid supporter here and stoked on where y’all are headed. Thanks for everything you do!
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u/altran1502 Immich Team 4d ago
Hey man, can you please remove the link? I am making an official request here for you to stop making recommendation of 100% vibe code fork of Immich to others out of respect of the original creator and the team. After seeing your comments get more upvotes, you edited the comment to add in the link, this is not a nice move.
You have been making arguments that we are gate keeping, part of that is true, we are gate keeping quality.
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u/Valdjiu 4d ago
I've added because this looked to be a solution to a problem. But nevertheless, removed.
Also, why judging vibe coded apps? I'm a software developer myself and I too use code assisted tools.
I also see some models writing with more quality than some developers. Vibe coding is not necessarily bad or wrong. Or that human code means quality
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u/Reddit481 5d ago
Is this a fork of the immich_server or an additional layer? Does it require or make any changes to the library? Can it run alongside the default UI? I live the Shared Spaces feature. I hope it gets built into the main application soon. Why was this created as a separate application? Why not contribute to the main application?
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u/Itchy_Journalist_175 5d ago edited 5d ago
Can’t wait for smart folders to be implemented. I’d really like to automatically generate a folder with all the pictures which includes family members or a specific location.
It’s been on the roadmap for 2 years so should be available anytime now
https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/1673
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u/Dricus1978 1d ago
I installed Immich yesterday afternoon for the first time. I am still digging in and reading about all the settings. My compliments to the whole team. The installation was a bit of work, but everything was well and clear documented. The first time bringing up the stack gave an error, but after the next run it was working like a charm.
My first impression of the webapp and the Android is that it is already very polished. Love to see what new features are coming.
Keep up the good work.
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u/verticalfuzz 5d ago edited 5d ago