Immich 3.1 Filters Photos by EXIF Metadata and Makes Google Photos Irrelevant on Your Own Infrastructure

July 29, 2026 — Immich shipped version 3.1.0, and the gap with Google Photos is now a DNS configuration away. The self-hosted alternative adds EXIF metadata workflow filters, OIDC role synchronization, and screen wakelock during web upload — features that graduate Immich from “promising project” to enterprise-deployable product.

With over 50,000 GitHub stars and a rapidly expanding contributor base, Immich is no longer the “budget Google Photos.” It is the solution that data-sovereignty-conscious organizations deploy to keep their photos and videos outside US cloud jurisdictions.

What Immich 3.1 changes in daily use

Version 3.1 is a dense quality-of-life release, with improvements touching all three interfaces: web, mobile, and server.

EXIF metadata workflow filters

The most powerful addition in this release. Immich automation workflows can now filter assets by EXIF fields — aperture, focal length, ISO, camera model. In practice:

• A workflow can automatically tag photos taken with a telephoto lens.
• Another can archive everything shot with a secondary smartphone.
• A third can flag photos where ISO exceeds 3,200 for dedicated post-processing.

For now, only string comparisons are supported. Numerical comparisons (ISO > 3200, focal length < 50mm) will arrive in a future release, but the mechanism is in place.

Screen wakelock during web upload

The web application now automatically acquires a wakelock during uploads, preventing the screen from dimming. This feature, already present on mobile, requires an HTTPS connection. It is a small detail that changes everything when you are uploading 20 GB of photos after a wedding.

OIDC role synchronization

Immich’s OAuth/OIDC integration already supported setting an initial isAdmin value via a role claim. Version 3.1 turns this one-time assignment into continuous synchronization: the isAdmin role is re-evaluated on every login. Additionally, the claim now accepts both a single value (immich_role: 'admin') and an array (immich_role: ["admin", "user"]).

This improvement is critical for enterprise deployments behind Authentik, Keycloak, or Authelia: access management no longer depends on an initial configuration that nobody remembers to update.

Server path filtering and date range on map

• Path filtering: workflows can filter assets by their actual server location rather than the original filename.
• Mobile map date range: the mobile app catches up with the web version, adding a time filter to the map view.

Session invalidation and improved CLI

The immich-admin reset-admin-password command now offers an option to invalidate all existing sessions — an essential security addition when an administrator leaves the organization.

Why Immich dominates the self-hosted photo market

The self-hosted photo gallery market is crowded. PhotoPrism, Piwigo, Lychee, Nextcloud Memories — all offer to store your photos locally. But none have reached the combination Immich delivers in 2026:

Immich’s killer feature is not any single capability — it is the absence of cloud dependency. Photos stay on your drive, encrypted with your keys, accessible through your reverse proxy.

What’s still missing

Immich is not perfect. Three gaps remain:

1. No client-side encryption. Photos are stored in plaintext on the server. For a zero-knowledge setup, combine Immich with an encrypted volume (LUKS, ZFS encryption) or wait for a native implementation.
2. No collaborative editing. Immich is a gallery, not an editor. Retouching must happen upstream.
3. No native multi-server support. An Immich deployment is monolithic. For high availability, you must manually orchestrate the PostgreSQL database and asset replication.

Verdict

Immich 3.1 is the Google Photos replacement you were waiting for — if you have a server.

• For individuals: deploy Immich on a Synology NAS, a NUC, or a €5/month VPS. You regain ownership of your photos and facial recognition that does not phone home to Google.
• For families: pair Immich with Tailscale or a WireGuard VPN for remote access without exposing the service to the internet. OIDC synchronization with Authentik gives you clean SSO for the whole household.
• For businesses: Immich behind a reverse proxy with Authentik for OIDC, encrypted volume storage, Borg backup to a secondary site. Total cost is that of a server, not a per-user subscription.

Immich 3.1 does not reinvent the photo gallery concept. It simply makes it sovereign, free, and controllable — three properties Google Photos will never give you.

References

• Immich GitHub — Release v3.1.0, July 29, 2026
• Immich Documentation, accessed August 6, 2026