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Files Custom Locations

This guide explains how to store generated and raw files with docker's volume mount in different locations.

Backup

It is important to remember to update the backup settings after following the guide to back up the new backup paths if using automatic backup tools, especially profile/.

In our .env file, we will define variables that will help us in the future when we want to move to a more advanced server

.env
# You can find documentation for all the supported environment variables [here](/docs/install/environment-variables)

# Custom location where your uploaded, thumbnails, and transcoded video files are stored
- UPLOAD_LOCATION=./library
+ UPLOAD_LOCATION=/custom/path/immich/immich_files
+ THUMB_LOCATION=/custom/path/immich/thumbs
+ ENCODED_VIDEO_LOCATION=/custom/path/immich/encoded-video
+ PROFILE_LOCATION=/custom/path/immich/profile
+ BACKUP_LOCATION=/custom/path/immich/backups
...

After defining the locations of these files, we will edit the docker-compose.yml file accordingly and add the new variables to the immich-server container.

docker-compose.yml
services:
  immich-server:
      volumes:
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload
+     - ${THUMB_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/thumbs
+     - ${ENCODED_VIDEO_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/encoded-video
+     - ${PROFILE_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/profile
+     - ${BACKUP_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/backups
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

Restart Immich to register the changes.

docker compose up -d
note

Because of the underlying properties of docker bind mounts, it is not recommended to mount the upload/ and library/ folders as separate bind mounts if they are on the same device. For this reason, we mount the HDD or the network storage (NAS) to /usr/src/app/upload and then mount the folders we want to access under that folder.

The thumbs/ folder contains both the small thumbnails displayed in the timeline and the larger previews shown when clicking into an image. These cannot be separated.

The storage metrics of the Immich server will track available storage at UPLOAD_LOCATION, so the administrator must set up some sort of monitoring to ensure the storage does not run out of space. The profile/ folder is much smaller, usually less than 1 MB.

Thanks to Jrasm91 for writing the guide.