It fetches them as needed, much like Google photos. Every photo in the timeline has a little icon on it telling you whether it's on your device or only on the server. You can have Immich installed on several devices and see photos from all of them on any of them no problem

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

That's great! It's what's been holding me back from other self hosted solutions, is that they seemed to want a full two-way sync. Maybe it's time to make the switch!

[–] hikaru755@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

Go for it! Doesn't even need that much investment as long as you're familiar with self-hosting. Just install it and see how it goes with new photos, and you can still backfill your old photos later. There is a tool that even lets you migrate your entire Google photos account, including albums, favorites etc super easily from Google takeout