#Immich cross server shared albums finally here (Google photos style)!

2 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

thin geyser
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Hi guys — cross-server shared albums (federation, whatever you want to call it) has been one of the most requested Immich features for 4+ years. We all want that dead-simple Google Photos sharing experience with friends and family... well, fellow self-hosters, now we've got it.

If like me you got bored of waiting, time to get cloning: immich-shared-albums, a sidecar addon for Immich.

It never touches your Immich instance directly — it talks to it via an API key and runs in its own container, so any issues stay isolated to the addon. Minimal setup, and once it's up you can create share links that anyone else running the addon just opens to join the album and start adding photos.

What you get:

🔗 Simple link sharing — open a link, join, done. Stock Immich apps, nothing else to install
👤 Per-user, not per-server — so your parents won't see your antics from that lads' holiday
💾 Your storage stays yours — each server keeps its own assets, so joining an album doesn't dump hundreds of unwanted photos onto your disk (full quality still there to download whenever you want)
💬 Cross-server comments — near-instant messaging between servers
📦 Isolated & self-hosted — one small container, no forks, no patched Immich
Go have a play and let me know what you think:
👉 https://github.com/lukeet332/immich-shared-albums

Made a quick demo showing it off too:
👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3GO-YFchYo

ivory socket
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No disrespect..... but not sure if I would trust my library to a project vibecoded within 24 hours then instantly shared as if it was stable

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How much has this even been tested?

thin geyser
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Yeah that's cool and tbh it was so quick because the architecture is actually pretty simple. I updated the Readme to make it clearer. It's been tested pretty thoroughly only by spinning up a max of three test servers but there's also full playwrite e2e tests for the repo too. The great thing is it's a completely isolated docker container it doesn't physically change your Immich instance at all just interacts using the API key. The risks are virtually non existent if you're happy to test between servers over a tailscale VPN.

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If you or anyone is up for it, I would love to do a real-life test sharing between servers

sly lotus
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It MITMs the web ui and requires an admin api key, I would be extremely hesitant to claim “the risks are virtually non existent”