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 out the forum! #

The feature requests category in PhotoStructure’s new community forum is replacing this page.

Please head over to the forum so that you can:

  • vote on what you want to see built next,

  • add new feature ideas, and

  • brainstorm and discuss implementation details of new features with the author and other users

If you see anything on this page that’s missing on the forum, feel free to copy and paste it into the forum. Bonus points if you include any other details, like why you want the feature, how you think it should work, any examples of other applications that you think do this feature especially well, or any other clarifying details.

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) (coming in v1.0!)

  • 📅 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 (coming in v1.0!)

  • 🐁 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 #

  • 🏷️ Extract “person” tags from Google Takeouts, Picasa, and Lightroom sidecars (coming in v1.0!)

  • 🤖 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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