[Discussion] Potential user confusion: freeing up space may break media in other apps

[M123-dev]

The free-up space feature added in #24999 (#23743) is very useful and something Immich should definitely have.

I want to highlight a potential source of confusion for non-technical users that may be worth considering before this reaches a broader audience.

When Immich moves local assets to the device trash, this also affects media that is owned or referenced by other apps. A prominent example is WhatsApp: if these files are moved to trash by Immich, WhatsApp will no longer be able to find them and they appear blank or blurred, which can easily look like data loss from a user’s perspective.

From what I remember, Google Photos avoids deleting media from certain app folders (e.g. WhatsApp), but I’m not fully sure which apps are covered or how broadly this applies.

That being said, this is not meant as an argument against the feature, and I don’t have a clear solution either. However, it may be worth consciously deciding how to handle or communicate this before releasing it more widely.

[M123-dev]

cc @alextran1502 (sorry for the direct ping — referencing here since GitHub doesn’t seem to create a back-reference to the pull request)

[julian-poidevin]

Looks like it has been handled in #25460 ?

[M123-dev]

Amazing, it seems #25460 is indeed is a great solution 💯