[Feature] Prioritize sorting by filename (after timestamp)

[Novgorod]

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

• Yes

The feature

I'm aware there are already feature requests to have more sorting options in albums other than by timestamp (ascending/descending) - everyone (including me) is eagerly waiting for this, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

When multiple photos have the exact same timestamp, the sorting looks kind of random in the main timeline as well as in albums. My guess is that it's sorted by the order in which the image files have been uploaded or written to the disk or database. It would be more sensible to default to sorting by filename in the case of identical timestamps instead of file system sequence or whatever it is now. I guess the secondary sorting criterion (the primary being the timestamp) is generally a matter of preference or philosophy, hence I don't consider it a bug. But since this is not a user-facing feature (and I don't argue that it should be), I don't think there is any conceivable downside to make the filename secondary for sorting. It should be very little work to fix, simply slightly altering the database request to include a secondary sorting column.

The use case is not exactly mainstream (since images should be properly dated either by the camera or the editing software), but it's not obscure either. I'm stumbling upon tons of photos with nonsensical timestamps, especially in old archives, where either the EXIF timestamp was never set in the camera (01/01/2000) or not preserved by some editing program. In that case I can use the bulk date change feature in the GUI to roughly set the timestamps of the affected images/series, which then end up with an identical timestamp and are sorted by "chance". The filenames usually contain at least some logical sequence (DSCF0001 etc.) and would help to automatically put such images in order. I know "custom" sorting can be forced by manually setting the timestamp of each image with some fake offset (like a second apart), but that's extremely tedious and unnecessary if it would simply secondary-sort everything by name. In the very unlikely case that the timestamps AND filenames are identical, it can default to the current sorting or someone can think of something more clever (creation time on the server?)...

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

#15924