Environment Variables

caution

To change environment variables, you must recreate the Immich containers. Just restarting the containers does not replace the environment within the container!

In order to recreate the container using docker compose, run docker compose up -d. In most cases docker will recognize that the .env file has changed and recreate the affected containers. If this should not work, try running docker compose up -d --force-recreate.

Docker Compose

Variable	Description	Default	Services
IMMICH_VERSION	Image tags	release	server, microservices, machine learning, web, proxy
UPLOAD_LOCATION	Host Path for uploads		server, microservices

tip

These environment variables are used by the docker-compose.yml file and do NOT affect the containers directly.

General

Variable	Description	Default	Services
TZ	Timezone		microservices
NODE_ENV	Environment (production, development)	production	server, microservices, machine learning, web
LOG_LEVEL	Log Level (verbose, debug, log, warn, error)	log	server, microservices
IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION	Media Location	./upload	server, microservices
IMMICH_CONFIG_FILE	Path to config file		server
IMMICH_WEB_ROOT	Path of root index.html	/usr/src/app/www	server
IMMICH_REVERSE_GEOCODING_ROOT	Path of reverse geocoding dump directory	/usr/src/resources	microservices

tip

TZ is only used by the exiftool as a fallback in case the timezone cannot be determined from the image metadata.

exiftool is only present in the microservices container.

Ports

Variable	Description	Default	Services
PORT	Web Port	3000	web
SERVER_PORT	Server Port	3001	server
MICROSERVICES_PORT	Microservices Port	3002	microservices
MACHINE_LEARNING_HOST	Machine Learning Host	0.0.0.0	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_PORT	Machine Learning Port	3003	machine learning

Database

Variable	Description	Default	Services
DB_URL	Database URL		server, microservices
DB_HOSTNAME	Database Host	localhost	server, microservices
DB_PORT	Database Port	5432	server, microservices
DB_USERNAME	Database User	postgres	server, microservices
DB_PASSWORD	Database Password	postgres	server, microservices
DB_DATABASE	Database Name	immich	server, microservices
DB_VECTOR_EXTENSION*1	Database Vector Extension (one of [pgvector, pgvecto.rs])	pgvecto.rs	server, microservices

*1: This setting cannot be changed after the server has successfully started up

info

When DB_URL is defined, the other database (DB_*) variables are ignored.

Redis

Variable	Description	Default	Services
REDIS_URL	Redis URL		server, microservices
REDIS_HOSTNAME	Redis Host	immich_redis	server, microservices
REDIS_PORT	Redis Port	6379	server, microservices
REDIS_DBINDEX	Redis DB Index	0	server, microservices
REDIS_USERNAME	Redis Username		server, microservices
REDIS_PASSWORD	Redis Password		server, microservices
REDIS_SOCKET	Redis Socket		server, microservices

info

REDIS_URL must start with ioredis:// and then include a base64 encoded JSON string for the configuration. More info can be found in the upstream ioredis documentation.

• When REDIS_URL is defined, the other redis (REDIS_*) variables are ignored.
• When REDIS_SOCKET is defined, the other redis (REDIS_*) variables are ignored.

Redis (Sentinel) URL example JSON before encoding:

{
  "sentinels": [
    {
      "host": "redis-sentinel-node-0",
      "port": 26379
    },
    {
      "host": "redis-sentinel-node-1",
      "port": 26379
    },
    {
      "host": "redis-sentinel-node-2",
      "port": 26379
    }
  ],
  "name": "redis-sentinel"
}

Machine Learning

Variable	Description	Default	Services
MACHINE_LEARNING_MODEL_TTL	Inactivity time (s) before a model is unloaded (disabled if <= 0)	300	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_MODEL_TTL_POLL_S	Interval (s) between checks for the model TTL (disabled if <= 0)	10	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_CACHE_FOLDER	Directory where models are downloaded	/cache	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_REQUEST_THREADS*1	Thread count of the request thread pool (disabled if <= 0)	number of CPU cores	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_MODEL_INTER_OP_THREADS	Number of parallel model operations	1	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_MODEL_INTRA_OP_THREADS	Number of threads for each model operation	2	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_WORKERS*2	Number of worker processes to spawn	1	machine learning
MACHINE_LEARNING_WORKER_TIMEOUT	Maximum time (s) of unresponsiveness before a worker is killed	120	machine learning

*1: It is recommended to begin with this parameter when changing the concurrency levels of the machine learning service and then tune the other ones.

*2: Since each process duplicates models in memory, changing this is not recommended unless you have abundant memory to go around.

info

Other machine learning parameters can be tuned from the admin UI.

Docker Secrets

The following variables support the use of Docker secrets for additional security.

To use any of these, replace the regular environment variable with the equivalent _FILE environment variable. The value of the _FILE variable should be set to the path of a file containing the variable value.

Regular Variable	Equivalent Docker Secrets '_FILE' Variable
DB_HOSTNAME	DB_HOSTNAME_FILE*1
DB_DATABASE_NAME	DB_DATABASE_NAME_FILE*1
DB_USERNAME	DB_USERNAME_FILE*1
DB_PASSWORD	DB_PASSWORD_FILE*1
REDIS_PASSWORD	REDIS_PASSWORD_FILE*2

*1: See the official documentation for details on how to use Docker Secrets in the Postgres image.

*2: See this comment for an example of how to use use a Docker secret for the password in the Redis container.