Replace Google Photos with Immich (The Honest 2026 Guide)
The moment I moved my parents off Google Photos, the free 15 GB of Google One became 200 GB of headroom, and I got back the photos Google had been helping itself to. That part was easy. The part nobody mentions is that Immich is a real server, not a web app, and it has requirements Google quietly pays for on your behalf. Six gigabytes of RAM, a disk you will back up separately, and a public endpoint on your home connection — which is where most of the sharp edges live. Here is what actually happened for me when I replaced Google Photos with Immich, checked against the official documentation on 10 November 2026. I’ve run it on a Pi 5 and on an N100 box, and both taught me something different. ...