The team behind Immich, a popular open-source, self-hosted photo and video management platform, has released version 2.5 and is celebrating the project surpassing 90,000 GitHub stars.
The main addition is the Free Up Space feature for mobile, which allows users to safely remove local photos and videos already backed up to an Immich server, freeing storage without data loss.
The feature includes safeguards such as cutoff dates, preservation of albums and favorites, and a mandatory review step before deletion. Removed files are sent to the device’s native trash, allowing them to be recovered if needed.
Immich 2.5 also introduces non-destructive photo editing. Edits such as cropping, rotation, and mirroring are now stored in the database instead of modifying the original files. As you might guess, this lets you revert changes at any time while still allowing edited versions to be downloaded by default.
On top of that, backup and restore functionality is now fully supported in the web interface. Users can restore database backups directly from the Immich UI, either through the administration maintenance page or during onboarding of a new instance.
Upload handling has been improved, especially on mobile. Foreground uploads are now more reliable due to enhanced concurrency and better support for files with missing extensions.
A visual refresh spans the web app, mobile clients, and documentation, introducing a new font designed for better legibility and a more consistent UI component hierarchy. Tooltips have been added to icon buttons to improve usability, and the overall interface aims for a clearer structure across platforms.
Additional enhancements in Immich 2.5 include star ratings on mobile, a slideshow loop option on the web, and a new environment variable that allows administrators to disable open admin setup on fresh installs.
Finally, on the performance side, Immich now supports progressive JPEGs and uses native HTTP clients for image loading, including HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, resulting in faster image rendering, smoother scrolling, improved caching, and a better offline experience.
For more information, see the changelog.
