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How to install Imaginary for Nextcloud?

Imaginary is a fast image processing server that runs in a Docker container next to your Nextcloud and takes over the generation of previews (thumbnails) for your images. It replaces the previously used Imagick which was known to be slow and to have security issues and makes the preview generation in Nextcloud a lot faster. This means that folders full of photos in the Files app, in the Photos app and on your mobile devices load noticeably quicker.

info

Imaginary replaces the Preview Generator app. If you have the Preview Generator installed, the script will offer you to remove it including its cronjob, Imagick and all previews that were pre-generated until now. This will most likely free up a lot of disk space. Pre-generated previews are not needed anymore once Imaginary is installed.

Preparations​

  1. Your server needs to have at least 4 GB RAM and 4 CPU cores. The script will abort if this is not the case.

Installation​

  1. Run over CLI:
    sudo bash /var/scripts/menu.sh
  2. Choose Additional Apps -> Imaginary
  3. Choose to install/reinstall Imaginary
  4. If you have the Preview Generator installed, confirm that you want to remove it
  5. If asked, confirm that you want to remove all previews that were generated until now (recommended, since they are not needed anymore)
  6. Wait until everything is installed and it reports that Imaginary was successfully installed

Now, all previews in your Nextcloud should get generated by Imaginary.

notes
  • Imaginary runs in a Docker container that only listens on 127.0.0.1:9000 and is therefore not reachable from outside your server
  • The preview providers get configured automatically so that images, videos, MP3, text, Markdown and OpenDocument files get a preview
  • Previews are limited to a maximum size of 2048x2048 pixels with a jpeg quality of 60 to keep them small
  • ffmpeg gets installed additionally so that previews for videos can be created
  • Previews are now generated on the fly when they are needed instead of being pre-generated by a cronjob. So there is no cronjob anymore that puts load on your server