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

• Configurable hero layouts — split, fullbleed, minimal, stacked (image + thumbnail strip), typographic (text-only), or mosaic (multi-image grid)
• 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
• Showcase / filmstrip / editorial-flow layouts — featured hero + grid, horizontal scroll strips, or alternating full-width and paired images
• 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

Production Ready: The codebase has been fully audited for production. It uses strict Content Security Policy (No unsafe-eval), strong cryptographic patterns (SHA-256 for IV generation instead of MD5), lengths-capped inputs for OG dynamic generation to prevent DoS, and is completely free of N+1 database queries since the API isolates Immich.

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

All gallery structure — hero images, albums, subpages, grid layout, footer — is defined in content/gallery.yaml.

→ Gallery Configuration Guide

Theming

Seven built-in presets with distinct visual identities — or mix and match with fine-grained control over colors, fonts, corners, photo frames, hero layout, and grid style.

theme: studio # or: minimal, editorial, classic, noir, monograph, botanica

Studio Leica-inspired, red dot	Minimal Swiss brutalist, fullbleed hero
Editorial Cinematic magazine, warm charcoal	Classic Gilded gallery, gold accents
Noir Darkroom analog, film noir	Monograph Typographic, book-like
Botanica Organic, nature-inspired

→ Theming Guide

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.