Creating albums in a locked folder

[kondi06]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Creating albums and adding entire albums in a locked folder

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[NicholasFlamy]

Yep, I discussed in the original feature request how I was disappointed about the feature being a copy of the Google Photos feature. The Google Photos feature is lacking for me.

Edit: I wanna make it clear that I'm grateful we got the feature and I'm grateful for the work the devs put it.

[jfietz]

I specifically tried out immich because the Google Photos feature is so lacking. Thanks for calling that out. I'm working around now with multiple users, but as is said further down, the mobile app is making that a suboptimal solution because it's missing multi-user support (haven't tried myself yet as I'm still in the evaluation mode).

[NicholasFlamy]

This is only a single hidden album, with even less possibilities than the archive.

I have some pics I don't want to show my family, but I need to share them with a doctor. I have made an album that I shared with her, and after upgrading I put these pics out of the archive, then in this private area : they all disappeared from the album where she expects to see the latest photos of my surgery. I had to get them all out of the private area, back in the unprotected archive (so that at least they do not appear in my home page)...

And in the private area, I can't sort pics and show only some of them to some selected people, it's all or nothing.

Clearly, this feature is below expectations...

Originally posted by @willoma in #2451 (comment)

[NicholasFlamy]

Having locked albums would be perfect for this and other similar use cases.

[tbelway]

On a similar note, if you and your partner need to share pics with a doctor (especially when kids are involved), this would also be a beneficial use-case.

To be clear, I'm not talking about sending the link to the doctor, but let's say only one parent can make it to the doctor's office and pics need to be provided, having the ability to have a shared locked album with your partner would make this exceptionally easy.

[LawF0rge52]

Another use case could be if you have an album that contains pictures from ex partners you would like to hide but you still want to reflect them in albums.

So to speak a subset of hidden pictures but still in the same album and reflected in locked items.

[biva]

Indeed, the locked folder is a great feature and it would be nice to enhance it. I think the main idea behind all this is to hide pictures from the main timeline (and I think also from the map, persons, search?). On mobile, I can already decide to show or not a shared library from a partner in the main view (Library > Pictures of the partner > Show in timeline). If I understand well, the main enhancements would be:

1. Hide an entire album and hide an entire folder: any picture added to it would be hidden by default (and if removed from the album, then it's shown again in the timeline)
2. Any other feature should remain possible in a locked folder (share link, share with partner, ...)

The advantage is that it would also propose a solution to this other discussion about hidden albums: #5158

Thanks again for the great work ❤️

[stephen304]

any picture added to it would be hidden by default (and if removed from the album, then it's shown again in the timeline)

This is one of the most important pieces to me, on at least a couple of occasions I've seen contributors hint that automatic hiding of assets added to a particular album will require the user to manually set up an automation using the pipelines or workflow feature, but I strongly believe that Immich should be smart enough to have this built in when an album is marked locked.

My use case would be to sync non-camera-roll folders so that any new images get synced and automatically locked. I think requiring the user to set up locked albums and separately keep in sync a set of pipelines for each album to automate the locking of newly added assets would be a terrible UX - it means if someone forgets to change the album lock or the pipeline when switching between locked/unlocked, they could end up being confused why added assets are being locked when the album is not locked or they could be adding assets to a locked album without realizing they messed up the automation to lock the asset resulting in unexpectedly unlocked assets.

[monester]

I think this is crucial - when I'm listing photos on phone and showing to anyone I don't want to show some photos. But for family I want to show all photos. Also it would be nice to have a private albums or when private mode unlocked private photos showed in normal albums.

Right now I have private albums from several trips but I'm thinking to deploy dedicated immich for private photos only but android application don't allow accounts switch.

[ckewok]

Instead of creating all new albums inside the locked folder, using custom views to only show specific tags that have been added to photos (and hopefully albums) would solve all these issues. See my comment in the private mode feature request.

[grzywek]

Yes, that's the way to go. There are easier and more flexible approaches that duplicating albums into locked albums etc. Downvote OP.

[NextBlaubeere]

For me it would also make more sense to have individual albums locked that can be shared with different users, instead of one folder that only I have access to.

[kaung-minkhant]

Is this feature available? My use case would be locking by albums. Right now I had to lock pictures and they are spread out in the locked folder. I already have them organized in normal ablum, so just locking the album would make things a lot easier and tightier.

[CodeBormen]

+1 for this feature

I'm grateful that there is a locked folder feature, but without any organization it gets out of hand very quick. Anything more than a handful of photos/videos makes it next to impossible to navigate.

I could see several implementations working to address this: albums within locked folders, the ability to make any album a locked album, the ability to tie a tag or set of tags to lock any image

[frumpel]

There are multiple different functionalities that would be served by "private" folders. I can think of these:

• make sure "private" images don't show up in the main timeline - the current "locked folder" allows this but is inconvenient for a large number of images. Also inconvenient if there are different categories of "private", e.g. "medical" and "exes"
• allow selectively sharing subsets of private images. E.g. "medical/teeth" vs. "medical/cancer" vs. "exes" - the current folder does not allow for this and having a private toggle on regular albums/folders as suggested by [Feature] toggleable 'private' mode instead of completely separated locked folder #18645 (comment) would be helpful
• allow seeing a timeline of private images. The current "locked folder" feature does this but would need to support that for "private albums" as well.

[surfingbytes]

Instead of creating albums in locked folders, it should just allow to set whole albums as locked (which would fulfill that functionality), and also single/selected pictures of albums to be locked - but those would stay in their respective albums, just be hidden.

[NicholasFlamy]

I think I would prefer locked albums as well.

Edit: I believe I mentioned this in the original FR.