Certain photos fail to upload with "File is required"

[Zinurist]

The bug

I recently bought a seek nano thermal camera. It's a camera you plug into the phone via USB-C. The photos made with this camera fail to upload with error "File is required". This is on iOS/iPhone.

Errors when trying to run the backup:

When I choose the image manually and try to upload, nothing happens.

In the photos app those images all have the name /:

When you look at the image info in the immich app, it does display a proper filename for the image though:

I guess it's also up to the seek nano app to not create images named /, but idk if they'll fix that

The moment I save the photos from the iOS photos app to somewhere else, it does become a normal jpg file that I can upload without problems. I don't know how to reproduce this without that thermal camera app.

The OS that Immich Server is running on

debian

Version of Immich Server

1.126.1

Version of Immich Mobile App

1.126.1 build.194

Platform with the issue

• [ ] Server
• [ ] Web
• [x] Mobile

Your docker-compose.yml content

client issue

Your .env content

client issue

Reproduction steps

1. buy a seek nano
2. buy a cat
3. take pictures of the cat with seek nano on an iphone
4. try to upload those picture to immich

Relevant log output

There are no new logs on the immich_server container when I try to upload the broken files, I think it fails client side.

iOS app logs:

2025-02-13 16:59:18.020418 | WARNING  | Store                | No key available for value id - 9 |
2025-02-13 16:59:15.442842 | INFO     | BackupNotifier       | _getBackupAlbumsInfo: Found 22 available albums |
2025-02-13 16:59:15.327540 | INFO     | BackupNotifier       | Found 22 local albums |
2025-02-13 16:59:13.844339 | INFO     | BackupNotifier       | _getBackupAlbumsInfo: Found 22 available albums |
2025-02-13 16:59:13.728525 | INFO     | BackupNotifier       | Found 22 local albums |

Additional information

No response

[io112]

+1 Having same issue, as I see those photos are screenshots or downloads from messengers or photos migrated from previous iphone to my gallery.

[kfreitag1]

I'm also getting the same issue with photos that have been migrated from other libraries. Is there a workaround to reindex the photos library on iOS?

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1ba4c563-c58a-4998-82b5-3262517e561f

[io112]

@kfreitag1 I've seen some workarounds on Reddit, it happens because of duplicates which are not exist on iPhone. You can enable iCloud photo sync, and it will remove all duplicates before enabling. For me, it removed duplicates, but showed an error message, because I don't have a paid iCloud account, and I have more than 15 GB of photos. The problem is gone

[kfreitag1]

@io112 Thanks for this suggestion. It turns out I did have some albums labelled under "From My Mac" which contained readonly items - as I wasn't able to modify or delete these. I don't have access to the originals anymore so what I did was duplicate all of these readonly items, which created copies that I could edit/delete. Then, I did as you suggested to try enabling iCloud photo sync, which removed the original readonly versions. Unfortunately, it seems that I am still unable to upload these items even though they are seemingly stored locally on the iPhone - I get the same "File is required" error. Perhaps the iOS photos library/database still refers to these items as being external even though they are local copies?