Beta timeline does not respect the prefer remote images setting and causes thumbnail quality degradation

[james58899]

I have searched the existing issues, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate report.

• Yes

The bug

When I switched to the Beta timeline, I noticed a significant drop in thumbnail quality.

I hope the beta timeline retains the ability to prefer remote images, unless the local thumbnails are of comparable quality to the remote ones.

Here are some comparison screenshots:
Beta timeline

Old timeline with prefer remote images enabled

Old timeline without prefer remote images

The OS that Immich Server is running on

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

Version of Immich Server

v1.141.1

Version of Immich Mobile App

v1.141.1

Platform with the issue

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

Device make and model

Samsung S24+ Android 15

Your docker-compose.yml content

#
# WARNING: To install Immich, follow our guide: https://immich.app/docs/install/docker-compose
#
# Make sure to use the docker-compose.yml of the current release:
#
# https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
#
# The compose file on main may not be compatible with the latest release.
name: immich
services:
  immich-server:
    container_name: immich_server
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends:
    #   file: hwaccel.transcoding.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [nvenc, quicksync, rkmpp, vaapi, vaapi-wsl] for accelerated transcoding
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the media storage location on your system, edit the value of UPLOAD_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/data
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - '2283:2283'
    depends_on:
      - redis
      - database
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false
  immich-machine-learning:
    container_name: immich_machine_learning
    # For hardware acceleration, add one of -[armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, rknn] to the image tag.
    # Example tag: ${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}-cuda
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}
    # extends: # uncomment this section for hardware acceleration - see https://immich.app/docs/features/ml-hardware-acceleration
    #   file: hwaccel.ml.yml
    #   service: cpu # set to one of [armnn, cuda, rocm, openvino, openvino-wsl, rknn] for accelerated inference - use the `-wsl` version for WSL2 where applicable
    volumes:
      - model-cache:/cache
    env_file:
      - .env
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      disable: false
  redis:
    container_name: immich_redis
    image: docker.io/valkey/valkey:8-bookworm@sha256:a137a2b60aca1a75130022d6bb96af423fefae4eb55faf395732db3544803280
    healthcheck:
      test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
    restart: always
  database:
    container_name: immich_postgres
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/postgres:14-vectorchord0.4.3-pgvectors0.2.0@sha256:32324a2f41df5de9efe1af166b7008c3f55646f8d0e00d9550c16c9822366b4a
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
      POSTGRES_DB: ${DB_DATABASE_NAME}
      POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS: '--data-checksums'
      # Uncomment the DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD' var if your database isn't stored on SSDs
      DB_STORAGE_TYPE: 'HDD'
    volumes:
      # Do not edit the next line. If you want to change the database storage location on your system, edit the value of DB_DATA_LOCATION in the .env file
      - ${DB_DATA_LOCATION}:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    shm_size: 128mb
    restart: always
volumes:
  model-cache:

Your .env content

# You can find documentation for all the supported env variables at https://immich.app/docs/install/environment-variables
# The location where your uploaded files are stored
UPLOAD_LOCATION=/storage/immich
# The location where your database files are stored. Network shares are not supported for the database
DB_DATA_LOCATION=./postgres
# To set a timezone, uncomment the next line and change Etc/UTC to a TZ identifier from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List# TZ=Etc/UTC
# The Immich version to use. You can pin this to a specific version like "v1.71.0"
IMMICH_VERSION=release
# Connection secret for postgres. You should change it to a random password
# Please use only the characters `A-Za-z0-9`, without special characters or spaces
DB_PASSWORD=<REDACTED>
# The values below this line do not need to be changed
###################################################################################
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich

Reproduction steps

1. Enable prefer remote images
2. Switch to beta timeline
3. Observe the difference in thumbnail quality

Relevant log output

Additional information

No response

[mertalev]

Hmm, this was supposed to be addressed with #21502. Is there a sample image you could share (zipped to make sure it doesn't get modified)?

[mertalev]

Also, how do the thumbnails look in the local gallery with the same tile dimensions?

[james58899]

Hmm, this was supposed to be addressed with #21502. Is there a sample image you could share (zipped to make sure it doesn't get modified)?

I'm afraid that simply increasing the thumbnail resolution won't fix this, as it looks like the quality is being degraded by the scaling algorithm.

The images can be grabbed from the following links (I picked out a few that looked particularly bad on my device):
https://i.pixiv.cat/img-original/img/2025/07/28/00/00/34/133193341_p0.jpg
https://i.pixiv.cat/img-original/img/2025/08/29/08/28/45/134450177_p0.png
https://i.pixiv.cat/img-original/img/2024/12/14/00/01/18/125160058_p0.png
https://i.pixiv.cat/img-original/img/2025/05/31/18/47/17/131017334_p0.jpg

[james58899]

Also, how do the thumbnails look in the local gallery with the same tile dimensions?

Images that are not uploaded remotely look just as bad, similar to the example in the issue, whether in the timeline or in the library.

[mertalev]

By local gallery, I meant the gallery app on your phone, not Immich. The thumbnails Immich uses in the beta timeline are the same used by your phone's gallery app, but with possibly different resolutions and rendering.

[james58899]

By local gallery, I meant the gallery app on your phone, not Immich. The thumbnails Immich uses in the beta timeline are the same used by your phone's gallery app, but with possibly different resolutions and rendering.

I think Samsung's built-in gallery will generate higher quality thumbnails from the original images instead of using the Android system's directly.

I tried viewing the images using Android's built-in file manager, and the quality was still better than in the beta timeline, though still not as good as the thumbnails generated remotely by immich.

Restoring support for the prefer remote images option is the best solution for me.

Samsung gallery

Android file manager