Option to pick the folder where new Albums are created in Aves

[marcosilva85]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I create sub-folders in DCIM for organizing my camera photos into albums.
At the moment Aves does not allow me to create Albums in DCIM because its hard-coded that it needs to be sub-folders inside the "Pictures" folder.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be lovely if Aves would allow Albums to be created on any other folder of our choice (in my case I would choose DCIM). Other people may also wish to choose a folder like GDrive or OneDrive folders if they use Cloud apps...

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently I have to use a File Manager for folder creation since I can't choose the destination of Albums in Aves. Aves is nice by allowing already to move/copy pictures as we please, but it would feel more user-friendly if it allows us to choose where we want to have our albums.

[marcosilva85]

Hi @deckerst , I noticed some time has passed since my report. I don't know if you got the issue, so I edited it for clarity. Would this be something you could implement soon, or too hard to implement correctly / unwanted?

[deckerst]

There's no need to bump issues. This one is labeled P6 which means issue unlikely to be addressed (you can hover on Px labels to see what they mean). So it's unlikely to be addressed but I let it open because I may change my mind. It's just... unlikely.

[marcosilva85]

Thanks for the reply, sorry I did not know what the label P6 was about. I rewrote better the whole issue so it's more clear to understand now and just wanted to let you know of that, not to bump.

[marcosilva85]

@deckerst I've updated the original ticket, could you have a look and a wild guess if this would be simple to implement?

[deckerst]

It's easy to implement, but it does not fit in the principles I follow to develop Aves. One of them is to play along with the recent Android versions which nudge users and developers to have public media in predictable places.

Doc regarding "well-defined collections":
https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/media#media_store

[marcosilva85]

It's easy to implement, but it does not fit in the principles I follow to develop Aves. One of them is to play along with the recent Android versions which nudge users and developers to have public media in predictable places.

@deckerst, but you already provide the sane-default setting which plays along.
Now, along with that, lets say you allow users to manifest their preference. Nobody here is suggesting that a folder picker should be brought up always when clicking "New Album" - only a setting in the options of Aves.
How would that mean stopping to playing along with the recent Android versions?

One thing is the default Album folder, which was set based on your developer decision to play along (this is OK), the other should be the users right to choose but you're also deciding on that for them (its arguably not-OK).

That argument of yours raises the question: if that's a good principle you are trying to follow, when you think of the users that wanted to change their default Album folder and can't, could you identify how they would benefit from this decision?
(please don't take any negativity from the tone, I'm only trying to properly communicate these points across)

[marcosilva85]

hi @deckerst , I was thinking since half a year passed if I could draw your attention for this simple feature request,
specially now that Aves supports media-management permission,
or at least to get your reply to my thoughts in the last post?
thank you so much.

[deckerst]

Again, no need to bump issues. Please do not confuse the freedom to express your opinion with an obligation for me to act on it.

You want my opinion so here it is: you wish for additional settings for what i consider micro management, while i want to limit setting complexity.

[catacgc]

One use-case I have for this is, in fact, the SortedAlbum use-case I just mentioned in #1375 (this could be an automated alternative to that)

With this feature I could create a folder (SortedAlbums) and a dynamic folder using that folder tag from the Explorer view. Let's call it dir.SortedAlbums. With it, now I can create "auto-updating" dynamic folders like ToSort = -dir.SortedAlbums

And now, any new Album I create with Aves and all photos I added to those albums become sorted.

This works really nice in conjunction with applications like Immich where I can select the albums I want to backup.

There are other ways the above can be achieved:

• add an automated dynamic album / tag "ManagedByAves" that includes all Albums created by Aves. Even nicer if I can tag pre-existing albums as well
• allow filters based on some naming convention (e.g "2025." will match any album that starts with 2025) - this way, I can just follow the convention in both apps and have things backed up
• manually manage the set of Albums managed by Aves as mentioned in Dynamic Albusm Split and then overwrite #1375