[Feature] Virtual repository

[danielwagn3r]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

I would like to propose the introduction of virtual repositories, to enable a sharing experience with features that have been requested in numerous issues and discussions, like deduplication across accounts, or visibility of albums and tags across users.

Current situation
Currently each user has some sort of asset repository and can give others access to it through different sharing mechanisms (shared albums, partner sharing, shared links). Tasks like deduplication, organizing albums or tagging remain restricted to the user who ultimately owns an asset.

What would virtual repositories enable?
A virtual repository would be a collection of assets and organizational metadata (person detections, albums, tags and so on) with more than one owner. These owners share responsibility for the repository and can perform all tasks that are currently restricted to the owning user, e.g. deduplication or deleting assets.

This would also be a more natural fit for real-world ownership of assets. In a family setup, for example, pictures are often not owned by one person, but by several persons at once.

One could think of a virtual repository as a kind of user that is not a person and has no account to access the instance.

Roles
Initially, a very basic role model could already bring value:

• Owner: can perform everything
• Viewer: can only perform read-only tasks

Visibility
Users should be able to choose whether assets and organizational items (albums, tags) of a virtual repository appear in their timeline, album view, tag view, map and so on.

Leaving and orphaned repositories
Leaving a virtual repository means giving up rights on its assets as well as the responsibilities that come with it. A repository without owners could be handled by an instance administrator, i.e. by assigning new owners or dropping the repository.

Non-goals
This proposal is not intended as a major redesign of Immich's storage mechanisms, but as a different way of using them and presenting them to the user. Likewise, it does not aim at system-wide duplicate detection or storage-level deduplication across all users and repositories. Deduplication happens within a virtual repository, among its owners, as it is currently available for a single user.

Open questions
How assets enter a virtual repository (move, copy, direct target for mobile backup) is left open for discussion.

Related discussions
#1668, #7026, #7885, #14489, #17422, #32339

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

#12614