Why Does the App Take a Moment to Load?
Understand why PixelUnion sometimes needs a few seconds to start up
If you sometimes see a short loading screen when you open PixelUnion, that is expected behaviour. It is not a fault or an outage, but a deliberate part of how we run the service. This article explains what happens and why.
What Is Happening
To run Immich for our customers at the price we offer, we temporarily switch off your instance when it is not being used. At the moment, this happens after half an hour without activity. We recently shortened this from one hour to half an hour.
As soon as you open or start using PixelUnion again, we automatically switch your instance back on. That startup takes a few seconds, and that is the short loading screen you sometimes notice, typically the first time you open the app in a while.
How Long It Takes
Under normal circumstances, the startup time is around 6 to 8 seconds. Occasionally it can take a little longer. We work on this actively every day to keep the startup time as short and smooth as possible.
Why We Do It
Switching instances off when they are idle is what allows us to offer PixelUnion at the price we do. Rather than keeping every instance running around the clock, we use resources only when they are actually needed. This is a core part of how we keep a privacy-first, European photo service affordable.
It is also better for the environment. Running idle servers day and night would waste a lot of electricity. By scaling down when your instance is not in use, we keep our compute costs low and reduce the energy and resources our service consumes. In other words, this approach is good for your wallet and for the planet.
What You Can Do
There is nothing you need to fix, the instance comes back on its own. A few things that can help:
- Just wait a few seconds. Once your instance is up, everything runs at full speed again.
- Keep the app open if you are actively working in your library, so it does not go idle.
- Try again if a load seems to take unusually long. If it consistently takes much longer than 6 to 8 seconds, let us know.
Still Seeing Long Load Times?
If the app regularly takes much longer than expected to load, or you run into errors instead of a brief loading screen, contact our support team. We are happy to take a look and help you out.