Continuous macOS Apple Photos Library Sync to a Self-Hosted Immich Server, Native, With Album and Keyword Metadata Intact
Mac-first households who don't carry an iPhone have no clean way to keep a self-hosted Immich library in lockstep with their primary photo workflow on macOS. Immich's iOS app handles continuous background backup beautifully, but the macOS side is bulk-upload-once or nothing, and bulk export silently drops keywords, faces, and album structure. The builder opportunity is a daemon that reads the Apple Photos SQLite database directly and streams diffs to Immich.
Reading Photos.sqlite directly is the only path that preserves keywords, faces, and album structure... everything else loses data. The trap is assuming you can use Apple's PhotoKit framework, it's read-limited and won't surface enough metadata. Distribute as a signed .app with a launchd agent so non-engineers can install it like any normal Mac app.
landscape (4 existing solutions)
Every existing path either ignores Apple's metadata model (file-mirror approaches) or treats sync as a one-shot bulk export (osxphotos). The clean path requires reading the Photos SQLite database directly and watching for diffs, and only one volunteer project (mirror-immich) has even started down that road.