How to Self-Host and Back Up Your Photos Using Immich and NixOS

Michael Stapelberg’s article, published on November 29, 2025, details his experience transitioning from Google Photos to a self-hosted photo management setup using Immich. When the gphotos-sync tool stopped working in early 2025 due to Google’s OAuth restrictions, Stapelberg sought a more independent and sustainable solution for storing and backing up his personal photo library. He chose Immich, a self-hostable and open source photo manager, to run on his compact Ryzen 7 Mini PC using Proxmox for virtualization. Inside a NixOS virtual machine, he declaratively installed and configured Immich to function securely within a Tailscale VPN environment, avoiding firewall exposure.

Stapleberg’s setup process included initial challenges importing photos from Google Takeout archives. While the official Immich CLI had reliability issues, the third-party tool ‘immich-go’ proved much more stable by pausing background jobs during uploads and properly importing JSON metadata. He then installed the Immich app on his iPhone to enable automatic backups of new photos directly to his own server. His backup system involves regular rsync tasks to replicate Immich data to another PC, integrated into a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Although Immich lacks editing tools or direct sharing functionality comparable to Google Photos, Stapelberg finds it effective, fast, and transparent. He concludes that the project exemplifies the power of open source self-hosting for users prioritizing privacy, autonomy, and data ownership.