I feel grandparents will be most interested in a nice photo solution. So something like Immich with it setup on their phones.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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Immich is certainly the best photo experience but how does it handle on Synology devices?
No idea. That's why I wrote "like Immich". :)
I run Immich, along side about 10 other services, on my DS420+, and it runs great imo. The initial import of all my photos (40,000+) did take a long time but now that it's up and running it's more than quick enough.
This guy does a lot with Synology NAS:
https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-immich-on-your-synology-nas/
every time I try to install Immich on my Synology it freezes the entire machine due to straining CPU and RAM resources. it's probably due to the machine learning model, but I've given up on it for now
Yeah, I had the same issue, but I did get it running. I disabled ML, and set most tasks to use a batch size of one. Later I bumped some of them back up.
good to know it's possible, I'll try your suggestion. I've also heard you can offload the machine learning to a GPU on your network, might have to give that a shot
Yup, I did exactly that. I'll probably just move Inmich to a mini PC or something eventually
Synology
I've never had a Synology so I don't know. I have 5 really old 4 bay ReadyNAS filled with 10 TB drives, and you can't install really anything but maybe SMB and CouchPotato which has more than likely been superseded by something far better.
Probably an *arr stack, nextcloud, and tailscale.
Honestly running anything that isn't Synology made on their devices is a pain. Also, without knowing how old the device is, it's also a challenge to make a recommendation. As the other user replied Jellyfin is a good one, can run music, movies and tv, and home media too.
Stash is also a good one for grandpa
I disagree. Docker containers are pretty easy to set up on it, though I admit that the small memory sucks in terms of performance.
So you could say it’s a pain… lol, what I just said
Sorry, I thought you were saying it was a pain to setup and run anything else, I disagreed with that. It is performance limited because it is a NAS after all, but still completely functional. I've never installed anything on one that it couldn't handle, but perhaps someone else has. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Drive is nice.
The photos mobile app is OK.
Jellyfin on the native docker app works.
I can't imagine the video transcoding is very good. Is that an issue?
It depends. Some have CPUs with iGPU. If you enable hardware support it’s fine for about two streams. Also, transcoding isn’t needed a whole lot. Most devices support native formats.
Jellyfin on the native docker app works.
And if it's a model without docker capability built in (most of the lower end ones they remove docker support), docker can usually be side loaded fairly easily.