Blurry images and thumbnails on ios app

[Hritik14]

I have searched the existing issues, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate report.

• Yes

The bug

This is similar to #25711 except that I'm not user mTLS (direct connection over LAN wifi),

I'm getting plenty of following errors in logs:

2026-03-12 18:13:54.416475 | severe   | ThumbnailWidget      | Error loading image: PlatformException(, Failed to decode image for request, null, null) | PlatformException(, Failed to decode image for request, null, null) |
#0      RemoteImageApi.requestImage (package:immich_mobile/platform/remote_image_api.g.dart:69)
<asynchronous suspension>
#1      RemoteImageRequest.load (package:immich_mobile/infrastructure/loaders/remote_image_request.dart:15)
<asynchronous suspension>
#2      CancellableImageProviderMixin.loadRequest (package:immich_mobile/presentation/widgets/images/image_provider.dart:59)
<asynchronous suspension>
#3      new OneFramePlaceholderImageStreamCompleter.<anonymous closure> (package:immich_mobile/presentation/widgets/images/one_frame_multi_image_stream_completer.dart:33)
<asynchronous suspension>

I've tried enabling and disabling Load preview image and Load original image but to effect. I also ried prefer remote images but backed up images are still blurry. Images stored on my device show just fine.

Old timeline shows an exclamation mark on blurry images hinting something is wrong but the new timeline only shows the blurry images without any visible error.

My app version is 2.5.6

The OS that Immich Server is running on

Arch

Version of Immich Server

v2.5.6

Version of Immich Mobile App

256 build.246

Platform with the issue

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

Device make and model

iOS 26.2.1

Your docker-compose.yml content

name: immich

services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    volumes:
      - ./mounts/drive1/immich:/data:rw
      - /home/hritik/immich/thumbs_local/:/data/thumbs:rw # thumbs on ssd
      - ./mounts/:/home/user/drive:ro
      - ./empty:/home/user/drive/drive1/immich # ensure uploads don't go to external lib, NOTE: Do this in webui too at library -> exclude imports
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - '2283:2283'
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: no
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    volumes:
      - model-cache:/cache
    env_file:
      - .env
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false

  redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: docker.io/valkey/valkey:8-bookworm@sha256:a137a2b60aca1a75130022d6bb96af423fefae4eb55faf395732db3544803280
    healthcheck:
      test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
    restart: always

  database:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/postgres:14-vectorchord0.4.3-pgvectors0.2.0@sha256:32324a2f41df5de9efe1af166b7008c3f55646f8d0e00d9550c16c9822366b4a
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
      POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS: '--data-checksums'
    volumes:
      - ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    shm_size: 128mb
    restart: always

volumes:
  model-cache:

Your .env content

DB_DATA_LOCATION=/home/hritik/immich/postgres

# To set a timezone, uncomment the next line and change Etc/UTC to a TZ identifier from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List
TZ=Asia/Kolkata

# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v1.71.0"
IMMICH_VERSION=release

# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
# Please use only the characters `A-Za-z0-9`, without special characters or spaces
DB_PASSWORD=redacted

# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich

Reproduction steps

1. Open immich on ios app
2. Images not present on phone and only present on immich server render blurry thumbnails

It works just fine on webui.

Relevant log output

Additional information

No response

[bo0tzz]

Are there any errors in the server log? Does logging out and back in change anything?

[Hritik14]

I've tried reinstalling the app and clearing local image cache but it didn't fix anything.
I triggered extract metadata on server so server logs are very noisy right now.

[Hritik14]

This is probably relevant, I recently lost my thumbs dir and had to regenerate all thumbnails from the web ui.

[alextran1502]

Yeah losing the thumb folder will do that. Regenerate them all should fix it

[Hritik14]

ok, so this is happening on the webui as well. Perhaps it was cached earlier on my browser so I didn't notice.

I'm getting lots of 500s for thumbnails and images.

; curl 'http://192.168.1.42:2283/api/assets/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8/thumbnail?size=thumbnail&c=iQgGDIACW2Z8hoWGaYUCejlQyQ%3D%3D&edited=true' \
  -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0' \
  -H 'Accept: image/avif,image/webp,image/png,image/svg+xml,image/*;q=0.8,*/*;q=0.5' \
  -H 'Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9' \
  -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate' \
  -H 'Connection: keep-alive' \
  -H 'Referer: http://192.168.1.42:2283/photos?at=4db2cb60-5e67-4a0f-8365-0d221d774354' \
  -H 'Cookie: immich_access_token=redacted; immich_auth_type=password; immich_is_authenticated=true' \
  -H 'Sec-GPC: 1' \
  -H 'Priority: u=5, i'
{"message":"Internal server error","statusCode":500,"correlationId":"7imq20gb"}%

; docker compose logs | grep 7imq20gb
immich_server            | [Nest] 36  - 03/12/2026, 6:43:13 PM   ERROR [Api:LoggingRepository~7imq20gb] Unable to send file: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, access '/data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_thumbnail.webp'
immich_server            | [Nest] 36  - 03/12/2026, 6:43:13 PM   ERROR [Api:GlobalExceptionFilter~7imq20gb] Unknown error: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, access '/data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_thumbnail.webp'
immich_server            | [Nest] 36  - 03/12/2026, 6:43:13 PM   DEBUG [Api:LoggingInterceptor~7imq20gb] GET /api/assets/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8/thumbnail?size=thumbnail&c=iQgGDIACW2Z8hoWGaYUCejlQyQ%3D%3D&edited=true 500 1795.05ms ::ffff:192.168.1.42

but files exist on host

; fd 8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8 /home/hritik/immich/thumbs_local/
/home/hritik/immich/thumbs_local/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_thumbnail.webp
/home/hritik/immich/thumbs_local/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_preview.jpeg

but not on docker

; docker compose exec immich-server ls /data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_preview.jpeg
ls: cannot access '/data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_preview.jpeg': No such file or directory

thumbs doesn't seem to be mounted at all

docker compose exec immich-server cat /proc/mounts | grep thumbs

recreating the container fixed it. it was probably due to some docker compose changes i made earlier and did not force-recreate to bring up the instance. my bad

; docker compose up -d --force-recreate
; docker compose exec immich-server ls /data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_preview.jpeg
/data/thumbs/160888aa-f2ff-4ac6-9f7c-bc41af496192/8a/63/8a63f83b-abb6-4145-aff9-80e013e7a5d8_preview.jpeg