[Feature] Mass remove already backed-up photos

[spupuz]

Feature Details:

• Google Photos style "Free-up space", will remove all photos from device that are already backed up (manual)
• Automatic delete of local assets based on some settings, some ideas below:
  • X days have passed
  • Maximum storage space used by assets
  • Minimum free space left on device
  • https://support.google.com/files/answer/10862356?hl=en
  • https://cdn.nerdschalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/how-to-delete-backed-up-photos-and-videos-4-a.png?width=800

Screenshot of Android Implementation

Google Photos Free Up Space

Platform

Mobile App

Notes

From Google Photos, it looks like this is possible on both iOS and Android. On Android it's only possible in android versions lower than Android 12 if the app is your default photo viewer. In Android 12 and higher it's possible for any app to delete photos without confirmation by targeting android 12 and requesting the special media management permission. More details can be found here: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/media#management-permission

[palitu]

this would be nice. Potentially down-sample images? or set an age limit, where older images are removed from the device, and if you want to view them it grabs them from the server?

I dont know if i would want to just remove them immediately.

I would also want to be able to totally remove images from both phone and server.

[Tschuuuls]

It would probably be useful to set a threshold on the age of photos. Like delete everything that's backed up and older than 2 Years for example.

[bo0tzz]

Maybe this warrants its own issue, but I'll put it here for now: It'd also be nice if the delete prompt allowed you to only delete files from the server, while keeping them on the local device.

[bertmelis]

Actually, just like Google Photos I'd like to delete photos from the backup (server) as well. When background backup is implemented, all photos will be transferred, also the ones that you delete from your phone. (Who doesn't take multiple pictures only to save the best one?)

[zackpollard]

Yea, would be good to have both all options available to you, could just say Delete From: Server, Local, Both as clickable options

[r3nor]

This feature would really be a game-changer for Immich. It is the one feature I've been missing from all Google Photos replacements!

[mhqschen]

#774 is closed? Is this feature still under development?

[spupuz]

Any news about that?

[bo0tzz]

That PR was closed because it was inactive for months, so the feature is not currently under development.

[spupuz]

well :/ not good once people backup photos to a "cloud" or self-hosted cloud would probably regain the space on the device that was the original source

[alextran1502]

This feature will be implemented eventually, however it is not a priority at the moment

[acjohnson]

I decided to give Immich a go on kubernetes with the helm chart and I gotta say this is really well done so great work 😃

(Facial recognition was the feature that pushed me to give it a try btw.)

This "Free up space" ability (as Google/Android calls it) is exactly the missing feature that is needed to eventually completely drop Google Photos IMHO.

Again great work I'm amazed and encouraged 🎉

[Sniper435]

This is a feature I'd also love to see, I've just set up an immich server to determine whether it's a suitable, self hosted, Google photos replacement and so far this is the biggest missing feature I've come across.

[nmoore1]

I'm surprised this isn't already a feature. I'm blown away that it isn't a priority feature.

I can't speak for everyone, but this feature is the sole reason I spun up an instance of immich. To give my family an easy way to offload photos to my server and free up device space following.

PLEASE put this in the feature cycle to be worked on.

Otherwise, you guys have done a phenominal job on all fronts. Functionality is great, ui is smooth and the mobile apps at this stage of development is mind blowing.

Thank you!

[alextran1502]

@nmoore1 we are aware this is a needed feature and will work on it eventually. It is one of the last feature we will work on before the stable release. Because of the nature of destruction of the feature, we want to make sure the server is stable and you have a good way to rebuild your instance if needed during the development cycle.

I hope this answers why it is not a priority feature at the moment

[eUnisk]

This thread has gotten out of hand, let's drop the discussion and keep it on topic folks.

Agree.

IMO this project has done a perfect job in terms of backup photos.

I hope the mobile app working with the server end could have a feature to free up space by safely deleting photos that are already backed up. Here are my reasons:

• Mobile phones are the most popular photo-shooting devices nowadays.
• Many people use cloud services for the main purpose of extending the storage capacity.

[cristianku]

For the moment I am exporting manually the photos and videos from my phone and the manually uploading to my server to a folder where I can launch the CLI command to import them . This way I can flush the phone storage and keep it clean . On the other hand immich doesn't have the edit so it's far away from the apple icloud solution but i think it would be really nice to have such seamless experience like with icloud from apple. For the time being there are for me always two library's the iOS photo and the immich server seen as two separate entities and if I need to edit I download the photo to my phone edit it and somewhere later upload it again manually to the server. Not the best experience . Worth noticing when the possibility to revert to the original goes lost as someone mentioned

[DiegoOrtiz-npc]

The truth is that if it had this automatic deletion option, the application would gain much more.
Because I think the alternatives that currently exist are worse than this one.
This is more successful at all levels (web, mobile app, facial recognition)

[CurlyFlow]

The truth is that if it had this automatic deletion option, the application would gain much more. Because I think the alternatives that currently exist are worse than this one. This is more successful at all levels (web, mobile app, facial recognition)

No they need to focus hard on backups because thats what sells. ;-)
And there are no other backups solutions out there, so that makes sense ;-)

[spupuz]

@spupuz you keep repeatedly requesting this, but all that will serve to do is annoy people, it won't speed anything up. As has been stated a few times now, this feature will only be implemented once we approach a stable release.

I'm Sorry you are bothered, but this is just your opinion, i see many person that like me have requested this functionality, additionally seems that immich is widely utilized and more than stable. This request is 2 years old and would be cool at lust see it in a future functionaluty list.

[lukebouch]

This feature is very much needed. Right now I'm having to go in to the files app on my GrapheneOS phone and delete all of the files manually. When I open the Immich app back up after deleting the files, it can't find them to preview them and I have to sign out of the app and sign back in. I have to do this every couple of weeks because storage is at a premium on my 128GB phone.

[jtagcat]

Automatic delete of local assets based on some settings, some ideas below:

Unsolicited input: Last accessed/viewed, for single media items, but possibly also recently changed albums.

Using interface pair sounds reasonable: One side defines a quota for clean-up (derived from used storage, free space on device, etc). With manual clean-up, quota should be larger (fewer files kept). The second is responsible for progressively deciding what to delete, by assigning weighed points based on all attributes. An alternative would be step-by-step interfaces (each being more 'brutal' in sacrifice conditions).

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[bo0tzz]

There's nothing new to add to this request, so I'm going to lock the thread. If there are any updates they will be posted here.

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion has automatically been closed as it is likely a duplicate. We get a lot of duplicate threads each day, which is why we ask you in the template to confirm that you searched for duplicates before opening one. If you're sure this is not a duplicate, please leave a comment and we will reopen the thread if necessary.

[mertalev]

Closed by mistake.

[alextran1502]

Implement in #24999