What's next for PhotoStructure?

The following are some of the features that we’re considering adding to PhotoStructure in the coming months and years.

Check the forum! #

The new PhotoStructure community forum has many of these features now.

  • Please head over to the forum to vote on what you want to see built next.

  • If a feature is missing in the forum, feel free to add it.

  • Feature request topics in the forum will eventually replace this page entirely.

Notes #

  • These are not in any order.

  • No guarantee is given for delivery of any item on this page, but these are all things that I personally want, so I’m going to try to make them happen.

  • We’ll try to keep this page updated as changes happen, but if you see anything amiss, tell us!

Front-end improvements #

  • 🗂️ Support for browsing by filesystem folders (as they appear on disk)

  • 📅 Add “Next” and “Previous” links in date headers that go to the next or previous tag “sibling” (so When/2018 would link to When/2019 and When/2017).

  • 🧵 Tag-context browsing. When clicking on a thumbnail, the asset page should retain the tag context for “next” and “previous” assets. As an example, when you navigate to Who/Smith/Alice, and click an image of Alice, the navigation buttons should go to the next-younger and next-older assets tagged with Alice. (The current implementation always defines “next” and “previous” by chronological order). Switching this context can be done via the bottom streams panel, or a new pulldown added to the asset header.

  • 🎰 Support direct navigation to a specific asset in a gallery. This fixes several issues:

    • Scrolling through a large gallery, clicking into an asset, and clicking back would return you back to the same scroll spot
    • Clicking the breadcrumb titles in the asset view jumps to the asset in context

  • 🎥 Enhance support for videos in thumbnails

  • 📅 “Timeline” view of all assets, sorted chronologically. This is in addition to the current browsing by When/YYYY/Month. Direct navigation into the timeline would be via new links in the asset header or the asset info panel.

  • 🔍 Support for faceted browsing

    • view “hidden” or “trashed” assets
    • view only ⭐'ed assets)

  • 🔍 Search by

    • keyword
    • tag
    • filesystem path
    • first-imported time, or most-recently-imported
    • dominant color
    • geo

  • 🍿 Slideshow support (possibly including local smart TVs)

  • 📽️+📷 “Live” photo support (autoplay video, replaced with full-resolution still image)

  • 📚 Support for “stack” management (many shots taken of the same content, with the ability to pick a “cover”, or “best” variant)

  • 🌞/🌘 Support for “light” and “dark” modes

Manual asset management #

  • 🏷️ Support for manually editing tags

  • 📂 Support for manually created albums

  • 📓 Support for manually editing capture time, title, and description/caption

  • 🗑️ Support for hiding and removing assets, individually and through bulk operations

  • 🐁 Right-click/long-tap context menus for thumbs (brief info, hide, fave, trash, share, …)

Secure sharing #

  • 👨‍👩‍👧 Support sharing via albums and tags

  • 💖 Support user likes and comments

  • 📱 Native sharing (to apps that receive shared media, like Messages and Email)

Automatic tagging #

  • 🤖 Add ML-powered face-and-thing tagging. As always with PhotoStructure, all computation happens locally on your computer. Your data stays yours.

  • 🌍 Support reverse-geocoding, to automatically tag assets with location names.

  • 🌏 Automatically generated albums when “trips” are detected

Enhanced curation and browsing #

  • 🏷️ Folder-name based “event” or “album” tagging (YYYY-MM-DD-eventname, YYYY-MM-eventname, YYYY-eventname, and variants).

  • 📅 “On this day”/“This week in history” album

  • 🌏 Map-based views of assets and events.

  • 🔍 Albums based on search results

Metadata management #

  • 🗃️ Support migrating metadata into sidecars, or out of sidecars and into original files

Synchronization management #

  • 📈 View progress of current synchronizations

  • 📂 Add/remove folders and volumes from sync

  • ⏯️ Pause/resume/force sync for a specific volume

  • 🔁 Add “watched” folders that synchronize as soon as files are added

Integration with other tools #

  • 🤹 Support “open file in…” to quickly edit in an external application

Import improvements #

  • 🗜️ Archival file imports (import from zips, tarballs, …)

  • 🕷️ Non-local imports (via S3 or other URL-accessible sites)

  • 🤳 Uploads via web

🧑‍🎓 Completed features from this list 🎉 #

The following features have graduated from the “todo” list to the “done” list:

Version 0.9 #

  • 🐳 Support browsing very large numbers of “child tags” (for, example, PhotoStructure libraries with > 20 years of photos)

  • ⛔ Retroactive application of NoMedia folders

Version 0.9.1 #

  • 🏷️ Show keywords in the Asset Info panel
Photo of Matthew McEachen

Hi! I’m Matthew, the author of PhotoStructure. I’m a dad, amateur photographer, and author of open source, adtech, fintech, and edtech software since the turn of the millennium. He/him. I am building a self-hosted, safe, and fast new home for all your photos and videos.
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