[Feature] Enable Linux build for mobile app

[luigi311]

I have searched the existing feature requests to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Mobile app support for linux would be great as it will help with photo management on a linux laptop/desktop or mobile linux phone. There are more and more mobile linux phones being developed with a working camera so being able to backup those images via a familiar interface would be perfect. As of right now the only possible way to get a immich application working is to go via a android emulator but that has limitations since it wont have access to the host images. While going through the web client does allow us to view and even upload images, it does not provide a method of keeping our local images synced and would instead require us to manually selecting all the images to upload instead of the mobile app method of selecting directories and it automatically uploading missing images. Even without the background syncing ability (assuming this doesnt work) having to open the immich mobile app would be a big improvement.

Looks like flutter is used for the mobile apps and that has support for building for linux. I did see a response for a similar feature on the macos side so i figured i would create a discussion for linux itself. #14058 (reply in thread). I was able to find this documentation on getting started with an android and desktop linux app so it might be a good starting point and hopefully it is as simple as they make it out to be.
https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/linux/install-linux/install-linux-from-android

As for distribution of the linux app, it seems the most universal way with a good update system would be via flatpak which should work across all linux distributions. It would also make it so people download the application straight from you guys if you guys publish to flathub directly to avoid any issues with the source and dependencies.

I did find this discussion #1427 from 2023 but it seemed to be categorized incorrectly and the conclusion from back then was to only build a desktop sync agent. Enabling a linux build of the already built mobile app would be a better solution as it would instead keep the interaction the same across all platforms instead of having unique/limited UX for each desktop OS.

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[mmomjian]

We do not support or encourage use of the mobile app on desktop, and on platforms where it can technically be done (like you linked) it is generally broken and we do not support/bugfix for it.

A linux mobile app would be a reasonable request but I am not sure this would be a high priority anytime soon.

[luigi311]

Is there a reason to not encourage the use of the mobile app on desktop? The mobile app looks fine on desktop and would reduce the amount of work required for creating a desktop client. For mobile linux there would be no difference between it and desktop linux as they effectively are the exact same thing unlike the distinction between iOS and MacOS.

[luigi311]

Looks like getting to a starting point with linux support isnt to hard. Im not a flutter dev so this is all new to me but i was able to build and run the mobile app on my desktop linux by adding the build target

flutter create --platforms=linux .

Adjusting the getApplicationDocumentsDirectory call in the function loadDb as it seems to fail on linux for some reason even though the path_provider package says it supports linux. In this case i replaced it with a semi manual path if the platform is linux

Directory dir;

  try {
    if (Platform.isLinux) {
      // Define a custom directory for Linux
      String homeDir = Platform.environment['HOME'] ?? '/tmp';
      dir = Directory(p.join(homeDir, '.immich'));
    } else {
      // Use the standard application documents directory
      dir = await getApplicationDocumentsDirectory();
    }

    // Ensure the directory exists
    if (!await dir.exists()) {
      await dir.create(recursive: true);
    }
  } catch (e) {
    // Handle any exceptions and fallback to the system temp directory
    print('Error getting application documents directory: $e');
    dir = Directory.systemTemp;
  }

And then in the setDeviceInfoHeader function adding in information for platform.isLinux as the current method checks for ios and if not assume android.

if (Platform.isIOS) {
      final iosInfo = await deviceInfoPlugin.iosInfo;
      authenticationApi.apiClient
          .addDefaultHeader('deviceModel', iosInfo.utsname.machine);
      authenticationApi.apiClient.addDefaultHeader('deviceType', 'iOS');
    } else if (Platform.isAndroid) {
      final androidInfo = await deviceInfoPlugin.androidInfo;
      authenticationApi.apiClient
          .addDefaultHeader('deviceModel', androidInfo.model);
      authenticationApi.apiClient.addDefaultHeader('deviceType', 'Android');
    } else if (Platform.isLinux) {
      authenticationApi.apiClient.addDefaultHeader('deviceModel', 'Linux');
      authenticationApi.apiClient.addDefaultHeader('deviceType', 'Linux');
    }

device info plugin says it supports linux but im not sure if theres any useful information in there that we could use. Maybe instead default to hostname?

This gets you a opening immich app that lets you connect to your server, via ip address only, and view your synced images.

This is what it looks like, enjoy a picture of my handsome dog

Lots of features though would need to be fixed in similar ways since things are checking for ios or falling back to android implementations. Pictures work though im only looking at jpgs. Videos and local files do not work.

[luigi311]

I was curious to try this on my mobile linux device but looks like isar errors out because it doesnt support linux_arm64 so until thats fixed upstream mobile linux on arm64, which is most devices, isnt possible.

isar/isar#876

[luigi311]

They have a few workarounds for getting arm64 support working, editing your local isar_core.dart file to add in case Abi.linuxArm64 and then placing a libisar.so file that they compiled for arm64 in the mobile folder and that lets it actually run. Weirdly the colors seem to be off on my FLX1 but it is atleast working now and displaying with the same features as above. Heres what it looks like on my Furilabs FLX1 running phosh

[luigi311]

All in all its not bad to get a base up and running. The problem is definitely going to be the plugins and making sure they support linux and adjusting all the ios/android specific fixes to make them work on linux.

[mmomjian]

Thanks for your work on this. If there are any changes on the Immich side that can make this process easier without affecting behavior/performance on Android or iOS, a PR would probably be welcome. If you want to write up your process we can probably include a link on this page if it's kept up to date and easy for someone else to use: https://immich.app/docs/community-guides

As for why we generally haven't encouraged desktop use, it's because this would be effectively another platform that we would have to test/optimize/develop for, that the team is not able to take on at this time.

[luigi311]

Gotcha ok that makes sense. Hopefully this is something that can be worked on once all the other major things have been implemented and stable has released. Mostly the mobile linux client as that would let me keep the same workflow on my mobile devices. Ill try and see what i can do though im not a flutter/dart developer so I'll see how much i can make and see if others can contribute to it before i send anything else your guys way.