Immich Podman Quadlets Handbook

The original Immich Docker Compose file rewritten using Podman Quadlet.

Check out the wiki for additional guides, such as Hardware Transcoding & Acceleration or running immich in a pod.

This guide serves as a stock base setup for Immich using Podman Quadlets. It closely follows the structure and intent of the official Docker Compose file provided by Immich. The goal is to provide a shared starting point the community can build upon. Instead of writing isolated full guides, consider contributing your enhancements or customizations to the Wiki.

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Note

❓Do I need a .env file? ❓

In this setup, a separate .env file is not required. All necessary environment variables are defined directly within the .container files.

Click for more details

In the original compose file, there is a separate .env file for configuring your containers. I decided not to use one, as although systemd units support env files, it cannot use generic placeholders within unit (.container) files.

This means users would need to edit both the unit and the .env file, defeating the purpose of having a single source of configuration.

Steps

1. Either clone or manually write the quadlet files to /etc/containers/systemd/immich:

   git clone https://github.com/linux-universe/immich-podman-quadlets.git /etc/containers/systemd/immich

Note

For rootless Podman setups, clone the repository to ~/.config/containers/systemd/immich instead.

2. Go through every .container file and replace the ${} variables with the needed values.

   For example:

   - Image=ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION}
   
   + Image=ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:v2

   See this page for the default values.

3. Reload systemd:

   systemctl daemon-reload

4. Then start Immich:

   systemctl start immich-server

Note

Run steps 3 and 4 with the --user argument for rootless setups.