Immich v3.0 is here

The first major version bump since v2: a proper photo editor on mobile, automated workflows, far more reliable Android backups, and a new video player. Here’s what changed for you.

Immich has released v3.0.0, the first major version since v2 landed. It’s a big one: months of work from the core team and their contributors, and the first release they shipped through public release candidates before making it official.

We’re rolling this out to PixelUnion instances now, in stages, so it may not have reached yours yet. There’s nothing to install, no database migration to plan, and no downtime to schedule when it does. Update the Immich app on your phone in the meantime, so you have everything below the moment your instance is upgraded.

Editing photos on your phone, properly this time

Web-based photo editing arrived in v2.5. Mobile had its own separate editor that worked differently: every edit created a new photo alongside the original, leaving you with duplicates to clean up.

That’s gone. The mobile app now uses the same non-destructive editor as the web. Crop, rotate, and adjust an image, and Immich stores your changes separately from the original file. The photo you uploaded stays untouched. You can revisit an edit weeks later, change it, or discard it entirely and get the original back.

Because both editors now share one system, an edit you make on your phone shows up on the web, where you can keep refining it.

Two things didn’t survive the rewrite. Recoloring photos and editing live photos are both gone for now, along with editing photos that only exist on your device and haven’t been backed up yet. The Immich team has said they plan to bring these back.

Workflows: teach your library to organize itself

This is the feature we’re most excited about, and it’s worth spending ten minutes with.

Workflows let you build automations for your library. Each one starts with a trigger (something that happens, like a photo being uploaded), then runs a sequence of filters (conditions that narrow things down, like “only photos taken in Amsterdam”) and actions (things Immich does, like adding the photo to an album).

You build them by dragging blocks around, and premade templates show you the shape of the thing before you build your own. Find it under Utilities → Workflows on the web.

Workflows can be shared. Every workflow can be exported as plain text, which is useful for describing what you built on a forum, or as JSON, which lets someone else import an exact copy of it. If you build something clever, the Immich team is collecting ideas in their discussion thread.

One caveat: this is a preview. The building blocks available today are the foundation for a much larger set, and workflow behavior may shift between releases while the feature matures. Build with that in mind.

Backups that actually run in the background

Android background backup has been rebuilt on a new periodic task scheduler, and the difference is significant.

Previously, background backup on Android only uploaded photos you had just taken. If you had a backlog, you had to open the app and leave it open. Now the whole library uploads in the background. The app also follows Android’s rules for what apps may do when they’re not on screen more closely, cleans up after itself properly, and warns you when your battery optimization or notification settings are configured in a way that will quietly break backups.

On iOS, the background refresh task now syncs and uploads at the same time rather than one after the other. iOS gives apps a very short window to do background work, so doing both in parallel means uploads actually start inside that window instead of running out of time during the sync.

Recently Added

Your timeline is sorted by when a photo was taken. That’s the right default, and it’s not much help when you’ve just imported four hundred photos from an old hard drive and they’ve scattered themselves across 2011.

The new Recently Added page sorts by when a photo arrived in Immich instead. Find it under the Explore tab on the web and the Search tab on mobile.

A video player that behaves

The web app now has its own video player, built to match the rest of the Immich interface. Every device gets the same controls in the same place, and basic functions like changing playback speed and seeking with the keyboard are built in.

If you use Immich on an iPhone or iPad in the browser, this fixes the long-standing annoyance of Safari’s own video controls sitting hidden behind the Immich navigation bar.

Smaller things you’ll notice

Slideshows on mobile. Sit back and let photos and videos play across the screen, the same as on the web.

Text recognition on mobile. The asset viewer has a new toggle that highlights text it finds in a photo. Tap to select it, copy it, paste it somewhere useful. Handy for receipts, signs, whiteboards, and the wifi password you photographed in a café two years ago.

Upload straight into an album. You no longer have to upload a photo and then locate it to file it. Pick the album at upload time, from the asset sheet in the mobile app.

Choose the size when you share. When you share a photo from the mobile app, you can pick the resolution before it sends. Keep it small for a messaging app, or send it at full quality when it matters. Set your default under App Settings → Preferences, or long-press the Share button to pick per share.

Faster timelines. Months containing very large numbers of photos scroll dramatically smoother, and no longer lock up the browser tab.

Immich as your Android gallery. Tap a photo in another app, choose Immich, and it opens in the Immich viewer with the option to share it or upload it to your library. This is a first iteration, and Immich doesn’t yet always recognize files that are already in your library.

Two things we handle for you

Real-time video transcoding. Immich can now transcode video on the fly rather than generating transcoded copies ahead of time, which means quality switching, better codec selection per device, and less storage used. It’s genuinely experimental, web-only for now, and it needs real CPU headroom to work well. We’re testing it on our infrastructure and will roll it out when it’s ready. You don’t need to do anything.

Integrity checks. The server can now scan its own storage and compare it against its database, reporting files it doesn’t recognize, files it expected to find but can’t, and files whose contents have changed since they were stored. This is a server maintenance feature and lives in the admin panel, which means it’s our job, not yours. We run it. If it ever finds something, you’ll hear from us.

If you use the Immich API

Most of v3.0.0’s breaking changes are API changes. They don’t affect using Immich, but they may affect tools you have pointed at your instance. If you run something like immich-folder-album-creator, a custom script, or anything else that talks to the API directly, check that it supports v3 before you rely on it. The API surface has been substantially cleaned up: deprecated endpoints are gone, error responses have a new structure, video durations are now expressed in milliseconds, and star ratings can no longer be set below 1.

The Immich team’s migration guide has the full list.

Rolling Out Now

We’re upgrading PixelUnion instances to v3.0.0 in stages, so the server-side changes may not have reached yours yet. No action is required on your part; it will arrive automatically. To get the mobile features, like the new editor, slideshows, text recognition, and the better backups, update the Immich app from the App Store or Play Store — those work as soon as your instance is upgraded.

If something looks wrong, tell us. We’d rather hear about it early.