I'd take a backup, first, and then just send it. Then, if that doesn't work out, do it the hard and slow way.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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I have Immich Server Version: v1.115.0. They're up to v1.129.0. I am guessing there have been lots of breaking changes in that range, since that was true the last time I updated.
Is there a safe way now to update without making me read all the release notes and carefully craft my docker compose file in multiple steps to make sure I don't lose anything in the process of getting caught up?
Thanks for any tips.
ETA: Or just, how do you handle your Immich (in Docker) updates in general?
2ND EDIT: I did read the release notes. After a lot of reading, there was 1 change (updating their internal Port # for the main service to 2283) It's done. Thanks y'all. My cats appreciate you all.
Haha this was my first thought too.
Immich is very clear: "⚠️ Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos."
In that case, you have your content elsewhere. Make a backup of relevant volumes and a database dump (for your albums and such) and then try updating. Roll back if it doesn't work. If if you don't have much in the way of Immich meta data, and the upgrade didn't work, then you could just start from scratch and re-import your content.
That first part is why I still maintain my Google Photos account. I have most of it on Immich at this point, but given that's still in active development, I like having options.
I treat Immich like a frontend. I have photos in Nextcloud, plus local and remote backup (1 2 3 style). Then Immich is set to absorb the photos from Nextcloud, and the photos are exposed read-only to Immich so it can't damage anything.
I just had to do this. Don’t skip the release notes. They’re really good at highlighting potential pitfalls, just scroll back through and look for the heading “Breaking Changes.”
In my case there were a few, but they were only for API calls I’m not using, so I just did the update in one go and it worked out great. (Of course, I made sure to take a backup first.)
I neglected to update for like seven "major" versions recently. I took the safe-ish route to just read every release note as I go and install the last minor version of each major version release, then start, quick check, stop, next one. It turned out fine.
edit: Backup, backup, backup. Then you can't fail.
You're going to have to read every single release with breaking changes.
That's one of the reasons I favour Semantic Versioning...
Don't trust Semantic Versioning claims, devs can and so screw it up. That said, if they claim to follow semver, it'll probably work, but I've had patch versions break my code before.
I yoloed from a year old version up to the latest, it was fine.
Love that for you.
However, that is not everyone's experience and doesn't really answer op's question.
Good opportunity to test your backups.
Restore to a new directory, update that and see what happens. If it works do it to the original.
I just update. If it breaks, I read the notes. Probably the wrong way but it worked. And I use it for a long time. To me, it was never that unstable. And since a couple of months it's very stable. Backup first.
Make backup do yolo. So far backup has not been nessasary.
Lol, i was going to post the same question one of these days. I too am almost on the same version and I was hoping some kind soul would help me out.
On top of it I'm not very well versed with docker backups so I'm doubly scared. What I am going to do is to take a mirror image of my whole OS drive in my zfs mount that I use as backup, give a release notes a glance and go YOLO based on what I can make out.
Your post gives me a lot of hope. Thank you!