I would love a way to mark content private or secure and keep it from displaying on the main feed.
As a content creator i would love a way to secure certain pictures from view.
Welcome to PhotoStructure, @modulateddreams , and thanks for the feature suggestion!
The next version adds an “archived” state that hides the asset from searches and tag galleries:
Is this basically the same thing that you’re asking for?
(In other words, does it make sense to have both a “private” flag and an “archive” flag for every asset, or do they basically have the same usage? If it’s the same, should I rename “archive” to “private” or some other/better/more intuitive state name?)
I actually would like to have folders inside of the archive, maybe with password protection? I kind of see 2 phases of password protection:
- UI only password where file can be viewed only after password is entered. Can go to disk to view if desired.
- encrypted files - even if you go to disk, you cant view without password. Maybe py-gpg so that it is a standard that doesn’t require PhotoStructure to decrypt in the future / can be scripted to decrypt?
Usecase to validate my insanity: my library includes some photos from the birth of our son… Not all of those we want family to be able to view unless we put a password in (read, there are some family members that may click archive due to technical prowess being low, and see pictures my wife wouldn’t want them to)
I haven’t looked into how the DB is defining archived assets, but maybe step 1 would be a rational first step?
My next feature will be adding user authentication, which should take care of your use case. Initially, you’ll be able to authenticate either as an “owner” or a “visitor.” Only owners can
- see the settings page
- manage sync
- make changes to assets
- see archived, removed, and deleted assets
The next bit you’d want (that I want too) is to be able to mass-edit assets (so “archive” an entire folder’s contents, for example). There’s an outstanding feature request for that already.
I think that’ll work nicely! One part to organization that I’d kind of like is almost to have a folder inside of the archive (since we can’t search it, now). So I could have something like Archive/sons-birth, Archive/receipts etc.
Also, maybe archive is a bit counter intuitive name wise, but only to apple users like myself? Apple calls this “Hidden” while google I think calls it “Archive”. That being said, I don’t think this needs to change in the software; I more so wanted to call it out in case anyone else winds up here from a forum search.
Oh! You can search for archived files: if you click the “View archived” link from the main menu, you’ll see it’s actually just a search term: archived:true.
So if you search for “archived:true sons-birth” that should only show archived files in that directory.
Is it worth making a distinction between folders I want to limit access to and files/folders I want to archive? Archiving could be a method to control access to certain files, as you’re discussing here, but is it really the ideal mechanism? I don’t mean to muddy the waters, just thinking in terms of the “ideal” solution.
Once we have user auth, I could see wanting to limit users from seeing certain photos. I don’t think I’d want to archive those photos though.
Agreed, @tkohhh–access to an asset or tag (who can see an asset or a tag’s content) is not the same as the asset’s state (like if it’s “archived” or “hidden”).
I’m assuming most people will have used Google Photos, so copying that UX model (sharing an album or tag with a user or via a URL with an access token) should be intuitive to some degree.
These requests are related: