Overview

**⚠️ Beta ⚠️ **: This package is currently in in beta. Please use with caution and report bugs or feedback.

Immich EXIF Writer syncs metadata from Immich to your photo and video files. When you organize photos in Immich's UI - adding them to albums, marking favorites, adding descriptions, or updating locations - this service automatically writes those changes directly to the EXIF/IPTC/XMP metadata in your files.

Why use this?

• Portability: Your metadata isn't locked in Immich's database - it travels with your files
• Backup safety: If you restore from file backups, your organization isn't lost
• Compatibility: Other photo apps can read albums (keywords), favorites (ratings), and locations
• Peace of mind: Your curation work is preserved in the files themselves

Key features:

• One-way sync: Immich → Files (never modifies Immich database)
• Incremental updates: Only processes changed assets
• Supports both photos and videos with appropriate metadata tags
• Handles removals: If you remove a photo from an album in Immich, it's removed from the file's keywords
• Non-destructive: Only modifies metadata, never touches image/video data

Prerequisites

• Immich-exif is designed to work with external libraries
• Immich-exif requires read/write access to the external library regardless of how it's mounted for Immich server

Installation

Docker Compose

Add to your existing docker-compose.yml:

services:
  immich-exif:
    image: ghcr.io/jmathai/immich-exif:latest
    volumes:
      - ./immich-exif/config:/app/config
      - ./immich-exif/state:/app/state
      - ./immich-exif/logs:/app/logs
      - /path/to/your/external/library:/photos:rw
    restart: unless-stopped

Note: The photo library must be mounted with read-write access (:rw) for immich-exif to update EXIF metadata, regardless of how it's mounted in your Immich installation.

Create your configuration file at ./immich-exif/config/config.yaml. See config/config.yaml.example for configuration options.

Project Context for Claude Code

Repository Information

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/jmathai/immich-exif
• Issues: When referencing issues, use the format #123 which links to https://github.com/jmathai/immich-exif/issues/123
• Pull Requests: When referencing PRs, use the format #123 which links to https://github.com/jmathai/immich-exif/pull/123