Your PhotoStructure library contains 📚 your image database, ⚙️ library settings, 🖼️ preview images, and 🎞️ transcoded videos (if enabled).

All of PhotoStructure’s tags are “hierarchical.” This article will try to explain how they work, and why they’re useful. Flat tags Most popular tagging systems, or folksonomies, are “flat.

When PhotoStructure is importing files, it automatically excludes all hidden files, as well as operating system and application support directories.

PhotoStructure has several strategies to ensure your library matches your filesystem. 🩳 Briefly A “sync” focuses on your filesystem. Sync updates your library with changes made to your filesystem.

Version 0.9.0 added a bunch of metrics about your PhotoStructure library to the about page. This page tries to explain what exactly these numbers represent.

You can use environment variables to configure PhotoStructure’s settings. The defaults.env file describes all of PhotoStructure’s settings, and how to change each with an environment variable.

If your photos and videos are disorganized, PhotoStructure can bring some order to your chaos. If you’d like all your photos and videos to be organized into one, tidy place, choose “Yes” on PhotoStructure’s settings page:

PhotoStructure’s settings page is simple and only offers a handful of configuration options. There are many configurable settings within PhotoStructure, though, including:

If you’re on a desktop or laptop, knowing a couple keyboard shortcuts will help you get around your library faster.

PhotoStructure uses a bunch of methods to pull out keywords from your photos and videos. Keywords from metadata PhotoStructure extracts keywords from the following metadata tags:

So, you’ve got PhotoStructure installed, and it looks like it’s importing every photo and video you’ve got. What should you know now?

If you have videos, you need to install VLC or FFmpeg. -- PhotoStructure requires additional software to be installed to support videos in your library.

PhotoStructure has a several ways to view your photos at different magnification levels. PhotoStructure’s new loupe slider (added in v0.

You’ll want to install PhotoStructure for Desktops on a computer that you can leave powered on for a while, at least during the initial import.

🎥 Do you have videos? Please follow these steps. It’ll only take a minute. 📖 See also: Where should I install PhotoStructure?

Your library’s disk space is proportional to the number of photos and videos you have in your library, and whether or not you choose to have PhotoStructure organize your photos and videos by copying them into your library.