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Running PhotoPrism on a Synology NAS

Should you experience problems with the installation, we recommend that you ask the Synology community for advice, as we cannot provide support for third-party software and services.

Visit the Synology Knowledge Base to learn what kind of CPU and how much memory your device has. We recommend hosting PhotoPrism on a 64-bit system with at least 2 cores and 3 GB of physical memory. High-resolution panoramic images may require additional swap space and/or physical memory above the recommended minimum.

RAW image conversion and TensorFlow are disabled on devices with 1 GB or less memory. You will have to resort to 32-bit Docker images to run PhotoPrism and MariaDB on ARMv7-based entry-level devices like the Synology DS218j.

Indexing large photo and video collections significantly benefits from local SSD storage and plenty of memory for caching. Especially the conversion of RAW images and the transcoding of videos are very demanding. We take no responsibility for instability or performance problems if your device does not meet the requirements.

Will my device be fast enough?

This largely depends on your expectations and the number of files you have. Most users report that PhotoPrism runs well on their Synology NAS. However, you should keep in mind:

  • initial indexing may take longer than on standard desktop computers
  • the hardware has no video transcoding support and software transcoding is generally slow

Troubleshooting

If your device runs out of memory, the index is frequently locked, or other system resources are running low:

Other issues? Our troubleshooting checklists help you quickly diagnose and solve them.

Setup using Docker & SQLite

Note that SQLite is generally not a good choice for users who require scalability and high performance.

Since we don't have a Synology test device, contributions to a step-by-step tutorial using mariadb are greatly appreciated. You can contribute by clicking to send a pull request with your changes.

Help improve these docs! You can contribute by clicking to send a pull request with your changes.

This guide describes how to set up PhotoPrism using the new Synology user interface.

Prerequisites

  • Docker is installed
  • folders config and photos are created:

Photoprism_1

  • for testing purposes, add some pictures to your photos folder
  • later, if you're ok with your setup, you can link your pictures to the photos folder

Get the image

  • Launch Docker
  • Search for photoprism/photoprism in the Registry
  • Download and choose your flavor
  • Wait until you get the message your image is downloaded. It is big, so this can take a while

Set PhotoPrism up

  • double-click the image you just downloaded
  • Network: choose your network - next
  • give your container a name and click on Advanced Settings

Photoprism_2_en

  • Add Variable PHOTOPRISM_ADMIN_PASSWORD with your password

Photoprism_3_en

  • enter values for PHOTPRISM_SITE_DESCRIPTION and PHOTOPRISM_SITE_AUTOR
  • PHOTOPRISM_DATABASE_SERVER and PHOTOPRISM_DATABASE_PASSWORD are used for mariadb. It is recommended to use mariadb but not part of this guide
  • Save

Photoprism_4_2_en

  • Next
  • enter the local port you want to use to connect to PhotoPrism

Photoprism_5_en

  • in the Volume Settings we're adding the two folders (see prerequisites)
  • choose config, add /photoprism/storage as Mount path
  • choose photos, add /photoprism/originals as Mount path

Photoprism_6_en Photoprism_7_en Photoprism_8

  • Done
  • Run the container and give it some minutes to create
  • connect to your instance of Photoprism with your browser ip-to-your-nas:port and login

First Steps

Our First Steps 👣 tutorial guides you through the user interface and settings to ensure your library is indexed according to your individual preferences.