[Feature] Folder view

[pin147]

The Concept

1. Either a dedicated Folder View (see the Memories app for Nextcloud)
2. Or a toggle to switch between timeline and folder view (see the demo for Synology Photos)

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

Many users have photos split into two parts:

• random smartphone photo backups
• photos taken with a photo camera which are organized in folders by YYYY/MM-DD-event-description mapped as external storage

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.

Workaround for those who can't wait

https://github.com/Salvoxia/immich-folder-album-creator
It can be automated and implemented in the docker-compose.yml

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[ajnart]

I have the same use case, I used this script in order to create albums for each of my directories from my external library

[pin147]

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.

[mirchiseth]

A must have feature is the only one stopping me to move from photoprism to immich.

[kennhardy]

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.

[johndoe0815]

Same here. Until then Immich is just a parallel solution.

[notraiday]

Same. Ive already have all my photos sorted in folders in smartphone

[stylobille]

Same for me also, I got 20 years of photos on my NAS, perfectly ordered in "YYYY-MM - subject" folders, I would love to simply have immich as a presentation overlay to my NAS structure.

[wchorski]

@stylobille looks like Photoview would complement your pre organized library much better

[crasyI]

I was searching also for a solution to create a Folder and put multiple Album in it.
Folder in Folder would be nice too.
Maybe for events eG:

wedding

• John & Anna
  • MakingOf
  • Church
  • Portrais
  • Party
  • ...
• Maya & Pete
  • MakingOf
  • ...
• ...

Have a nice day and happy new Year.

[aisbergde]

I would like #2168 (tag hierarchy) for this goal.

[gardiol]

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.

[stanthewizzard]

Same

[ok1ok1]

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.

[aisbergde]

I agree with @bo0tzz - these topics are related and I prefer to wait and to get an optimal solution instead of just having a quick fix.

[bo0tzz]

wouldn't it make sense to get this feature out first and think about those other nested albums, etc. later?

No. We're in no rush, and doing that sort of thing just means painting ourselves into a corner and likely needing to do double work later.

[manishmaharjan]

@bo0tzz,
Does that mean these features requests are being parked until foreseeable future? There are lots of anticipated users waiting here, so it would be greatly appreciated by the community to get some insights on the progress, plan or any blockers on these areas. Perhaps, some community experts could also shades some lights for helping with the architectural decisions.

[haldi4803]

I fully agree that this is a very important feature.
But honestly, i don't need an explicit folder view... if we had hierarchical Tags that use Folder Names to achieve the same Result, wouldn't that result in exactly the same?
So it'd be way better for development to create a proper plan by evaluating which feature would fullfill most users whishes and is the most stable / future proof to implent.
i'd rather have one properly working feature in the far future than some sloppy folder view tomorrow that doesn't allow for new folder or moving between folder or other handicaps.

[ok1ok1]

@bo0tzz, wouldn't it make sense to get this feature out first and think about those other nested albums, etc. later?

This is exactly right. Better to do it sooner rather than later. Users aren't going to stop asking for this feature & the longer they go without implementing it the more difficult the task is likely to become.

[ok1ok1]

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.

*this is absolutely essential for you

[gardiol]

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.

[ok1ok1]

@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.

[manishmaharjan]

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. 🤷‍♂️

[wchorski]

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.

Photoview is a photo app built by a photographer for photographers

[aisbergde]

Good point: to look at the intention of an app.
immich main intention was (and is) to replace Google Photos and to allow something similar as self hosted service.

I don't care about immich photo upload. But I can just ignore it, and I can use immich with only external libraries. Of course I need to care about photo upload outside immich, Synology Drive works fine for me, and there are other solutions. And I understand, that upload is very important for the mainstream user of immich.

I am using immich only as a viewer. There are many features still missing compared to Google Photos. That's why Google photos is still our primary viewer. But I see the immich evolution from version to version. And I understand the developers and their priorities.

compared to other self hosted solution immich is my favorite, it's not perfect, but it has the highest potential to meet my requirements. I try to add feature ideas, but as a developer in other project I understand, how this works. Some "only if I get feature X, then I will start to use software Y" is often not very helpful. Better is to find arguments, why a feature could be useful for many users and why it could be worth to spent resources. And we should remember: is is open source. Developers spent a lot of their resources.

[gardiol]

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?

[martabal]

Not sure #4279 (reply in thread)

[ok1ok1]

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.

[Crashman1983]

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!

[roserez]

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.

[manishmaharjan]

Oh I also had a thought about folder view over virtual album concept, but this feature was already requested here.
#2073 (reply in thread)
I would also highly vote for this feature request.

[benmccann]

Synology Photos lets you alternate between Folder View and Timeline View

[pin147]

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.

[ok1ok1]

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

[stanthewizzard]

The synology solution would be the best in my use case

[manishmaharjan]

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!

[gardiol]

None that I know of

[gardiol]

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

[stanthewizzard]

There is a way to auto create albums
https://hub.docker.com/r/salvoxia/immich-folder-album-creator

[manishmaharjan]

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.

[stanthewizzard]

I agree

[huntekah]

Is anyone from Imich working on this, or do they have it in backlog?
This is a must-have for me, as it ensures a smooth transition between Synology Photos and Immich.

[KGBist2000]

I tested Immich-App and compared it with Synology photos which I am using today. Thank you for Immoch-App, very interessting and potentially project.

Immich is nice, but a photo-library tool should be able to work with given folder structure and not with an crypted database and useless filenames.

Also for home users with a foto-library with more then 100k of photos, structured in folders YYYY/Event or YYYY/MM should be work with Immich.

An Upload / backup of new photos should be stored with original file name and in from user defined folder. So that the user have a chance to view the new photos in Immich and sort them in his given folder structure manually or in Immich-app.

Photos-Viewer are coming and going, but photos are still give for humens live. Therefore also for privat user with family and kids pictures are mostly using a folder structure.

Please integrate this very important feautures and give the user more control about dataflow for upload and backup from phone.

[wuestnjo]

I followed this thread for a while now - and follow the exact same issues as most people here; big gallery that is sorted in folders and scepticism about application specific file structure. I sync my files via syncthing and only need a viewer.
I've tried piwigo, photoprism and had big hopes for immich. It works nicely but the folder issue is my braking point.

Here #5409 (reply in thread), pigallery2 is mentioned and it solves all my needs flawlessly. Lightweight, read-only viewer. On my phone I use F-stop.

[gardiol]

I fully agree... We should not chase what immich is not, and use the proper tools for our use cases. Recently I started using Photo view and i like it better than pigallery2 because i can also share albums with public links.

Sincthing is the best sync tool for Android, and let's you do the arrangement on the server as you like it.

I think the devs are right on this topic: folder view doesn't apply to immich and such tools that mimic Google Photo approach.

[koen81]

Not sure it would help you, but

I'm running an external script in a container which creates albums based on folders from my external library. Not a perfect solution but it's a fix for now. i have scheduled it to run with a certain frequency.

https://github.com/Salvoxia/immich-folder-album-creator

[pin147]

Not sure it would help you, but

I'm running an external script in a container that creates albums based on folders from my external library. Not a perfect solution but it's a fix for now. I have scheduled it to run with a certain frequency.

https://github.com/Salvoxia/immich-folder-album-creator

I personally didn't know about this. Thanks for mentioning it @koen81. I knew about the script but the last time I tried using it it didn't work well.

Kudos to @Salvoxia for improving and making this possible to be automated and implemented in the Docker-Compose file. This is 10x better than the original script file. Since I don't think we'll have an official folder view implementation any time soon I'll pin this to the top for anyone coming here.

Now that I think about it more, this concept to only automate the creation of albums from the folders might be something that the team would also be more open to implementing this feature since it doesn't mess with the current architecture in any way.
Maybe have a tab on the Albums page with the albums from the External Library folders? Or a sort filter to display only the External Library albums? That would really make everyone happy.

[bo0tzz]

this concept to only automate the creation of albums from the folders might be something that the team would also be more open to implementing this feature

This is something we've thought about indeed, and will likely be possible to support through workflows (#1673).

[juanpeich]

Is there any progress here?

It would be interesting to control with a folder explorer.

Alternatively, Samba could be implemented to manage the folders.

[bo0tzz]

Have you read the recent discussion? That's much more meaningful than asking for a generic progress update ;)

[juanpeich]

Sorry, I was reading the whole thread, and it seems I wrote the comment without refreshing the page first. I'm glad you're on it. and sorry for the inconvenience.

[ok1ok1]

Here is a summary....

The discussion is in regards to adding a "Folder View" to the Immich app. This would allow users to maintain existing organizational habits, something that Immich currently lacks. References to solutions in similar software, such as Nextcloud's Memories and Synology Photos are mentioned. Both "Folder View" and a similar "Nested Albums" feature are among the top five requested features according to tallied up votes in the forum. bo0tzz (An Immich forum maintainer) raised concerns about rushing the implementation but did not offer any clear alternative suggestions, emphasizing a need for a more considered approach rather than immediate action.

In short. Users want it, Immich (bo0tzz) doesn't.

[alextran1502]

@ok1ok1 As the maintainer of this project, this is false. Please stop spreading misinformation and berating other team members. It is not a nice behavior.

The correct take is that this feature is complex to implement in the current structure of the Immich codebase. At the moment, other higher-priority tasks are being worked on. We know users want it, and we will look into it in due time.

I would appreciate it if you didn't make such a remark about this topic just to show your desire for the feature.

Thank you

[haldi4803]

Correct answer is. User want it.
Immich is aware that's user want is but it's not first priority. Because there are a lot of other things that are higher priority. It's not THAT simple to implement, even though its not that hard. It COULD easily be integrated but probably would bring a lot of other issues with it ... That's why the plans to crate a property fully working implementation.

[xttlegendapi]

A folder view for external libraries makes so much sense and would be great for people that have lots of years of photos in a folder tree and want to view it in immich.

[xttlegendapi]

Also something that would be great in addition to this. Is to show some folder not in the main timeline. For example, I have lots of photos from a broken GoPro that have wrong time metadata and is hard to all change because its a lot. but it would be great if I can still view them from immich in the folder view and that it doesn't mess up the timeline view.

[haldi4803]

Also something that would be great in addition to this. Is to show some folder not in the main timeline. For example, I have lots of photos from a broken GoPro that have wrong time metadata and is hard to all change because its a lot.

There is special software for EXIF editing that lets you batch change -3 days or whatever you want for a folder...

[xttlegendapi]

I know and that good to use but sometimes the time also changes when you turn it on/off for a moment or some photos I have are just fixed at random dates. not for everything a good option

[manishmaharjan]

@alextran1502, @bo0tzz, We are not sure if you guys have dig into photoview or Nextcloud/memories source code to get an idea on how this feature could potentially be brought forward, but architecture wise if you feel like integrating this feature is overwhelmingly complex with the current structure of Immich codebase being upload first architecture, then how do you see of possibly introducing this feature as a seperate standalone microservice in the server backend and plug in rendering as a separate viewing section in the same client side?

[davidakerr]

https://github.com/immich-app/immich/blob/main/server/src/entities/asset.entity.ts#L73

  @Column()
  originalPath!: string;

Does this indicate that the raw data for constructing a UI around this exists ?

Is it difficult to get all asset originalPath's? Perhaps so, I'm unfamiliar with the codebase.

If not, it should be relatively trivial to create a UI that allows the user to navigate them.

[xttlegendapi]

Amazing! can you upload your code to Github, I'm very curious

[davidakerr]

Oh gosh, I'd be too embarrassed at this stage. When I'm back home and have some time mid-September I'll have something a bit fancier to show.

POC Linked below

[davidakerr]

attempt1.mp4

Early days but, if I can do it in a few hours with no prior svelte or nest experience, I suspect the team here can do a much better job.

Can the AssetGrid be used with an arbitrary array of assets @bo0tzz ?

[alextran1502]

@davidakerr looks great, the asset grid unfortunately only work with time bucket. For this view, I assume using continuous lazy loading would suffice. If you want to open a PR. I can help taking a look at it

[davidakerr]

I accidentally wiped everything and had to recreate it! I’m pushing it up now so I don’t lose it again. 😅

This is a really quick and nasty POC. If this gets some traction I can spend some time and do it well.

Here’s the link: #11880

@xttlegendapi, @alextran1502 please go easy on me! 🙏

folder-view-demo.mp4

[gardiol]

This thread is starting to be... somehow embarrassing.

On one side, the Immich devs have stated clearly that they have other priorities and this will be worked on at a later time. Many suggestions on the thread itself already offer alternatives (either within Immich itself, or using other tools).

On the other side, users seems to not realize that:

• Immich is probably not the right tool for the job they need (check Photoview, PiGallery2, NextCloud memories etc etc...)
• No amount of badgering, pushing and lack of politeness is going to change the dev's mind on this.
• Immich dev's are free to choose their priorities: Immich is their playground after all, and they put in free time on this.

I suggest to anybody requiring folder view to look for other tools, tools more focused on offering a photo gallery / photo viewer approach rather than Immich, which is focused on the Google Photo principle, which is very much different.

Let Immich be what Immich aims at being, it already excel in that direction and pushing the devs will only end up with annoyed community, annoyed devs or worse, half baked implementation.

Or step up, fork and propose a PR with the solution... :)

[jacobalvarez]

And 2 days later the lead maintainer posts a sneak peek of this very feature...

[alextran1502]

Sneak peak time

Folder tree and detail view

Assets in folder view

[haldi4803]

update incoming? :D
memo to myself... buy immich!

[a351399739]

@alextran1502 little further detail, will mobile app get this feature?

[alextran1502]

Yes, eventually, but not in the next release

[scottrbaxter]

:heavybreathing:

thanks for this feature! it'll be used a ton, especially if search is incorporated nicely!

[DanielLaberge]

Looks great. Will we be able to navigate to the folder view from an Asset's info panel?

Speaking of, the mobile app needs a way to display the asset storage location, not just the file name.

[friesoft]

Just for the record and to show our appreciation of this feature (maybe by hearting this comment): I'm currently a Synology Photos (previously DS Photo) user looking for alternatives for ages and this feature alone (proper folder view) will lead to me buying into (literally) Immich.
So thanks a ton for implementing ❤️

[charles-997]

Similar for me. I have been a GitHub sponsor of Immich for nearly a year, though I have not used Immich yet as I was waiting for a few additional features. The recent implementation of folder view, tags, and EXIF star ratings has made Immich viable for my use case. Huge thanks to all the developers!

[jfdid]

Purchased today as I was waiting for folder view. Such a great addition - finally transitioning from NC Memories over to Immich. Thanks to all who helped this along!

[David-Development]

The folder view is fantastic! Thank you for implementing it!

I do have a follow up question in regards to whether it was a technical decisions or it was left out because it wasn't necessary for the mvp.

Would it be possible to select multiple/all photos in a folder and e.g. share them / add them to a album (just like in the Timeline View)?

[mertalev]

It's just for the first pass. We want to have feature parity for multi-selecting across different views.

[Cyberax]

Sorry for a "me too" post, but I have just purchased Immich just because of this feature. Thank you!

[JC-LB]

Great, i guess it will be added in other menus.

Personally I would love to be able to select any pic and have 2 options:

• show complete path
• get me to all pics of this path

A personal use case i have is when i use the map, sometime I forget to enable Bluetooth on phone to let my camera retrieve position.
I know I can already get to timeline, but having get to folder would be nice.

Guess it will be on-boarded in mobile app in November.

I've missed such an app for years, am a Capture One user for RAWs editing/export but I was missing exactly what you've made (and are still improving) I've just ordered a server key from France and am really grateful for this app.

As I was waiting for this am now going to index my pics, oldest real digital ones made with a small CMOS sensor in ... 2001