Save images to Bluesky folder

[thktkblt]

For now, the images downloaded from Bluesky are saved to general DCIM folder (I use Android), so it would get mixed with pics from other sources and feel cluttered.

[pfrazee]

I originally did this, but it required more permissions than folks were comfortable with :(

[fuelflo]

I'd also appreciate this. What permissions does that need, normally just access to storage and or photos/videos and you could only ask for permission when downloading a picture for the first time, right?

[pfrazee]

IIRC it forced me to ask for full photo library access (eat me). It's way out of scope for the team's current workstream but as a PR I'd accept some settings for configuring where your images are saved and dealing with the permissions.

[fuelflo]

Yeah, granular photo/video library access is only available from Android 14, which will probably be released in two days....

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/changes/partial-photo-video-access

But as Android manufacturer's upgrade slowly to newer versions, most of the users will be stuck for quite some time to have to grant full access.

[SaphireLattice]

Sigh. This one is getting extremely annoying. /DCIM folder gets very enthusiastically synced by Google Photos. Which uh, is extremely not what I want, and there's no way to exclude that without also excluding actual camera photos, I think?

So I end up with a mess of a gallery thanks to this.

[kairusds]

i wish they could just have the photos saved in Download/BlueSky or Picture/BlueSky

[dbrian57]

Came here to add my +1 for this change. The current setting really gunks up my camera roll. I like to keep my real life and weirdo online life separate, thank you very much.

[marksteward]

No extra permission should be needed to download files to the Downloads directory on Android.

[Nonplayable]

Begging y'all to let us save images downloaded from Bluesky to literally any folder other than DCIM. I do not need my camera folder or Google backups cluttered with dumb memes I want to send to a non Bluesky using friend

[RedFoxNightfox]

I too find it very annoying that I cannot change the download folder to not be DCIM. Every other andriod app I have ever used either allows me to change the download folder, or at least defaults to ./pictures/{app} or ./downloads/{app} folders.

[holistic-developer]

Since DCIM = digital camera images, this folder is not intended to be used for this purpose.

I understand the issue of asking too many permissions upfront, so ideally the required permissions could be requested right when the user tries to save an image.
This way users would see the direct connection between their action and the permissions necessary to fulfill them.

[SarcevicAntonio]

This issue makes the app useless to me and I'm stuck on the web version, which is fine but has the bad account switcher and no image zoom gestures.

[tianon]

A simple workaround that I have been using successfully is that https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files has a share intent of "Download", so instead of clicking "Save" I click "Share" and choose "Files by Google | Download" and it puts the result into my downloads folder instead of into my camera roll (which isn't perfect and it's certainly an annoying flow, but for my uses it's a lot less annoying than the files going straight into my camera roll as if I took them myself 🤷).

Edit: also, for the avoidance of doubt, the team's efforts are appreciated, and I'll re-highlight this bit from above: 👀 ❤️

... as a PR I'd accept some settings for configuring where your images are saved and dealing with the permissions.

Edit 2: I've done a bit of code digging / research to try and see how difficult this would be, so I'm going to leave a few things here as notes for future adventurers who want to attempt actually making the change 👀

I'm pretty sure this is currently the relevant code performing the "save" operation:

social-app/src/view/com/lightbox/Lightbox.tsx

Lines 20 to 50 in 631277d

	const [permissionResponse, requestPermission] = MediaLibrary.usePermissions({
	granularPermissions: ['photo'],
	})
	const saveImageToAlbumWithToasts = React.useCallback(
	async (uri: string) => {
	if (!permissionResponse || permissionResponse.granted === false) {
	Toast.show(
	_(msg`Permission to access camera roll is required.`),
	'info',
	)
	if (permissionResponse?.canAskAgain) {
	requestPermission()
	} else {
	Toast.show(
	_(
	msg`Permission to access camera roll was denied. Please enable it in your system settings.`,
	),
	'xmark',
	)
	}
	return
	}
	try {
	await saveImageToMediaLibrary({uri})
	Toast.show(_(msg`Saved to your camera roll`))
	} catch (e: any) {
	Toast.show(_(msg`Failed to save image: ${String(e)}`), 'xmark')
	}
	},
	[permissionResponse, requestPermission, _],
	)

For Android, I think this is probably the relevant means by which this could be accomplished in a way that requires no special permissions:

https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/media#storage-permission-not-always-needed

I believe the complicated bit is getting access to / a wrapper for this from within React / Expo.

I found https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/filesystem/ and https://medium.com/@fabi.mofar/downloading-and-saving-files-in-react-native-expo-5b3499adda84#:~:text=Saving%20the%20Downloaded%20File seems to be a reasonable example of using it, but unlike the linked documentation this does appear to require specific permissions, so I don't think this is the "right" answer/solution.

Edit 3: it doesn't appear to be super actively maintained and I don't know how the maintainers here feel about third party libraries, but perhaps there's something useful in https://github.com/ammarahm-ed/react-native-scoped-storage

[lordkitsuna]

This is desperately needed. I was so confused when suddenly a bunch of images from Blue Sky started showing up in my camera roll feed and that is absolutely not what I want I use blue sky to follow many artists and a lot of them draw inappropriate material and that's perfectly fine and I like saving that but I want it in the pictures folder or the downloads definitely not my main camera roll.

I don't know why anybody would be upset with the full image access permission that's completely normal on Android for an application like this to request when saving a file you will get asked the same thing if you use Discord Telegram and even many Matrix clients if you want something a little more open source. You'll get asked the same thing by many Lemmy clients and so on it's just a standard part of doing business on Android for now

I would imagine that there are many many more people upset about the fact that these images are ending up in their main camera feed rather than the app asking for gallery permission

[shinyquagsire23]

Even if it's not in a Pictures/bluesky folder due to permissions, it'd be nice if the pictures were at least written to a DCIM subfolder so that I can stick a .nomedia file in there and get it to stop syncing to Google Photos