[Feature]: Nested albums

[rain0r]

Feature detail

How is the general opinion on nested albums?

As of now, there is one level on which albums reside and each album contains image(s) and/or video(s).

It would be great if an album could contain one or more albums.

An example use case: going on holidays with friends where everyone takes photos. They could all be collected in one album which contains an album for person that took photos.

The album structure could then look like:

--holidays-2022
    -- Friend A // contains photos taken by this person
    -- Friend B // ...

Platform

Web

[Simpoltin]

This is something I'd also like to see. My use case would be creating a main album for each side of my family that I could share to them and allow them to create sub-albums underneath it. By Inheriting permissions from the main album it would prevent having to share each and every album. In a quasi-related topic I'll also be opening a feature request for user groups for these types of situations to where i could just share to "Family 1" instead of each "Family 1" member individually. #1043

• Family 1 Main
  • Family 1 Wedding 1
  • Family 1 Holiday
• Family 2 Main
  • Family 2 Event
  • Family 2 Holiday
  • Family 2 Birthday

[alextran1502]

Do you know if Google Photos has this feature? I would like to experiment with the UI/UX

[klaus1k]

As far as UI goes, how about this:
The Album page stays the same, but only parent-albums are shown on the first view. (Basically like a file system view)
There could be an indicator (like in the stacked photos) to show that the parent-album contains child-albums. When clicking on a parent-album it leads to the picture level view, where the child-albums can be clicked on, just beside the pictures. (Again, in my mind - pretty similar to a file system view)

For me, one or two levels of nested albums would be sufficient. I don't know if the complexity increases significantly withe the amount of levels, or if it's "implement once and then scale up".

FWIW: I don't like the implementation in Photoprism, where all albums/folders are shown on the same level, thats really messy for my use case. (Many hundreds of albums...)

Or maybe there could also be a toggle on the album view to accommodate for different use cases, where one could switch from a "Tree view" to a "Flat view", where all albums are shown on one level.

[kamilmodest]

I'd say that having tags could solve this problem entirely. If it's still not enough, instead of implementing nested albums, you could implement autogenerated albums based on tag composition.

Like, you just put 2 tags on your photos: holidays-2022 and either Friend_A or Friend_B. Then you just filter by holidays-2022 + Friend_A or holidays-2022 + Friend_B
So, instead of manually adding photos to the album, you just define a filter. So technically, it's not an album but a saved filter.

After all, with the tag feature, you will have both: nested albums and cross-albums. 😁

Referring to this feature: #1651

[Simpoltin]

Do you know if Google Photos has this feature? I would like to experiment with the UI/UX

It's been so long since I've stopped using it that I had to go check, but no I cannot find a way to create nested albums within Google Photos.

After logging into it after so long and seeing it I want to thank you again for all the work you are putting into this project. The user experience so far is top notch and is definitely on par or better than Photos.

[asodyora]

I don't know if it's helpful at all;
iCloud photo's supports 'nested albums' they actually let you make 'folders' to put ur albums in to.

[waclaw66]

Much better approach. Like #5078

[Kernald]

Lightroom has a similar model to what is described above for iCloud: folders (which can be nested), in which you can place albums. Albums can also be at the top level, and can't be nested under other albums.

I personally find this separation between folder and album a bit restrictive. When I'm visiting a city for example, I tend to have a main album (e.g. Sydney) to which I'll add random photos, and when I visit a specific landmark, I'll create a new nested album in there (e.g. Sydney/Harbour Bridge). With that artificial separation between folders and albums, I have to create a Sydney/Random or something like that as a catch-all for any non-specific photo.

[Morethanevil]

I would like nested albums too. Are there any news?

[bcsteeve]

Just putting my +1 for nested albums / sub-albums

It just seems like an obvious feature, I was expecting it was already implemented and I just couldn't figure out how. There needs to be a way to have, for example, "travel" with "Italy" and "Peru" inside, and then "Rome" inside of Italy, etc etc.

It must be harder to do than I imagine :)

[alextran1502]

If you have experience in software development, please feel free to open a PR and contribute

[jrasm91]

How do you accomplish this feature in Google photos today?

[sushain97]

@jrasm91 I don't think Google Photos supports it. But, Lychee does in a reasonable way. The UX for a nested album is just to create an album when already navigated into an existing album.

Sharing is a bit more complicated. If an album's children are 'public', then the public view of the album also displays the nested albums. Since there's no notion of public in Immich and there can be multiple share links, we'd need a different strategy.

One approach is having a share link define whether nested albums are shared and/or selecting the subset of nested albums to include. However, this doesn't work with albums that are nested multiple times. Having share links unconditionally share all nested albums recursively is a reasonable compromise to start.

[jrasm91]

Not going to lie that sounds pretty complicated. I'm hoping groups will solve some of the mass sharing problems too. Maybe a view only prototype would be a good place to start.

[klaus1k]

I think the most reasonable way should be a simple logic, I don't see added value in a complicated solution here.

If a parent-album is shared by a link it should be recursive, so that all child-albums are visible.
If a child-album is shared, the parent-album should therefore not be visible.

This should work well with the current implementation of the share logic in immich. I don't know if this would be a solution that is technically feasible.

Or am I missing something?

[79vette]

+1 for this feature. would really like to see the ability to create nested albums, or to organize albums into "folders"

[briandipalma]

I wonder if hierarchical tags would fulfill this requirement. If Immich read the Tags List (I think) metadata from a file and allowed you to view all the photos with a tag you could implement this feature. It would be similar to how darktable, Digikam and I think Lightroom work. Check out this documentation to see some example UX. Tags seem a very common concept in photography software and many people already have large collections using them.

[briandipalma]

I'm guessing Digikam, darktable, Lightroom etc all do something similar. On import the metadata of the picture is scanned, the XMP tags that are used to store hierarchical tags are scanned and any new tags are added to the Tags table. When a user clicks on a tag in the Tags view a query is created that searches for all pictures with that clicked node tag AND all children. So click on 2023 and the database is queried for pictures tagged with 2023 and 2023/August and 2023/September and 2023/August/Birmingham etc a search of the Tags table will find all the possible subtags (just search for tags that start with the clicked tag I'm guessing?) and you just send the query to the database which will return all the picture IDs.

You can see below that Digikam edits multiple XMP tags with the tag you set on an image so that the picture will show up with the tags in all the programs mentioned above and in some other picture viewing software (MediaPro?).

[briandipalma]

Basically the hierarchical tags only need to be a view concern. I think the code can process them as flat strings that start with each other. So a flat Tags table is enough to store them all and to query for a tag and subtags you just look for all tags that startWith the same value as the tag the user clicked on. Does that make sense?

[jrasm91]

Yeah can't do an efficient database query using starts with. Currently we have a many to many table between tags and assets.

[jrasm91]

You could maybe get a list of tags that start with and then query for assets linked to any of the tags.

[dragere]

Hydrus incorporates tags for searching and the tags can also be related with each other: https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/advanced_siblings.html
For advanced searches in large libraries, hydrus is an excellent tool. A tag system like this would be great for immich.

[PJGitHub9]

+1 for this. reason im held back from moving to immich from local file storage is just for what is said above. I have everything sorted by month/event name and then inside those folders individual folders for different things. Eg. big event with pictures from different people. I like having albums based on each persons photos

Event
-- Friend 1 photos
-- Friend 2 photos

or

Main Event
-- Day 1(event 1)
-- Day 2(event 2)

[jrasm91]

Please just up vote the original post, that is why the feature exists in the first place.

[waclaw66]

I would suggest to make it as simple as possible like folders and files (albums) as described here...
#5078

[pakosalze]

+1 for me. I tried Photoprism and tried to discuss this feature. Got answer - there is no plan in near future. So trying to switch to anything else. From my perspective such kind of sorting photos is very natural to human brain sorting things (it is of course one of plenty possible ways). Eg. sorting by events, by group of people (family) would be very helpful.
Now I am using Synology Photo app. It has such feature - but its interface is not good for me. Also I going to go away from Synology NAS. Immich by now by now the best looking interface app, but it lacks of sorting capability. With hundreds of albums - that is number of albums I currently have, nested albums feature is must...

[j5k]

The very same here, I'm also using Synology Photos until I find another better solution. For me the following are a must:

• multi-user (for family and friends)
• folder-tree-like ordering with nested permissions

[sandersondigital]

Given the size of my photo library this is an essential feature for the next photo management application I move to as single level albums are too cumbersome to manage with larger libraries. I see that Piwigo does offer nested albums, whilst not easy, it must possible (admittedly on an older platform) however I would much prefer to go with Immich, this is the only thing holding me back.

[benmccann]

It seems to me that most of the examples shared here and other apps such as Lightroom and iCloud Photos use folders where you can place albums but not photos. I think that's the simpler approach in terms of both UI and implementation. Otherwise you get questions like if you open an album should it show the photos in the nested albums or just a cover photo that you can click into?

What do folks think? Do you prefer the simplicity of the folder approach or the flexibility of true nested albums where you can add both photos and other albums?

[briandipalma]

Those tags aren't folders you're totally misunderstanding the screenshot. Those are just an example of the hierarchal tags I've created. I can create a tag called "weddings" which would show every picture I tag with that value when tagged.

[bcsteeve]

I'm not sure I agree with the "base always should be directories" thing. I certainly did... before I gave in and just accepted the Immich way.

I too had a considerable library organized into folders, and I was very hesitant to give that up. But a database is the better way of organizing, since assets can then have multiple tags. You say "it's just metadata", but that is far more flexible than a rigid directory structure. Databases become corrupt? Sure, so do files. That's why we have backups. Robust recovery from backup needs to be a solid feature, of course, but as long as recovery is possible then it shouldn't matter that a rare event may happen. Databases are pretty reliable.

It would be nice if Immich could (and maybe it already can?) recognize a directory structure and - when importing - automatically recognize albums on that basis, should the user so choose.

Regardless of how it is implemented, I do still think that nested albums is a must. But personally I'd lean toward doing it in the database independent of file location.

[briandipalma]

I agree that the directory structure doesn't matter. I understand now that my screenshots are confusing as people think the tags are directories. They aren't. I just apply any number of tags to pictures as a way of sorting them and as way to create more permanent albums (I can upload those tags as albums to Gphotos using digikam for example).

If your files become corrupt but your database is fine you're still screwed. The database doesn't back up your files. Backups are independent of this conversation. My point is that if the tags are written to the pictures then you won't lose all the time you spend sorting your pictures if you move from Immich and other programs can read them too and upload them to various services for you.

If this data is only stored in the database then no other program can use all your sorting work.

[alextran1502]

Yeah my goal is to implement virtual album where we have a table in the database to link the logic of parent-child relationship. Then the enhancement of that feature is to build the tree like UI to easier navigate between nested albums when you are in a certain view

[manishmaharjan]

@alextran1502 , Just a thought came across, like what would be the main objective and use cases of having virtual album? Would it be just to handle photo belonging to multiple albums? It could practically limit the most important use cases unless there is also a plan to retain directory structure and sorting in some ways.

Therefore, for the starter, wouldn't it be much simpler to just use the plain directory structure like folder view approach like how users organise contents inside directories in any OS? This would then much simplify organisation of pictures in directories that would be readable no matter where it gets ported or plugged in. It would be very much portable and this way users don't even have to worry about any database issues too. Immich could just have "Copy to album" or "Move to album" options instead of just "Add to album" options and assets could be moved or copied across directories as user wishes.

[cfpwastaken]

From what I understand the problem is UI/UX.

I experimented a little bit and got these two designs. Looks a bit off because I am using different fonts and such, but could work maybe?

[waclaw66]

Subalbum is nonsense, album should be a leaf of a tree of folders or tags.

[briandipalma]

A tree view showing all your tags with children makes more sense. When you're dealing with nested concepts like this is you need a tree. Open your file explorer in your OS or IDE.

[benmccann]

Basically like this, right? (ignore the red text. that was added in the source where I found this screenshot and not by me)

[briandipalma]

The tree widget, yes.

[imler]

My two cents to this feature. As I understand it’s still unclear what the final implementation will be, but either way I would love to see an additional button that will squash the structure temporarily and display all photos as if they were in one album and not nested.

For example:
The main album has 2 photos and 3 nested albums: the first contains 5 photos, the second 3 photos, and the third 6 photos.

In a normal way when I open the main album I see those two photos and 3 nested albums, but after clicking that “squash” button all photos (in that case total of 16) will be listed in a single combined list.

This will be useful for example for launching a slideshow of all photos regardless of their nesting.

When I unclick this button, everything goes back to the nested structure.

[y0dase]

I just started using immich about a week ago, and absolutely love it!
Now most my images are exported from Lightroom, and I was starting to make the albums. But just found out that all albums are "flat". I have 500+ albums (digital photographer since 1998), so it's a bit messy right now. This feature would be really awesome!
The "List" on the webbui is kind of ok, even if it would be quite massive with one long list. But on the phone/iOS app I can't use list view, so here it would be very hard to browse through the albums...

I understand the issues here. But to me it seems like Immich is overthinking it a bit? I mean we really don't need albums which can contain albums and photos, then it would be messy ofc. Why not just make like a folder structure, which you can assign the albums to? I mean just consider the albums like a photo, where you can add the photo to many albums. Or simply put, a new feature like Folder-album for Albums? This would be fairly easy to do I think. Then when you go into Albums it can show the Folder-albums first, and then list Albums which does not have a Folder-album set. So once you set one (or several) Folder-albums the album will not be listed in the root, only in these Folder-albums. The Folder-albums should be able to contain both Folder-albums and Albums, but not photos/videos.
It should also be possible to toggle Folder-albums on and off I think. So you can still view all albums at once if you want. (Otherwise it could perhaps be hard to find an album that has been misplaced).

One hirarchy of these Folder-albums would probably work for most people. I mean just to be able to put all 2023 albums in one folder would make a huge difference. My 500+ albums are sorted in ~30 folders. But if anyone else have need for more levels it would probably not be too messy with up to 3-5 levels or something?

[manishmaharjan]

I just started using immich about a week ago, and absolutely love it! Now most my images are exported from Lightroom, and I was starting to make the albums. But just found out that all albums are "flat". I have 500+ albums (digital photographer since 1998), so it's a bit messy right now. This feature would be really awesome! The "List" on the webbui is kind of ok, even if it would be quite massive with one long list. But on the phone/iOS app I can't use list view, so here it would be very hard to browse through the albums...

I understand the issues here. But to me it seems like Immich is overthinking it a bit? I mean we really don't need albums which can contain albums and photos, then it would be messy ofc. Why not just make like a folder structure, which you can assign the albums to? I mean just consider the albums like a photo, where you can add the photo to many albums. Or simply put, a new feature like Folder-album for Albums? This would be fairly easy to do I think. Then when you go into Albums it can show the Folder-albums first, and then list Albums which does not have a Folder-album set. So once you set one (or several) Folder-albums the album will not be listed in the root, only in these Folder-albums. The Folder-albums should be able to contain both Folder-albums and Albums, but not photos/videos. It should also be possible to toggle Folder-albums on and off I think. So you can still view all albums at once if you want. (Otherwise it could perhaps be hard to find an album that has been misplaced).

One hirarchy of these Folder-albums would probably work for most people. I mean just to be able to put all 2023 albums in one folder would make a huge difference. My 500+ albums are sorted in ~30 folders. But if anyone else have need for more levels it would probably not be too messy with up to 3-5 levels or something?

Similar folder view request has been done in this thread #5409 which makes more sense over this nested album imo.