immich
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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Does Immich need to be manually opened for the upload/sync to work as well like the other comment suggests?
I use NextCloud for photo syncing. There is an iOS app. One thing to watch for is that by default iOS uses an odd file format for photos and video. The format is readable in Linux but not usually by default. There’s a setting to change the format somewhere but I forgotten where it is. Not sure if it was in iOS settings or the Nextcloud app’s in-app settings.
Does this require manual intervention from time to time or does it just work? I'm looking for a solution for a family member of mine and therefore it should be "set and forget" so to speak.
Server-side, depends on how you choose to set it up. There's a dozen different ways to setup the Nextcloud server. I used Nextcloud-AIO. In the last 2 years, I've had 3 issues take down the server, two of which were hardware related. Automatic backups, Automatic updates. App gives notifications when both happen.
Once the server and apps are setup though, it's largely set and forget on server-side, desktop (Linux, Mac and Windows) and on Android. iOS is a little more hands on.
iOS has a thing where it will kill apps running in the background if you haven't opened them in a while in a bid to save battery. Used to be a major headache with VPNs. As long as you open the app every few days it will generally just do it's thing in the background. It doesn't seem to be as aggressive as it use to be, but I also use the Nextcloud app to scan documents (The app has a document to PDF scanner) into Paperless via a SMB share so I'm opening the app two or three times a week anyways. You can create an automation in Shortcuts to open the app automatically, though that does require the device to be unlocked for the automation to run.
Server setup is no problem as I would host it for them. If I understand you correctly I would need to tell them to open the app every so often for the sync to work. Hm, not exactly an ideal solution, but I guess it's an acceptable compromise.
I assume this is a hard limit iOS-wise, so all third-party syncing apps will have to deal with this somehow? There probably isn't a way to selfhost an iCloud server somehow, is there?
so all third-party syncing apps will have to deal with this somehow?
My understanding is that the process killing applies to everything that is not directly tied to the Apple ecosystem, so probably. So far I haven't found a way around it.
There probably isn’t a way to selfhost an iCloud server somehow, is there?
That would be nice, but this IS Apple we are talking about here. As far as I know that isn't even an option for the US Government.
HEIC? Not that odd, it's essentially a H265 single frame (and video is just H265). You can change it in camera settings but the alternative is JPEG. Blegh.
So I’m old. HEIC caused me a few headaches when I first ran across it. I get that it’s “better” but of all the nerdages I can claim, photo or camera nerd isn’t one of them. JPEGs have generally been good enough for my needs.