immich-folio/README.md

Immich Folio

A self-hosted photography portfolio powered by Immich. Turns your Immich albums into a beautiful, public-facing gallery — without ever exposing your Immich server to the internet.

Immich Folio acts as a secure reverse proxy between your visitors and your private Immich instance. Your Immich server stays on your local network, completely invisible to the outside world.

Features

Gallery & Layout

• Split hero homepage — full-height hero with site title, subtitle, and navigation links on the left; hero image on the right
• Hero image carousel — single image or crossfade carousel of multiple Immich assets
• Masonry photo grid — responsive layout with natural aspect ratios and configurable columns, gap, and aspect ratio
• Uniform grid mode — switch to a fixed-aspect uniform grid per-subpage or globally
• Per-subpage grid overrides — each subpage can define its own columns, gap, aspect ratio, and layout mode
• Fullscreen lightbox — keyboard and swipe navigation, EXIF panel, adjacent image preloading
• EXIF metadata on hover — camera body, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO shown directly on the grid
• ThumbHash placeholders — instant blurred previews while full images load

Content & Organization

• Subpage grouping — organize albums into named collections (e.g. /japan/tokyo-2023)
• Auto-generated slugs — URL slugs derived from album names automatically
• YAML gallery config — all gallery structure defined in a single content/gallery.yaml file
• Markdown about page — content/about.md with frontmatter for portrait, name, location, and gear list
• Dynamic OG images — auto-generated social preview images per album

Security

Concern	Protection
Server exposure	Immich URL and port are never sent to the browser — all requests are proxied server-side
API key	Stored only in .env.local, never included in client-side code or responses
Asset IDs	Immich UUIDs are encrypted (AES-256) into opaque tokens — visitors cannot guess or enumerate asset IDs
Album scope	Only albums explicitly listed in gallery.yaml are accessible — everything else is blocked
Password protection	Individual subpages can require a password before content is revealed
Rate limiting	Per-IP sliding-window rate limiter on the image proxy (configurable RPM)
No direct access	Visitors interact only with the Next.js app; they have zero knowledge of your Immich server's existence

Infrastructure

• Health check endpoint — GET /api/health for uptime monitoring and container orchestration
• In-memory caching — configurable TTL for Immich API responses
• Standalone Docker image — multi-stage build, runs as non-root, ~150 MB

Quick Start

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/ralksta/immich-folio.git
cd immich-folio
npm install

# Configure
cp .env.local.example .env.local
# Edit .env.local with your Immich server URL and API key

cp content/gallery.yaml.example content/gallery.yaml
# Edit gallery.yaml with your album UUIDs

# Run
npm run dev

Configuration

Environment Variables (.env.local)

# Required
IMMICH_API_URL=http://your-immich-server:2283
IMMICH_API_KEY=your-api-key

# Optional
SITE_TITLE=My Photography            # default: "Gallery"
SITE_SUBTITLE=A visual journal        # default: empty
CACHE_TTL=300                          # seconds, default: 300
RATE_LIMIT_RPM=120                     # requests/min/IP, default: 120

Gallery Config (content/gallery.yaml)

# Hero image(s) — single UUID or list for carousel
hero: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
# hero:
#   - uuid-1
#   - uuid-2

# Standalone albums on the homepage
albums:
  - 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
  - 22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222

# EXIF on hover (default: true)
# exifOnHover: false

# Global grid layout
# grid:
#   columns: 3
#   gap: 12
#   aspectRatio: "1"
#   layout: masonry       # "masonry" or "uniform"

# Subpages — group albums into collections
subpages:
  - name: Japan
    grid:
      columns: 4
      layout: uniform
      aspectRatio: '3/2'
    albums:
      - uuid-tokyo
      - uuid-kyoto

  - name: Wedding – Smith
    password: clientpass123
    albums:
      - uuid-wedding

See content/gallery.yaml.example for the full reference.

About Page (content/about.md)

---
portrait: asset-uuid
name: Your Name
location: City, Country
gear:
  - Camera Body
  - Favorite Lens
---

Your bio text here.

Docker

Docker Compose (recommended)

services:
  lightbox:
    build: .
    container_name: immich-folio
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - '7211:7211'
    env_file:
      - .env.local
    volumes:
      - ./content:/app/content:ro

Run with:

docker compose up -d

The gallery will be available at http://localhost:7211.

Standalone Docker

# Build
docker build -t immich-folio .

# Run
docker run -d \
  --name immich-folio \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 7211:7211 \
  --env-file .env.local \
  -v ./content:/app/content:ro \
  immich-folio

Note: The content/ volume mount lets you update gallery.yaml and about.md without rebuilding the image.

Health Check

The container includes a built-in health check at /api/health:

curl http://localhost:7211/api/health

Reverse Proxy

Put Immich Folio behind nginx / Caddy / Traefik with TLS. Example Caddy config:

photos.example.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:7211
}

Tech Stack

• Next.js 16 (App Router, standalone output)
• React 19
• TypeScript
• Vanilla CSS (no framework)

License

Private — all rights reserved.