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[How-To] Install Immich on Ubuntu

Purpose

The purpose of this doc is to explain how to install Immich on a Ubuntu Server. 

Prerequisites

List of prerequisites:

  • Sudo user
  • Ubuntu 24 LTS VM
  • Up to date system
  • Docker Engine installed and enabled

Installing Immich

Step 1: Download the required files

Create a directory of your choice (e.g. /opt/immich-app) to hold the docker-compose.yml and .env files.

mkdir /opt/immich-app
cd /opt/immich-app

Download docker-compose.yml and example.env by running the following commands:

sudo wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
sudo wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env

Step 2: Populate the .env file with custom values

Edit the .env file like this:

sudo nano /opt/immich-app/.env

Then do the following:

  • Populate UPLOAD_LOCATION with your preferred location for storing backup assets. It should be a new directory on the server with enough free space.
  • Consider changing DB_PASSWORD to a custom value. Postgres is not publicly exposed, so this password is only used for local authentication. To avoid issues with Docker parsing this value, it is best to use only the characters A-Za-z0-9. pwgen is a handy utility for this.
  • Set your timezone by uncommenting the TZ= line.
  • Populate custom database information if necessary.

Step 3: Start the containers

From the directory you created in Step 1 (which should now contain your customized docker-compose.yml and .env files), run the following command to start Immich as a background service:

sudo docker compose up -d

Check on the status of things with:

sudo docker ps

Now, browse to http://ipaddress:2283 and you should be presented with your new immich server.

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