The snap is updated to Immich v3.4. See the upstream release notes for what is new in Immich itself, including a long list of security fixes. This post covers what is different in the snap, and a few upstream changes you should know about before you update.
Empty asset backups since September
Since around the second week of September 2026, immich-distribution.backup -a has created empty asset archives while reporting success. Only the asset archives were affected; database backups, both the snap's and Immich's own, worked as usual. A security update to tar in the Ubuntu base made it incompatible with the snap's confinement. This update fixes it, and backup and restore are now tested for every release.
As the backup documentation recommends, back up the database with the snap and your photos directly with your own backup software. The -a option is meant for small installations and test instances.
Newer machine learning models
Like upstream Immich, the snap now uses the faster v2 model exports, and this update moves your installation to them. The new models are downloaded automatically. They have no new hardware or system requirements, so there is no reason to expect problems, and existing smart search and face data keeps working without re-indexing. If you run into issues, or prefer the original models, switch back to main, see Machine Learning for details:
sudo snap set immich-distribution ml-model-revision=main
The old models stay in /var/snap/immich-distribution/common/cache. On v2, you can free disk space by deleting everything except the v2 subfolder in each model folder.
JPEG XL thumbnails
Immich can now generate thumbnails and previews in the JPEG XL format, an option under Administration ➔ Settings ➔ Image Settings. The image libraries in the snap are now built with JPEG XL support, matching the upstream Docker image. The default format is unchanged.
FUTO Backups are not supported
Immich v3.4 adds a new beta backup feature, FUTO Backups, under Administration ➔ Backups. The snap does not support it. I have no good way to test it, and I would rather not offer you a backup solution that may be broken. Keep using the database backups and your own file backups.
If you would like FUTO Backups to work in the snap, open an issue and we can discuss the options.
Symlinks in external libraries
External library scans no longer follow symlinks. This is an upstream security fix. If an external library contains symlinked folders or files, new files behind them are no longer imported, and assets that were imported through a symlink may be marked offline on the next scan. Mount or move the real folders into the library path instead.