Convert Folders to Albums

[Wordsmith9091]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Albums are much more flexible than folders, but pre-existing libraries would almost always be sorted into folders. Once they're imported into Nextcloud and Memories, there's no convenient way to turn them into albums.

Describe the solution you'd like I'd like to be able to select multiple folders from within the folder view, and then a "convert to albums" menu item to auto-convert them to albums.

Describe alternatives you've considered An even better version of this feature: If Memories finds identical files appear in multiple selected folders, offer to delete redundant copies but still add the photo to all the newly created albums that were modeled on the original folders. This would presumably be more complicated to implement than the simpler version of my idea above.

[kayg04]

I already have an Albums folder like this and it would be awesome if this were a feature, or even better if memories could auto-recognise an "Albums" folder and add them to its Album view.

[ChildLearningClub]

I think implementing the albums in this way may be a big benefit as the folder sharing functionality and permissions could be possible extended to them?

I actually ran into this problem the other day where I needed to share the folder through Nextcloud for my wife to then add it to Memories to get some of the functionality we needed.

This would also take care of many people’s case where they had previously created folders to share, as I did, but are now converting them all over to the Memories Albums and required to reshare.

edit: for multiple folders consideration would of course be need to the individual folders current shared permissions if they exist. And the reuse of shared links which could also get complicated with more than one folder. Not sure how easy any of this would be to implement, but I guess we can brainstorm here.

[ChildLearningClub]

I realized that we would loose the flexibility of adding photos to Albums from multiple locations as it is in its current state. It would still be great in my opinion to figure out a way to unify Memories and Nextcloud’s sharing and permissions functionality and have that implemented in the Albums.

[kayg04]

@pulsejet if you have time for this, i'd like to propose a 50$ feature bounty, it would unify my many years of creating albums ;)

[pulsejet]

@pulsejet if you have time for this, i'd like to propose a 50$ feature bounty, it would unify my many years of creating albums ;)

I'm currently squeezed, but contributions are always more than welcome! I'm going to look into setting up a bounty program that might incentivize external contributors (see https://github.com/pulsejet/memories/issues/182#issuecomment-2046106354)

[MrRinkana]

Even with albums being more feature rich, there's merit to organising in folders, for portability or coexistence with other solutions for example. Not even mentioning user preference! Therefore:

From my perspective the best of all worlds would be if one could mark a folder as a album, meaning the album will track changes in the folder (and vice versa!) - in addition to the import/convert from folder feature talked about above.

Having these "tracked" album-folder pairs maximises flexibility and portability and allows users to utilise the benefit of organising in folders aswell.

General examples showcasing the benefit of folders:

• Porting away from nextcloud, or to a different NC server.
• Syncing with a mobile device that uses apps that sort images in folders, such as the amazing Aves
• Just QoL when looking at the media folder trough the files app, or the case mentioned by @ChildLearningClub

My own use-case, albeit maybe a bit uncommon: I put all my images on a NAS (that is very quick) and then mount that in my NC as a external folder (actually as a local folder since the NC and NAS are at the same server, with some LXC magic) that then becomes my media root. It would be a dream if I could edit the albums(folders) on my pc or smartphone and the changes reflecting in memories albums, and the other way around.

Also folders are awesome because you can nest them, allowing to organise like the following scheme:

Media root/
├── ...
├── 2023/
│   ├── album 1
│   └── album 2
├── 2024/
│   ├── album 3
│   ├── album 4
│   └── ...
└── cameraroll/
    ├── smartphone
    └── DSLR camera

Or similar, where I only the albums would be tracked/synced with memories albums, and images being moved from the camera roll to albums as they are sorted.

Maybe this should be written in a separate feature request, let me know.