I know a delete feature is not available yet; 1) will that be something available when 1.0 is released or will it be later in the future?
Iâm trying to get at least initial support into v1.0.0. There will be subsequent improvements in future releases.
with no official delete method, what is your recommended way? It looks like I can get the delete by the info button in the top right corner. If I manually delete that file, is there anything else I need to do like deleting thumbnail files, updating the database?
If you manually remove all image variants, or move them into a NoMedia directory, that asset will be removed from your library. When that happens, previews, thumbnails and transcoded videos are removed from your library automatically as part of the sync process.
Iâm going to mark files for deletion in the DB, and then add an âempty trashâ button in the nav menu that will use this technique as a safeguard, along with a link that opens a page listing all the paths about to be unlinked.
Why this solution and not some of the other discussed options?
Moving files into a platform-specific âtrash canâ only works on local drives, and only on macOS and Windows. Linux support for trash is spotty, but I could ask users to install trash-cli. A âtrash canâ doesnât make sense for Docker users, as ~/.local/share/Trash/ will be ephemeral to the image.
I tend to be susceptible to âooooh, thatâs cleverâ solutions, which tend to be too clever by half. I feel like a hidden local directory may be confusing for most users, especially because I donât know of any software that does this sort of handling of deletions.
Moving files into a folder that you need to delete manually requires PhotoStructure to have a flawless view of volumes. It has a really good view of current volumes, but (especially on macOS) the APFS volume list is borked/shows duplicates that can be confusing. Loopback bind-mount folders, symlinks, and N other exotic filesystem constructs will get in the way of âwhat filesystem hosts this fileâ and âwhere should it go to delete itâ.
I have a picture of someone blinking, and I want to delete that picture.
I used Windows Explorer to browse to the source location of the original image, and I deleted the picture. I then clicked âre-sync this assetâ in photostructure, but the picture remains in my photostructure library.
I currently have âMay photostructure organize your photos and videos?â set to YES. Does this mean I have to delete the picture twice for it to go away? (manually delete original photo, then manually delete photostructure library photo?).
I donât know if this is a bug, a feature thatâs not implemented yet, or an opportunity for end user education.
As long as there is an asset file variant, the asset wonât be removed. You can see where PhotoStructure thinks all the variants are by opening the asset info panel (tap âiâ or click the i in the upper right).
Yup! Youâll need to delete both files. Total PITA, I know. Supporting hide/delete (this feature) will be the next thing I build.
Itâs certainly a feature thatâs not implemented yet. Until itâs implemented, I guess itâs an opportunity for education?
Anyway, Iâll get this built as soon as I ship v1.0.0, which should be tomorrow.
I have the same issue as @bartv, I have a lot of screenshots I donât want to clutter up my photographs.
I set PS_REQUIRE_MAKE_MODEL=true a few days ago, and when I resync individual screenshots, they disappear from PhotoStructure, as you said. But do I have to resync each image individually?
I still see loads of screenshots in the general views of PhotoStructure (for example among the thumbnails in the main view of the application).
Is it just a matter of waiting for PhotoStructure to get through all my images again? I have tried restarting sync a couple of times. Iâm not sure if there are fewer screenshots than before, but they are definitely not gone completely.
PhotoStructure will automatically re-sync assets that are visited with the asset info panel open. (No, this isnât documented or even discoverable: it was an experiment to help me debug locally, and I donât think itâs generally a great idea (?), but at least for the time being, this is how PhotoStructure works).
Run a âlibrary rebuildâ: itâs already in the product, and itâs easy for you to start (via the nav menu), but itâll take a while and do a bunch of work that isnât necessary.
You can run a sync --force manually via the command line for the affected directories. Know that you can give sync as many files and directories on the command line as you need, and they donât need to be directories currently in your âscan pathsâ. The --force tells sync and sync-file to disable the âno-opâ filter that skips over files are âalready in syncâ (if their mtime and size match whatâs in the database), and actually re-import the files.
Found this chain looking for existing âhidingâ feature requests⌠looks like the discussion pretty rapidly moved toward how to delete, but I would like to resurface the âhiddenâ flag concept.
I think there are two levels to this, probably⌠one is the âuser accessâ, lock pictures behind a password, they are absolutely not to be seen except by approved users.
But then there is a lesser level. Some pictures I may want to keep, but they just arenât very flattering, or the content is just a little offputting (I have a picture of a friend who had suffered an injury and sent me a picture - I want to keep it, but I donât really want it popping up in the random display list).
Not sure itâs high up the priority list, but thought I would toss it out there as another use case to mull over.
Another use case for hiding are photos of documents, receipts, or other one-off photos that I want to keep around âjust in caseâ, but really donât ever want to see when scrolling through the timeline view or other views.
In other software the term âarchiveâ is often used to hide items like this.
I decided on using âarchiveâ terminology instead of âhideâ as it aligns with Google Photos. (the icon for âhideâ and âshowâ arenât exactly intuitive, either).
Archived and trashed assets are not shown in tag galleries, nor are they shown in streams or when navigating left/right by date.
Hereâs a sneak peek of the button bar for an unliked, unarchived, and undeleted photo:
Search will include an âaction barâ when viewing deleted assets, which will include a âempty trashâ button that actually deletes files from the filesystem. Iâm building that bit today.
I nearly hate to ask, but any chance to have an option that disables or hides âtrashâ? In terms of making sure a family member canât trash something?
Accidentally archiving something is annoying⌠trash isnât.
Iâll add a setting that contains a pass phrase needed to empty the trash, that shouldnât be hard.
Edit: I misunderstood the request.
The next release will have 2 new boolean settings to disable the asset viewâs remove from library and delete buttons, and 2 additional boolean settings to disable the âactually do itâ buttons on the ârecently removedâ and ârecently deletedâ views.
@mrm I think @bdillahu asking for settings to disable the delete capability completely. That sounds like a reasonable request, but eventually what will probably be needed is some sort of admin login for edit/delete/archive. Without login, everything should probably be read-only.
edit: it doesnât need to be anything fancy like implement full fine-grained user/group/role management. Just a simple login with passphrase setting to enable edit capabilities.
Iâve also added âremove from libraryâ, so now there are three buttons to make an asset to away from tag galleries and (most) search results:
Not visible in tag galleries or search
Removed from library
Removed from disk
archive
remove
delete
Note that for âremoveâ and âdeleteâ the operations arenât âexecutedâ until someone clicks the âremove assetsâ or âempty trashâ button from the search pageâonly then do the records get moved into an exclude list of SHAs (so theyâre not imported again by accident) and, for deleted assets, all variations get deleted from (mounted) disk(s).
I thought about having an automatic âtrash is emptied automaticallyâ feature, but Iâm shelving that idea for this release.
I like the implementation of deleting images. It seems to work quite well and is nice for curating my collection. I think mulitple/bulk select in the grid view would be amazing to combine with the delete/hiding of photos.
