Immich vs Synology Photos

Synology Photos is part of DSM, Synology's NAS operating system. You enable it in the package center, the mobile app backs up your camera roll, and it shares user accounts, snapshots, and Hyper Backup with the rest of the NAS. There is nothing to host and nothing to maintain separately. The catch is that it runs only on Synology hardware, and the AI features depend on which model you bought.

Immich is a standalone app you run in Docker. It does not care what hardware it sits on: a Synology, a mini PC, a Proxmox VM, an old desktop. You install it with a Compose file, it brings its own Postgres and Redis, and you own every part of the stack. That is more setup and more responsibility, but it also means you are not locked to one vendor's box.

Immich is built phone-first. The iOS and Android apps back up your camera roll automatically in the background, and the timeline, map, and search feel close to Google Photos. Its smart search uses a CLIP model, so you can type 'red car' or 'beach sunset' and it finds matching shots, plus face recognition groups people. Shared albums, partner sharing, and multi-user all work.

The project moves fast. New features land constantly and the app dropped its old 'not ready, expect breaking changes' warning once it stabilized. Fast movement is mostly a plus, with the standard caveat: keep backups and read the release notes before a major upgrade. For most people leaving Google Photos, Immich is the closest match available, and it is the same engine whether you run it on a Synology or a separate box. For the PhotoPrism angle, see Immich vs PhotoPrism.

If a Synology already sits in your closet, Synology Photos costs nothing extra and takes about five minutes to turn on. The mobile app does automatic camera-roll backup, you get a personal space and a shared space, and DSM handles the user accounts and permissions. Photos land on the same volume your other data does, so the same RAID array, snapshots, and Hyper Backup jobs protect them. Plan that volume with the RAID and ZFS calculator before you fill it.

Synology Photos also does face and subject recognition and geotagging, but the AI runs on the NAS CPU, so the experience tracks your model. A Plus-series box (DS923+, DS1522+, and similar) handles face and subject recognition fine. Entry value models with weaker CPUs are slower or drop some AI features entirely. It is polished and tightly integrated, just not as feature-deep or as fast-moving as Immich.

Choosing Synology Photos means buying into Synology hardware, and that decision got more complicated in 2025. Synology announced that its newer Plus-series models would require Synology-branded (validated) drives for full functionality, including health reporting and some pool features, locking out the cheaper third-party drives many homelabbers prefer. If you already own an older Synology this does not affect you, but for a new purchase it is worth weighing.

Immich sidesteps all of that. Because it runs on any Docker host, you can put it on a TrueNAS box, a Proxmox VM, or a cheap mini PC with whatever drives you like. If hardware freedom matters to you, that is a real point in Immich's favor. If you value an integrated appliance and do not mind the drive policy, Synology's all-in-one experience is still hard to beat. For the broader NAS-platform debate, see Synology vs TrueNAS.

These are not mutually exclusive. Immich installs cleanly on a Synology NAS through Container Manager (Synology's Docker UI), so plenty of people run Synology Photos for the built-in convenience and Immich alongside it for the better app and search. They keep separate libraries, so it is mostly a question of disk space and whether you want to maintain a container.

A common pattern: try Synology Photos first because it is free and instant, then add Immich if you miss Google Photos features like smarter search or faster development. If Immich becomes your daily driver, you can point its backup at the same NAS and treat Synology Photos as the fallback.