[Feature] API Scan External Library sub path or single file

[hanpq]

The feature

First, thank you all for the amazing work on Immich!

I utilize an automated processes for managing photos throughout different apps and mainly use Immich for consumption of already tagged, structured photos which in turn means I rely exclusively on external libraries. These libraries are stored on bind-mounted CIFS shares so I will never be able to use native file-watchers in Immich.

I would like to have the ability to tell Immich that a file has been added or updated in the external library and request Immich to add it or update it in case it already exists, rather than rescanning the whole library for modified files.

Would it be possible to add an option for the /library/:id/scan API to scan only a specific subfolder within the defined external library path and/or a single file?

Thanks again

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[shivanshs9]

+1 on this. For certain use cases, where I use a script to automate fixing EXIF metadata with date/geolocation, I would like to refresh that on Immich database as well.
With a API similar to scanLibrary, but exclusively for a specific list of paths, it'll be very fast to update metadata anytime.

[donnchawp]

It would be great to have an API endpoint like this. I use a script to move files into the external library, and because I have a huge external library, the watcher was taking up 3GB of RAM. Once I disabled watching on external libraries my RAM usage declined significantly.

Now, when I add new photos or videos I enqueue a LibrarySyncFiles job to scan those particular files only. It's an awful hack that I'll have to maintain.