[Feature] path variable as search item

[Surfer2010]

The feature

I read a lot about people (including me) trying to import their old library as "external library" and struggling about their "event-file-folders not beeing transformed into album automatically". Not mentioning subfolders and so on.

this could be solved by adding the "file path" of every assset/picture to the searchable items. This way I could search for a known folder name and add the result to an album of my choice / create a new album.
This is far from automatic album creation, but a huge step bringing old file structures as external libraries to immich.

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[BlipRanger]

In particular, it would be super helpful if the search featured the same glob style querying as the exclusion paths do.

[tztopi]

Also same issue here. As many folks the filename are generated by camera (IMG_xxxx, 20250101_xxxxxx.jpg, P202501.....) and only the parent directory carries the "album name". In many cases multi-depth directory name has the whole information. For example:
travel/2024/amsterdam_jan/IMG_.......jpg. Without proper full-path index search solution these photos hardly to find.
Another real example:
projects/work/20241205_server_rack/IMG_..... .jpg
I know many phones makes proper in-sync timestamp based filename (because it has NTP client sync), but most DSLRs are still using IMG_.... naming pattern.
Yes i know there are many external python script available to generate album name from directory. I dont want to create separate album records, all information exists on directory names.

Immich are great, the external path function also great, just please include the full original path to the search index for filename search function. Glob style search query also would be great as mentioned by @BlipRanger earlier.

[ffchung]

I want to have search folder name in search bar combine with other condition. Like People A & People B & Folder name with "badminton".

[kvalev]

This is now possible with this PR #16173

[luziusalbin]

any chance to get something out of this PR to make the path variable be able to search?

[luziusalbin]

Adding myself here as a total fan of the request!

I work in an environment of 15-20 people and everyone is using our photos, which is at this moment still windows-explorer standard usage and our paths are looking oftne like this: "P:/Photos/Projects/City, Customer-Name/2023/Measurment/..."

Some people using the old picasa-app (yes, and it's quick!), others ACDSee (way toooo slow and everyone has a separate db)...

Had an interesting discussion on discord about my inputs and would love to share the ideas: https://discord.com/channels/979116623879368755/1349684390577442816

[bo0tzz]

Totally missed it, but this should now be supported since v1.127.0

[luziusalbin]

This should be on top of priorities to make Immich usable for existing and already well organized photo-directories with much older dates. <3 please! :-)

[luziusalbin]

hey @bo0tzz - any updates to this?
i really would love to see the chance, that you can search for the "relative path" as an input.
thank you!

[bo0tzz]

https://justinmayer.com/posts/any-updates/

[luziusalbin]

yeah - don't want to bother... really! :-)

If i get the point right of your pasted link:
"The most effective thing you can do is make a financial donation to the project and to the people who maintain it." - where can i do the right donation, to receive a most quick implementation of this thread?

thanks in advance for your constructiove help, detailed informations about future updates and kind opinions, how i can help to bring that project forward as much as possible...

[luziusalbin]

Omg! as @tztopi sad it is implemented in backend and I already tested and works, we only need the UI changes. !

Pleaseee this is needed, it is just a damn radio and an input box!! XD

Thank you in advance!!

This still works - the codes are there. no crazy wizardry needed...

what i'm missing is that it's just looking at the final path and not checking for multiple places.
Input: .../search?query=%7B"originalPath"%3A"beach"%7D --> it show's every photo in every subfolder that contains "beach"
Input: .../search?query=%7B"originalPath"%3A"beach%20thailand"%7D --> it show's only photos that exactly contains "beach thailand" in a sequence

this should be flexible enough to show photos from folder "thailand beach", "beach party thailand" or "best beach in thailand" as well.

[JGKle]

Oh man - I tried out Immich in 2022 while looking for an alternative to Synology Photos (for Android), but passed because I couldn't use my existing folder organization. So stoked to see this has been added since! The ability to search by paths on mobile is the one & only blocker...so close to being able to move over!!! 🙏 🙏

[bo0tzz]

WIP in #18413

[TobbeJ]

question related to this part of the original feature request:
"this could be solved by adding the "file path" of every assset/picture to the searchable items. This way I could search for a known folder name and add the result to an album of my choice / create a new album"

can the search result be turned in to an album?
i'm asking because my (external) library is a bit on the large side with several 100k photos and i cant possibly organize them by clicking one photo at a time.
but it should be quick to convert certain paths to albums

[ManiacDC]

@bo0tzz I noticed #18413 was closed, any idea why? Is there a plan to implement this another way?

[JGKle]

I have the same issue - my collection is meticulously labeled by path + foldername (i.e. folder names like 19-03-08.0) Dubai - Day 2 (DhowWharfage, WaterBus, Souks, AlFahidi, MallOfEmirates, BurjAlArab, Madinat+Beach)) - if I want to find photos where I visited Madinat, I just search in the file manager or Lightroom or Digikam for any photos with that term in the path. But since Immich ignores path names, I pretty much can't find anything - I just have to go to the physical system where they're stored in order to search.

[luziusalbin]

I think it's obvious and very essential to manage an existing, (over years) maintained and large (!) photo archive.

Example folder names from this week:
2025-07-28 - Birthday Party Zurich
2025-07-29 - Hike in Zermatt
2025-08-01 - 1. Augustparty Aarau
2025-08-03 - Hike in Montpellier
2025-08-04 - Market Arles

Now if I search for "hike 2025" I want all the photos from the 2nd and 4th folder. If I type "August 2025" it should show all photos from the third folder...

Please add this asap to your coding queue 🙏🏼

[luziusalbin]

@luziusalbin have you tried search by location and date range in the search filter that we have?

The idea is nice, but doesn't help with old photos without GPS/exif data. Any these photos are the big part of my archive... 😊

[JGKle]

As a note (in the hopeful event that this is getting some traction), personally I only care about being able to do it from the mobile app.

[luziusalbin]

Personally i'm coming from the other side and need that on the PC/Web GUI version. :-)

[ManiacDC]

For anyone implementing this in the future, a really neat add-on for this would be able to click on a folder path in the "Folders" view and see all the files in that folder and its subfolders.