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A Family Photo Vault is Immich running on your own StackKit: your family’s photos, searchable and shared, without handing them to someone else’s cloud.

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Why your own photo vault

Every photo your phone takes normally ends up on someone else’s servers, under someone else’s storage limits and someone else’s terms. A Family Photo Vault flips that around: Immich runs on hardware you own, or on a server you lease and control, so the storage behind your photos is yours — not a shared, multi-tenant photo service. There’s no per-photo cloud subscription creeping up as your library grows. You pay for the compute and storage you already have, or a fixed server lease — not a recurring per-gigabyte photo bill.

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What you get

  • Immich at photos.<domain> — a kombify.me address if you’re on managed cloud, or photos.home.localhost if you’re running the local Basement Kit (listed in this catalog as Base Kit) on your own hardware.
  • Mobile backup apps for iOS and Android that upload new photos and videos automatically.
  • ML-powered search — find photos by what’s in them, not just by folder or date.
  • Shared family albums so everyone adds to and sees the same library instead of five separate camera rolls.
Photo and video libraries grow faster than most other homelab data, especially once the whole family backs up full-resolution originals. Check sizing your StackKit before you commit to a server or storage tier.

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The lifecycle at a glance

PhaseWhat happensWhere you do it
DecidePick local, managed cloud, or hybrid, and pick a kitThis site’s how-to guides, kombify-TechStack dashboard
Set upRoll out the kit, claim your owner passkey, open ImmichTechStack dashboard or CLI, then Node Hub
Live with itBack up photos, search, browse, share albumsImmich app and mobile app
ProtectKeep the stack’s backups covering your photo storageNode Hub, your stack spec
Move or leaveSwitch exposure, pause, or remove the serviceNode Hub, your PaaS dashboard

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Choose your setup

Two decisions shape this before you deploy anything:
  • Where it runs. Local hardware keeps everything on a machine you own, reachable on your LAN by default. A managed VPS lease through kombify Cloud gets you a public address without touching a server yourself. See local vs. cloud vs. hybrid.
  • How hands-on you stay afterward. Install-only gives you a working baseline you operate yourself from the CLI. Managed with kombify Cloud keeps recommendations, status, and future changes visible in a dashboard. See install only or managed with kombify Cloud.
Not sure which kit fits at all? Start with choosing a kit.

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Set it up

1

Deploy your kit

Roll out through the installer, CLI, or kombify-TechStack. Photos (Immich) is part of the default rollout — you don’t need to enable anything extra.
2

Open the Node Hub

Open the Node Hub at base.<domain> and complete the first-run checklist.
3

Claim your owner account

Rollout creates your PocketID owner record and prepares the matching Immich owner account for you automatically. You finish by claiming the one-time passkey link from the Node Hub — there’s no separate Immich sign-up form to fill in.

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Bring the family in

1

Create accounts for family members

Add each family member as an Immich user from the admin panel.
2

Connect the mobile app

Each person installs the Immich mobile app and signs in with their account. See the Immich guide for the mobile connect steps.
3

Create shared albums

Set up shared albums so everyone contributes to and sees the same family library.

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Everyday use and getting help

Most day-to-day questions have an answer close by:
  • This docs site covers the surrounding how-tos beyond this lifecycle guide.
  • The Immich service guide covers the app itself — first-run setup, mobile backup, troubleshooting.
  • The monitoring reference explains how StackKits watches your services, including Immich’s route and background jobs, so you notice a stalled backup before your photos do.

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Local-only or public

A Family Photo Vault can be reachable from anywhere or stay inside your home network — the choice comes from how you set up domain and context, not from a separate Immich setting.
  • Public: a kombify.me address or your own custom domain puts photos.<domain> on the open internet behind Traefik, TinyAuth, and PocketID login, so family members can back up and browse from mobile data, not just Wi-Fi.
  • Local-only: on a local Basement Kit without a public domain, Immich only answers on your LAN at photos.home.localhost (or the server IP) — nobody outside your network can reach it, but neither can you when you’re away from home.
See local vs. cloud vs. hybrid if you’re still deciding between these.

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Next steps

Immich

First-run setup, mobile backup, and troubleshooting for the app itself.

Choosing a kit

Compare Base Kit, Modern Homelab, and High Availability Kit.