Running PhotoPrism on a Synology NAS¶

Before setting up PhotoPrism on your NAS, we recommend that you check the Synology Knowledge Base for the CPU and memory configuration of your device.

For a good user experience, it should be a 64-bit system with at least 2 cores and 3 GB of RAM. Indexing large photo and video collections also benefits greatly from using SSD storage, especially for the database and cache files.

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. Also note that RAW image conversion and TensorFlow are disabled on devices with 1 GB or less memory, and that high-resolution panoramic images may require additional swap space and/or physical memory above the recommended minimum.

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:

Try reducing the number of workers by setting PHOTOPRISM_WORKERS to a reasonably small value in docker-compose.yml, depending on the performance of your device
Make sure your device has at least 4 GB of swap space so that indexing doesn't cause restarts when memory usage spikes; RAW image conversion and video transcoding are especially demanding
If you are using SQLite, switch to MariaDB, which is better optimized for high concurrency
As a last measure, you can disable the use of TensorFlow for image classification and facial recognition

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.