Schedules

A backup only protects you if it keeps running. Schedules do that.

In Immich

Open the backups page, select Configure, then Schedule, and turn on Run backups automatically.

Pick a Frequency of daily, weekly or monthly and a Start time on the hour. The default is daily at 03:00. The page tells you in plain words when backups will run, then select Save.

In the standalone app

Schedules are separate from backups, so one schedule can run several backups in order.

1. Go to Schedules and select Create new schedule.
2. Give it a Name.
3. Set Schedule, which takes a cron expression. The box starts at */15 * * * *, every fifteen minutes, which is almost certainly not what you want.
4. Add the backups it should run, in the order you want them.
5. Save.

Common expressions:

The five fields are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week.

A schedule shows its expression, when it last ran, and whether it is paused. Its menu has Pause, Resume, Configure and Delete.

What happens when a schedule fires

The backups in a schedule run one after another, in the order you arranged them.

• If the machine is off or the container is not running when a schedule is due, that run is simply missed. There is no catch-up run afterwards.
• If a backup from the previous run is somehow still going, that backup is recorded as failed for this run rather than starting twice.
• The "last ran" time is when the schedule started, not when it finished.

How long snapshots are kept

After each run, snapshots older than the retention period are removed and the space is reclaimed. The default keeps 60 days.

In Immich you can change this under Configure, then Storage, in Delete old backups: 15, 30, 60 or 90 days, only the latest two backups, or keep everything.

In the standalone app the 60 day default applies and there is no setting for it yet. If you need to keep snapshots for longer than that today, use a write-once backup, which never deletes anything.