Immich 2.2 released with OCR search, web layout boost, mobile workflow updates, and more

Immich 2.2.0 arrives as the latest version of this self-hosted, open source solution for managing photos and videos. One of the most requested features, optical character recognition (OCR) search, is now available. Users can search for text within images, greatly improving discoverability within large photo collections.

Following these search improvements, users on the web will notice a faster, re-implemented justified layout that calculates thumbnail sizes several times more quickly. This results in major performance gains for albums with many photos.

To aid in handling duplicate images, the asset info section on the web has been redesigned. It now highlights date and time, location, and how many albums an asset is included in. This UI update lets users quickly scan details, facilitating decisions about which duplicates to keep.

On mobile, workflow updates include access to albums an asset appears in, which can be navigated directly from the info sheet. The popular “Show similar photos” feature is now present on mobile, helping users find related images on the go. In addition, the album's activity view adopts a chat-style layout for easier message review, and the video player progress bar now reports durations with higher precision.

Meanwhile, setup has been streamlined for Docker users: the example.env file defaults to IMMICH_RELEASE=v2, referencing the latest 2.x.x image.