[Feature] Folder view #5409
Replies: 16 comments 29 replies
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I have the same use case, I used this script in order to create albums for each of my directories from my external library |
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Well, not everyone knows or is willing to use the command line. That's exactly what I would like to eliminate as I always run into cron problems with nextcloud and I have to generate the thumbnails manually. I want just to take care of the photo management and have everything else automated. |
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A must have feature is the only one stopping me to move from photoprism to immich. |
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Exactly the same here. I do not care for looking at the Photos in a calendar / time taken view. If i'm to open the app to find something I have it organized in specific folders and want to find it that way. Usually a happening or in categories. Looking for 200 photos for one type of event is not possible with a calendar. Or at least not optimal. |
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Same here. Until then Immich is just a parallel solution. |
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Same. Ive already have all my photos sorted in folders in smartphone |
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I was searching also for a solution to create a Folder and put multiple Album in it. wedding
Have a nice day and happy new Year. |
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I would like #2168 (tag hierarchy) for this goal. |
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I have extensive external library carefully arranged over 20+ years into folders, which are albums, and it would be a very useful frature if Immich could automatically show them as albums. |
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Same |
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This is absolutely essential. I really wish developers of self hosted photos apps would stop trying to replicate google photos. A more useful reference would be something like the old picasa software. |
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I do agree with @ok1ok1 on this. Such feature would make this one of the best softwares there is for selfhosted photo libraries. Me myself only wants and need folder views, so as it currently stands i'm not using the software. But if the feature was to exist i'd jump straight on the immich-triain. And I do not see how it would be a bad thing to have timeline & folder view co-existing. |
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Don't get me wrong, it's a nice feature and it would be cool to have it. But it's probably difficult to implement. One point I want to mention is that this might confuse regular users who only use the upload library. |
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Folder view could be disabled by default. No reason it couldn't be enabled in settings. |
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@bo0tzz So basically, because this feature was never intended to be part of the architecture design, it is too late now and it will never be taken into consideration, right? |
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What gave you this impression? The feature request is still open and there have even been pretty extensive discussions on this topic recently. It just has big interactions with other feature requests like tags, album nesting, etc, so it needs a lot of consideration. |
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A folder view is likely essential or highly useful for anyone serious about photography. We're talking about people willing to self host a solution for managing their photos. So who is immich for, my grandmother? Teenage girls? Overly sensitive collaborators? What's wrong with building a tool for your demographic? As @pin147 mentioned immich now has external folder support. Clearly immich users have photos organized by folder, & they aren't willing to change organizational habits to work around immich short comings.
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As a photographer it is essential to be able to structure photos by folder. Timeline view is completely useless. I see how it might be useful for people thinkering with memories and looking back for fun. But from a photographer perspective its a necessity. An example is from last year when I photographer a wedding and two other events. All of them took place over two days. I switched memory cards between the event and imported them into separate folders. Trying to view these 3 event in a timeline would just list all three events by date and time rendering the app useless for showing the photos. A folder view would in fact still be a timeline, but only showing the images in that folder by time. |
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I'd say immich, given its original pitch as "self hosted google photos" is mainly aimed at "personal" users, who want to organise their day-to-day photo library and who want to auto upload their phone and maybe at most occasionally take a relatively small amount of pics from their old dslr that they only take out when they go on a trip. Its not really aimed at someone importing huge piles of images from their camera as a hobbyist/pro photographer. Really, I'd say no hosted solution is really aimed at that demographic as local solutions like digikam or lightroom seem more relevant, at least for initial intake. Subsequently, you could upload a selection of images, or a cursted album to share to immich. That being said I support and see usefulness in this feature for the target demographic to a lesser degree, even if I think that involving thr needs of professional photographers in designing immich doesn't really make sense. It wouldn't be as necessarily hard, although likely a feature that would only work "going forward" as it needs to be able to grab the folder at time of upload (photos later get deleted or moved on local device). |
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While this is indeed true, one of the reasons of a "folder view" implies that you already have a sorted and organized collection of photos and just want to show them using the same UI that you already use for your phone photos. Since it's true that there are no better self-hosted tools out there, Immich with a proper folder view will address the use case very well. I had to resort to a less satisfactory solution (synchting + PiGallery2) while a single solution would offer better usaiblity and more integrated user experience. Immich do provide that, but lack a folder view to achieve the goal. |
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@deafmute1 True, that's the immich pitch. Unfortunately I think they're finding that users willing to setup a self hosted solution are interested in much more than that. It's not hard to understand why this is happening. The average Joe who takes a dozen photos on his cell phone every month isn't all that interested in setting up and managing a self hosted solution. Professionals / serious photographers are their demographic, even if they don't realize it. If immich were to pursue their requests (like a folder view) it would go a long way to establish them as the premier self hosted option. Yes the intention was to mimic google photos but to what extent? Excluding features that their demographic wants just limits their chance of succeeding. |
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Completely agree with @ok1ok1 and @gardiol . However, earlier maintainers of immich mentioned that they are internally thinking on ways of implementation as one feature replace each other and might take 6 months or more. Therefore, not sure, if this exact feature will ever hit the developmental roadmap or something else will come out as the final feature. 🤷♂️ |
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No need for a real "folder view", it would be already a great starting point if immich could create albums from existing folders in external libraries! That should be much easier to implement i guess? |
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Not sure #4279 (reply in thread) |
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I don't know about that. Why recreate something that already exists? I'm not saying it couldn't work but immich would then need to support nested albums. A folder view of the actual folder structure seems a bit easier and more powerful to me. The ability to navigate our photo collections using a system we're familiar with is the obvious benefit but a folder view would also provide more control for organizing & onboarding files. Of course the ability to create folder level albums would be an added bonus. That said source folders should not be explicitly linked to albums. For example, moving a photo from one folder to another should not have any impact on albums which already contain said photo. |
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All my photos are organised in folder structures and that was really important when I realised, that EXIF Data of many photos was changed badly. Wish Folder view too! |
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I second this request. I think that most people who take a lot of photos and care about showing more than the most recent ones, tend to organize things hierarchically. This addition would make Immich much less limited. |
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Oh I also had a thought about folder view over virtual album concept, but this feature was already requested here. |
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Synology Photos lets you alternate between Folder View and Timeline View
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That looks like the most simple and user-friendly experience. I have included the demo for inspiration. I am hoping that Alex will also start to implement nice features from other photo management solutions, not only G. Photos. |
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Yeah the folder view option in synology photos is great. Unfortunately the sharing aspects of synology photos absolutely ruin it. If you want to allow a user to search, see a timeline, or filter you MUST give that user full access to the photo library. This allows that user to view, delete, move, & rename whatever they like. Really stupid |
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The synology solution would be the best in my use case |
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Until this feature gets consideration from the developer and is in the development roadmap, what kind of workaround has been in place and has worked well so far? Could I get few pointers? Thanks! |
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None that I know of |
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I mean, you can use the storage templates but you still need to manually trigger it every time and still there is no folder view anyway. And that will not work for external libraries in any case |
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There is a way to auto create albums |
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That seems to resolve for album generation, but still album seems to be virtual only and doesn't help specially when there is a need to manage albums like moving pictures in between or adding new album directory, etc. I haven't managed to come across with any other working solutions for this, but closest alternate solution appears to be included in nextcloud/memories. I wonder if we could ever have this folder option available in immich in nearby future. |
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I agree |
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From an implementation point of view, the asset path in the database would need to be split into directory and filename. We want to be able to query the directory in order to find assets in that directory. We do need to get hit the database to get the asset information such as thumbnail location and can't just list the files directly from the file system. We should also check relative vs absolute path (uploads may use relative path while external libs use absolute path?) |
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Not sure how tricky it was from implementation wise, but probably need to go through code. However, some of the similar alternative solutions like photoview and Nextcloud/memories have managed to achieve the feature baked in smoothly. |
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The Concept
Examples
The Memories app for Nextcloud
https://demo.memories.gallery/apps/memories/folders
Synologys Photos offers probably the most user-friendly experience with a simple button to toggle between folder or timeline view - https://demo.synology.com/en-uk:
Usecase
If you edit many photos in Photoshop or w/e, you need to manually add the correct date to take advantage of the timeline.
With a folder view, you can simply access the photos using your own structure.
Many users have photos split into two parts:
The Memories app for Nextcloud is the perfect example of how useful the folder view is in such cases.
Since immich offers external storage support now, the option to have a folder view seems like the next logical step. It is the only thing holding many users from migrating everything to immich.
Platform
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