Long-term vision: should Immich ever modify originals?

[timonrieger]

Immich positions itself as photo management software, and that’s increasingly how users treat it - as the canonical source of truth for their libraries. Right now, Immich is intentionally non-destructive: originals are immutable and metadata edits live in the DB or XMP sidecars.

The question I’m curious about from a vision perspective is:

Is Immich’s long-term direction strictly non-destructive, or is there interest for controlled modification of originals?

There are classes of problems that can’t be fully solved with sidecars alone (e.g. HEIC→JPEG migrations, incorrect capture dates, timezone fixes, interoperability with tools that ignore XMP).

I’m not proposing a specific implementation yet — more trying to understand where the project wants to land philosophically:

• sidecar-only forever
• or potentially a clearly marked “danger zone” where the system can intentionally rewrite metadata in originals under user control

Understanding this boundary would help guide whether ideas like metadata-operation UIs or ExifTool integration even make sense to explore.

[bo0tzz]

Immich will never have destructive actions on the original, no. The way we plan to approach things like editing is by creating a new asset, then replacing (by stacking, trashing, or otherwise) the previous one.