Browse and cull

immich-edit reads your library straight from Immich. Nothing is imported or copied, so a photo is here as soon as Immich has it.

Find photos

The sidebar has Photos, People, Favorites, Albums, Tags, Folders and Edited. Edited lists the photos you have changed in immich-edit. People, Albums, Tags and Folders remember whether you left them open, and the one holding the page you are on opens by itself. The search box at the top searches your library, and the Search by buttons above the results pick what it matches, as in Immich:

Context uses Immich’s smart search, so a description such as red car at night works. When Immich’s machine learning is down, it falls back to searching filenames.
File name matches part of the original filename.
Description matches part of the description set in Immich.
Full path or folder matches part of the original file path, such as a folder name.
OCR finds text Immich read in the photo.

A query that looks like a filename, such as DSC00195 or IMG_1234.jpg, starts in File name; anything else starts in Context. Context and OCR appear only when the Immich server has smart search and OCR turned on; without smart search every query starts in File name. With no results, Context offers Search filenames instead.

Filters, or Shift+F, opens the filter panel on the right of the grid; its close button or Shift+F again hides it, and the Filters button stays hidden while the panel is open. The panel groups its filters into Library (Visibility, Rejected, Favorites only), Albums, people & tags (Albums with Not in any album, People with No people, Tags with Untagged), Rating & label, Date (Taken after, Taken before, Added after, Added before), Camera (Make, Model, Lens), Place (Country, State, City) and File (Filename, Min size (MB), Max size (MB)). Search leaves out Filename. Sections start folded; click a section title to open or fold it. A section with an active filter shows a reset button that clears only that section, and Reset at the top of the panel clears every filter. The panel remembers whether it was open and which sections you left open. Visibility switches between Timeline, Archived and Hidden; folders and Edited show timeline photos and do not offer it. Rating picks Any, Unrated or a star count. On Immich 3.2 and later, the button before the stars switches between ≥ (at least, the default), ≤ (at most) and = (exactly); ≤ also keeps unrated photos. Older Immich versions match the exact star count. Rejected shows rejects, hides them or shows only them; Only lets you review everything you rejected before deleting it in Immich. Not in any album keeps photos that no album holds yet, so you can find what still needs filing; albums, folders and Edited do not offer it. Untagged keeps photos with no tags at all, and on Immich 3.2 and later No people keeps photos where Immich found no faces. Color labels and reject marks are tags too, so a labelled or rejected photo is not untagged. Tag pages leave out Untagged, people pages leave out No people, context search leaves out No people, and folders and Edited offer neither. Min size (MB) and Max size (MB) keep photos whose original file is at least or at most that size, where 1 MB is 1,000,000 bytes. A photo with no recorded size never matches a size range. Folders and Edited offer them on every Immich version, other views need Immich 3.2, and context search does not offer them. Make, Model, Lens, Country, State and City list the values Immich knows from your timeline photos. Picking a make narrows the models and lenses on offer, and picking a model narrows the lenses; a country narrows the states and cities the same way, and a state the cities. A choice the new list no longer contains is dropped. On Immich 3.2 and later each picker takes several values and matches any of them; older versions match one value. When some photos lack the value, the list ends with Unknown, which finds those photos and cannot be combined with other values. Albums lists your albums, People the named people Immich shows and Tags your tags by their full path; immich-edit’s own label and reject tags stay out of it. Each takes several values, and by default a photo must match every pick. On Immich 3.2 and later, All of, Any of and None of under a picker switch to photos with at least one of them or none of them; older versions match all of them. An album’s, person’s or tag’s page leaves its own entry out of the list, and folders and Edited do not offer these filters. The sort menu next to Filters picks Date taken or Date added to Immich, and Newest first or Oldest first. On Immich 3.2 and later it also offers Rating, with Highest first or Lowest first, and Size, with Largest first or Smallest first. Immich sorts the whole result, so the best or biggest photos lead every page, not only the loaded ones. Unrated photos, and photos with no recorded size, come last in both orders, and photos with the same rating keep no particular order. Each view remembers its own order, so Date added with Newest first shows your latest uploads. Reset filters and sort clears both. Each active filter shows as a chip under the header; its Remove button clears only that filter. Filters live in the page address, so a reload keeps them, Back and Forward step through your filter changes, and a bookmark or shared link opens the same filtered view. Typing a filename or changing a date that is already set updates the address without adding a Back step. Each album, folder, person or tag starts unfiltered, as does the Photos link in the sidebar. The sort order is not part of the address; each view remembers its own. The count beside the title is the number of photos in the view, followed by how many of the loaded ones Label and Rejected are hiding because you changed them after they loaded. Before Immich 3.2, Immich cannot leave photos out by tag, so Hide rejects and No label filter the loaded photos instead and the count still includes the ones they hide. Context search works the same way on every Immich version, and matches only exact star counts. The S, M, L and XL buttons set the thumbnail size. The Thumbnail info button beside them, or I, cycles what a thumbnail shows without hovering: nothing at all, the favorite, reject, color label, rating and copy badges, or those plus the filename and capture date. Hovering a thumbnail shows five stars above its filename; click one to rate that photo, or the lit star again to clear it. With filename and date showing, the stars stay visible.

Look at photos

Clicking a photo opens it in the editor. To look without editing, hover it and press Quick review, or select it and press E. That opens the loupe: one photo at full size, with the filmstrip below. Arrow keys move through the photos, Z zooms, and I or the Info button opens the info panel beside the photo: the description (editable on your own photos; Enter saves, Esc undoes), exposure and camera, the place with a map link, the albums and tags it is in, and the file path with Copy path. The panel stays open until you close it, reloads included. On a phone it is a sheet that closes with the loupe. The loupe, the editor and their filmstrips load the rest of the view as you reach the end of what is loaded, so the arrow keys walk the whole album or search result. When you close the loupe or go back from the editor, the grid scrolls to the photo you ended on if it is off screen.

Ctrl or Cmd with the mouse wheel zooms at the pointer in the loupe, compare and survey, the wheel alone pans a zoomed photo, and a plain wheel over a filmstrip scrolls it. In the loupe, compare, survey and the editor, Shift with an arrow key nudges a zoomed photo by a tenth of the view. In the loupe, Home and End jump to the first and last photo, loading the rest of the view first when needed.

Z zooms to the faces Immich found, largest first, and back to fit after the last one. Without faces it zooms to the sharpest area. It zooms to the level you last picked, 1:1 until you change it. Zoom percentages are percentages of the original, so 100% shows one camera pixel on one screen pixel.

Rate, reject and label

These keys work in the grid, the loupe, compare, survey and the editor. In the grid they act on the selected photos; the arrow keys select one:

Key	Does
`1` to `5`	Set the rating; the same key again clears it
`0`	Clear the rating
`Shift` + `0` to `5`	Set the rating and move to the next photo, whatever Auto-advance says. In the grid, one selected photo hands its selection to the next one; with several selected, all get the rating and the selection stays
`P`	Toggle favorite
`X`	Toggle reject
`U`	Clear favorite and reject
`6` to `9`	Set the red, yellow, green or blue label; the same key again clears it

In the loupe, compare and survey, a new rating shows over the photo for a moment. The Auto-advance button in the loupe toolbar moves on to the next photo after every rating, favorite, reject or label: the overlay then names the change, adds “next photo” and fills a short bar before the step, so you see what you set. Moving to another photo yourself during the bar cancels the step. Shift with a digit moves on the same way.

A photo has at most one color label: red, yellow, green, blue or purple. Purple has no key; pick it, or any other label, with the label button beside reject in the loupe, the editor and the selection bar. Tiles and filmstrip thumbnails show the label as a colored dot, and the Label filter shows one color, or only photos without a label.

The first time you rate, favorite, tag, reject or label in a browser, immich-edit asks before it writes to Immich. Press Sync to Immich to allow it. Ratings, favorites and tags are stored in Immich, so they show up there too. Reject adds the Immich tag immich-edit/reject, and a label adds immich-edit/label/red and so on, so Immich searches and workflows can use them. Reject on its own deletes nothing; set Rejected to Hide to filter rejects out, or to Only to find them and move them to the trash.

Photos another Immich user owns, such as a partner’s photos in your timeline or another user’s photos in a shared album, follow Immich’s rules: the rating, favorite, reject, label and tag controls stay visible but are disabled, and hovering them says why. The keys above do nothing on them. You can still add them to albums, edit them and export the result as a new photo of your own. When Immich refuses a change for another reason, the message says what Immich answered.

Choose between similar shots

In the grid, keys act on the selected photos, so select photos first:

The arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down select one photo. The first press selects the photo you last had open.
Shift with those keys grows or shrinks the selection.
Ctrl-click, or Cmd-click on macOS, adds or removes one photo.
Shift-click selects everything between the last selected photo and this one.
The circle in a thumbnail’s corner also toggles it. Once anything is selected, a plain click toggles too.
Select all, or Ctrl+A, loads and selects every photo in the view.

With two photos selected, press C or Compare selected. The two sit side by side, and zoom and pan move together until you press Y. Alt+← or Alt+→ (⌥← or ⌥→ on a Mac) swaps the focused side for the previous or next photo, which is the quickest way to hold a winner and step through the rest, even while zoomed in. The left photo is labelled Select and the other Candidate. When the candidate is focused, its Make select button, or Enter, moves it to the left.

With up to nine selected, press N or Survey selected to see them all at once. Drop the weaker ones with Backspace, or the Drop from survey button that shows when you hover a photo, until the keepers are left, or press Enter to keep only the focused photo. Esc goes back to the loupe, and the survivors are selected when you return to the grid.

Selecting belongs to the grid. In the loupe, C compares the photo on screen with the next one and N surveys it with the next five.

The loupe’s View mode button switches between Single photo, Compare and Survey as well. In compare and survey, the bar under the photos has buttons for the same pane actions: Sync zoom and pan, Make select in compare or Keep only this photo in survey, and Drop this photo. Shift+S hides or shows the filmstrip, and F goes full screen. Right-click a filmstrip thumbnail for Open in editor and Add to compare, which adds or removes a pane in compare and survey. On a touch screen, press and hold the thumbnail instead.

A culling pass

Open the album, folder or day, and set Rejected to Hide.
Press E on the first photo. Step through with →, pressing X on misses and a rating on keepers.
At a burst, select the frames and press N. Drop frames until one is left, and rate it.
Under Rating, keep ≥ and pick the lowest star count you want to edit, such as three stars (Immich 3.2 and later). What is left is your edit list.
To clear out the misses, set Rejected to Only and press Move rejected to trash.

Act on a selection

With photos selected, the selection bar shows one heart, one star row, one reject button and the color label. Each shows what the selection already is: filled when every photo has it, faded when only some do. A click sets every photo the same way, so Favorite on a mixed selection favorites all of them instead of flipping each one, and a star sets that rating on all. Click the lit star again to clear the rating. The bar also has Tags, Albums, Create virtual copy, Edit and export selected, and Move to Immich trash. Albums adds the selection to existing Immich albums; inside an album it also offers Remove from that album, which drops the photos from the grid while they stay in Immich. Edit and export selected pastes edits, applies a preset or exports every selected photo in one go; see export many photos. When the selection holds a photo another Immich user owns, the favorite, rating, reject, label and Tags controls are disabled, and hovering them says why. Shift+B moves keyboard focus from the grid into the selection bar.

With one photo selected, the bar shows its filename in place of the count and an Open in editor button. With two it offers Compare selected, and with three or more Survey selected. Select all next to the count loads and selects every photo in the view.

Ctrl+C (⌘C on a Mac) copies the edits of the selected photo in the grid, or of the photo on screen in the loupe, and asks which settings to take, remembering your last choice. Ctrl+V pastes them onto every selected photo as a background job; in the loupe it pastes onto the photo on screen. When you have selected text on the page, both keys copy and paste the text instead.

Delete photos

Move to Immich trash sends photos you own to the Immich trash. It is on the selection bar, in the More menu of the loupe and the editor, and on Delete or Backspace in the grid and the loupe. To trash every reject in a view at the end of a cull, set Rejected to Only and press Move rejected to trash beside the filter chips. immich-edit always asks first and says how long Immich keeps trashed photos. Undo on the message afterwards brings them back; later, restore them from the trash in Immich until Immich empties it.

A virtual copy is deleted from immich-edit instead, which cannot be undone. Trashing an original takes its virtual copies out of view with it; its edits and copies stay in immich-edit and come back when the original is restored. Photos another Immich user owns are skipped.

immich-edit deletes nothing while the trash is turned off in Immich, because Immich would then remove the photos for good. Signed in with an Immich API key, the key needs the asset.delete permission.

Virtual copies

A virtual copy is a second, independent set of edits on the same original, such as a black and white version next to the color one. It takes no space in Immich until you export it. Create one with Create virtual copy or Ctrl+'. It shows up next to the original with a Copy badge.

Ratings, favorites, tags and reject marks belong to the Immich photo, so every copy shares them. Edits, masks, history and exports belong to one copy. Delete a copy from its thumbnail, or from Versions in the editor’s More editor actions menu.

The full key list is on keyboard shortcuts.