How to use Immich to delete original files on device?

[825i]

I have gone through and deleted hundreds of photos using Immich in my external library, just to find out that they are only deleted from Immich and not at all from my actual device. The whole reason I got this app was to be able to blaze through my photo timeline and mass delete images that I don't care about. I obviously want those images removed forever.

When checking the settings I can't see anywhere to actually delete the original files.

Is this seriously not a feature at all? What is the point of deleting photos in Immich if the junk files, duplicates, blurry photos etc. are all still taking up storage on my server/device?

[bo0tzz]

There's a few things at play here:

1. Files in external libraries are deleted from disk only if the library is not mounted readonly
2. Files in external libraries have no link to files on your phone - Immich only knows about that connection if they got uploaded through the app
3. If you delete a file from the mobile app, you get the option to also delete it locally on the phone
4. Deletes from the web/server are currently not propagated to the phone automatically. At the moment this is a concious choice, because we're dealing with important data and we don't want to risk a bug being able to accidentally delete all of it. Once Immich is more stable, we will implement a cleanup feature, see also [Feature] Mass remove already backed-up photos #165.

[serious-angel]

Just to clarify, since I haven't found such yet, is it possible to search and select all the already uploaded files on the phone app?

[JehandadK]

@serious-angel I think you have to select multiple files for this option to show up.

Also for dumb people like me:

• Delete : Delete from device and cloud
• Move to Trash: Will eventually delete from Cloud
• Delete from Device: Will only delete from device.

[serious-angel]

...you have to select multiple files for this option to show up...

Thank you for the response.
Indeed, and this is how I do now, too, but there seem to be no option to select all 10,000 photos to process on the app, but per group per day only organized by Exif/Meta data, and hence the question, since currently, to select all, we may need to select each day separately.

[drybx]

There's a few things at play here:

1. Files in external libraries are deleted from disk only if the library is not mounted readonly

For some reason, that's not what's happening on my end. I’m running Immich in an LXC container (bare metal, no Docker) and Immich definitely has write access to the folder where my external library is stored.

I already emptied the Immich trash, but the deleted files still remain on my HDD instead of being removed.

Now, when I rescan my library, of course deleted photos reappear

[Jebble]

3. If you delete a file from the mobile app, you get the option to also delete it locally on the phone
4. Deletes from the web/server are currently not propagated to the phone automatically. At the moment this is a concious choice, because we're dealing with important data and we don't want to risk a bug being able to accidentally delete all of it. Once Immich is more stable, we will implement a cleanup feature, see also [Feature] Mass remove already backed-up photos #165.

Appreciate this is a late reply, but I've never seen this question asked. I've only started using Immich after the 2.0 release. I did just try this again and i'm not able to remove images from Immich and also have them deleted from my phone.

[825i]

Ok I figured some of this out. I had mounted in Unraid the external library as Read Only.
After remounting as Read/Write. Deleting from the trash now does delete the original file.

However, I am having a second issue that despite the "/thumbs" DIR already having been mounted as Read/Write from the beginning. I am getting an EACCESS error that it cannot delete the thumb files when the image is deleted from the trash and the disk.

Is the process runner responsible for deleting the thumb file, running under a different user/process than what deletes the actual photo file?

[svenstaro]

I believe this should now be fixed as of immich v1.132.3 and #16732. Maybe change this to "answered"?

[Cheekie25]

It's still not the case for iOS, is it ?

[CiNcH83]

I also just deleted 2 photos from the Immich web interface. Those photos live on an external library which is being mounted rw:

    volumes:
      - ${IMMICH_HOME}/data:/data
      - ${DANIEL_LIB}:/Assets/Daniel
      - ${SABINE_LIB}:/Assets/Sabine

At least the external libs are not explicitly mounted ro. I also performed a "Scan All Libraries" afterwards. The files however haven't been deleted from the disk.

Is that intended behavior? Or will it only be deleted after 30 days?

Using Immich 2.1.0.

[CiNcH83]

I probably have to add that I am running as non-root:

services:
  immich-server:
    user: ${IMMICH_UID}:${IMMICH_GID}
    group_add:
      - ${DANIEL_GID}
      - ${SABINE_GID}

The photo files belong to my user which has been added with group_add:

Daniel@raspberrypi5:~/assets/2024/10 $ ls -lah
total 14M
drwxrwx---  2 Daniel Daniel 4.0K Oct 16 07:14 .
drwxrwx--- 13 Daniel Daniel 4.0K Nov  6  2024 ..
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 1.9M Oct  2  2024 2024-10-02_17-49-05_IMG_0122.heic
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 356K Oct  6  2024 2024-10-06_14-27-15_IMG_0145.jpg
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 2.6M Oct 12  2024 2024-10-12_17-50-34_IMG_0151.heic
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 2.6M Oct 12  2024 2024-10-12_17-50-37_IMG_0152.heic
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 2.8M Oct 19  2024 2024-10-19_12-16-49_IMG_0175.heic
-rw-rw----  1 Daniel Daniel 3.6M Oct 26  2024 2024-10-26_15-05-31_IMG_0190.heic

I think that the file permissions are properly being set up.

[CiNcH83]

Never mind... got it! After emptying the trash, the files got deleted too.