Your Immich photo library as a native cloud drive in File Explorer — on demand, without storing the photos on your PC.
Take a photo on your phone, let it auto-sync to Immich, and then grab it straight from your computer's file picker — no need to open the Immich web UI, download anything by hand, or fill up your disk. When you actually open or attach a photo, Drive for Immich fetches just that file on demand and hands it to whatever app asked for it (great for attaching a recent photo to a Craigslist listing, an email, or a form).
Drive for Immich uses the same Windows mechanism as OneDrive and Dropbox — the Cloud Files API — to create placeholder files. They look and behave like normal files in Explorer (correct names, dates, and thumbnails) but take up 0 bytes until you open one. Opening a file ("hydrating" it) streams the original down from your Immich server in the background; closing and freeing space dehydrates it back to a placeholder.
- Organized the way you think about it —
2026-06 Junedate folders (newest first), plus Albums, Favorites, and Partners folders that mirror Immich and stay in sync. - Real thumbnails without downloading — a lightweight shell extension fetches Immich's small thumbnails so you can see your photos before opening them, with nothing on disk.
- Lives in the tray — a single tray icon shows status (online / syncing) and lets you open settings, refresh, or pause. No heavyweight background service.
- Install Drive for Immich from the Microsoft Store.
- Open Drive for Immich and enter:
- your Immich server URL (e.g.
https://photos.example.com) - an API key (Immich → Account Settings → API Keys → New API Key).
- your Immich server URL (e.g.
- Click Test connection, then Connect. Your drive appears in Explorer under Drive for Immich (a sync-root entry in the navigation pane, like OneDrive).
That's it — browse by date and double-click (or attach) any photo.
- Windows 11 (build 22621 or newer) — Drive for Immich relies on the Cloud Files API and modern shell thumbnails.
- An Immich server you can reach (any reasonably recent version), and an API key from it.
Building from source, the MSIX packaging pipeline, and how the pieces fit together — the resident app, the thumbnail shell extension, the Cloud Files provider, and the on-disk index — are documented in DEVELOPMENT.md.
Licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0: free for any personal and other noncommercial use, including modifying and redistributing it. Commercial use is not permitted. Copyright © 2026 Ryan Ewen.