[Feature]: Nested albums

[rain0r]

Feature detail

How is the general opinion on nested albums?

As of now, there is one level on which albums reside and each album contains image(s) and/or video(s).

It would be great if an album could contain one or more albums.

An example use case: going on holidays with friends where everyone takes photos. They could all be collected in one album which contains an album for person that took photos.

The album structure could then look like:

--holidays-2022
    -- Friend A // contains photos taken by this person
    -- Friend B // ...

Platform

Web

[Simpoltin]

This is something I'd also like to see. My use case would be creating a main album for each side of my family that I could share to them and allow them to create sub-albums underneath it. By Inheriting permissions from the main album it would prevent having to share each and every album. In a quasi-related topic I'll also be opening a feature request for user groups for these types of situations to where i could just share to "Family 1" instead of each "Family 1" member individually. #1043

• Family 1 Main
  • Family 1 Wedding 1
  • Family 1 Holiday
• Family 2 Main
  • Family 2 Event
  • Family 2 Holiday
  • Family 2 Birthday

[alextran1502]

Do you know if Google Photos has this feature? I would like to experiment with the UI/UX

[Panzer1119]

One problem, already mentioned, is how to avoid duplicate files.

You say that there are more BIG differences/problems. Ok, go ahead and list them, so we can try to find solutions for these problems.

I meant that the issue with duplicates in a nested folder structure is a big problem (i.e. not a small one).

Because I thought you compared this and nested albums (which are digitally not necessarily bound to a certain directory structure) in your comment as if they were almost the same with negligible differences.

[Whitehawk2000]

@Panzer1119 Then please, do us all a favour. Start reading carefully, before commenting next time!

Duplicates are in no way a big problem. It is already possible to project the main album names into your folder structure through a storage template within the ImmichUI, now.
And simultaneously it is possible to put a picture into different albums, without creating duplicate files. So why shouldn't it be possible with nested albums?
Albums in general are just like links to the original file, it is just a question of where should the main folder/subfolder of the picture be? I have called it the "core"-folder.

So, in the end, this BIG problem is just a design choice on how to make such a feature available for the users, as easy as possible.

[briandipalma]

I didn't realize you could use album names in the naming template, I stand corrected. Although just because you can do something like that doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it. The documentation states the picture if in multiple albums is placed in the last album it was added. So your pictures can move from one folder to another over time as you add (and remove) it from albums. That sounds messy. I'd recommend against using the file system to find albums to share/zip up. That's what the Immich app is for, it can be used for such use cases. As for finding pictures to edit programs like digiKam and darktable support tags so I'd expect editing software to understand them.

[Whitehawk2000]

@briandipalma I would only partly agree with you. For one user, there is no need for a folder/subfolder-structure and for others, like me, this is essential. That means the whole library stays independent from any app and its supported functions. And thats the whole idea of Immich?!? Being independent from the big companies and their clouds, by making sure you are always in control of your own files, the way you want.

If pictures in multiple albums are really put into the "last" folder, instead of the "first" one, it really gets messy. But not more or less messy as it is by searching through the timeline or time and date based folders. That should definetely be changed.

There would be no disadvantage for any of the 3 functions by trying to combine them. You could implement automatic album/nested-album naming by the already existing folder structure. Or the other way round. Automatic tagging by the album/folder names... and maybe even more, that we cant't think of yet.

[atsza661]

Do you know if Google Photos has this feature? I would like to experiment with the UI/UX

imgbb photo hosting has a subalbum system.

[Simpoltin]

Do you know if Google Photos has this feature? I would like to experiment with the UI/UX

It's been so long since I've stopped using it that I had to go check, but no I cannot find a way to create nested albums within Google Photos.

After logging into it after so long and seeing it I want to thank you again for all the work you are putting into this project. The user experience so far is top notch and is definitely on par or better than Photos.

[kalebwd]

I don't use Google Photos, but it seems sort of limiting to say that this app may only reproduce a limited featureset of what Google Photos has already done, as I have seen commented elsewhere. This isn't my app, and I'm not the one putting in the labor, so I understand my opinions don't mean anything and I'm okay with that. And frankly I can't say I blame the team for not having any interest in something that randos are requesting.

[asodyora]

I don't know if it's helpful at all;
iCloud photo's supports 'nested albums' they actually let you make 'folders' to put ur albums in to.

[waclaw66]

Much better approach. Like #5078

[Kernald]

Lightroom has a similar model to what is described above for iCloud: folders (which can be nested), in which you can place albums. Albums can also be at the top level, and can't be nested under other albums.

I personally find this separation between folder and album a bit restrictive. When I'm visiting a city for example, I tend to have a main album (e.g. Sydney) to which I'll add random photos, and when I visit a specific landmark, I'll create a new nested album in there (e.g. Sydney/Harbour Bridge). With that artificial separation between folders and albums, I have to create a Sydney/Random or something like that as a catch-all for any non-specific photo.

[Morethanevil]

I would like nested albums too. Are there any news?

[bcsteeve]

Just putting my +1 for nested albums / sub-albums

It just seems like an obvious feature, I was expecting it was already implemented and I just couldn't figure out how. There needs to be a way to have, for example, "travel" with "Italy" and "Peru" inside, and then "Rome" inside of Italy, etc etc.

It must be harder to do than I imagine :)

[jrasm91]

How do you accomplish this feature in Google photos today?

[sushain97]

@jrasm91 I don't think Google Photos supports it. But, Lychee does in a reasonable way. The UX for a nested album is just to create an album when already navigated into an existing album.

Sharing is a bit more complicated. If an album's children are 'public', then the public view of the album also displays the nested albums. Since there's no notion of public in Immich and there can be multiple share links, we'd need a different strategy.

One approach is having a share link define whether nested albums are shared and/or selecting the subset of nested albums to include. However, this doesn't work with albums that are nested multiple times. Having share links unconditionally share all nested albums recursively is a reasonable compromise to start.

[jrasm91]

Not going to lie that sounds pretty complicated. I'm hoping groups will solve some of the mass sharing problems too. Maybe a view only prototype would be a good place to start.

[klaus1k]

I think the most reasonable way should be a simple logic, I don't see added value in a complicated solution here.

If a parent-album is shared by a link it should be recursive, so that all child-albums are visible.
If a child-album is shared, the parent-album should therefore not be visible.

This should work well with the current implementation of the share logic in immich. I don't know if this would be a solution that is technically feasible.

Or am I missing something?

[79vette]

+1 for this feature. would really like to see the ability to create nested albums, or to organize albums into "folders"

[briandipalma]

I wonder if hierarchical tags would fulfill this requirement. If Immich read the Tags List (I think) metadata from a file and allowed you to view all the photos with a tag you could implement this feature. It would be similar to how darktable, Digikam and I think Lightroom work. Check out this documentation to see some example UX. Tags seem a very common concept in photography software and many people already have large collections using them.

[briandipalma]

I'm guessing Digikam, darktable, Lightroom etc all do something similar. On import the metadata of the picture is scanned, the XMP tags that are used to store hierarchical tags are scanned and any new tags are added to the Tags table. When a user clicks on a tag in the Tags view a query is created that searches for all pictures with that clicked node tag AND all children. So click on 2023 and the database is queried for pictures tagged with 2023 and 2023/August and 2023/September and 2023/August/Birmingham etc a search of the Tags table will find all the possible subtags (just search for tags that start with the clicked tag I'm guessing?) and you just send the query to the database which will return all the picture IDs.

You can see below that Digikam edits multiple XMP tags with the tag you set on an image so that the picture will show up with the tags in all the programs mentioned above and in some other picture viewing software (MediaPro?).

[briandipalma]

Basically the hierarchical tags only need to be a view concern. I think the code can process them as flat strings that start with each other. So a flat Tags table is enough to store them all and to query for a tag and subtags you just look for all tags that startWith the same value as the tag the user clicked on. Does that make sense?

[jrasm91]

Yeah can't do an efficient database query using starts with. Currently we have a many to many table between tags and assets.

[jrasm91]

You could maybe get a list of tags that start with and then query for assets linked to any of the tags.

[dragere]

Hydrus incorporates tags for searching and the tags can also be related with each other: https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/advanced_siblings.html
For advanced searches in large libraries, hydrus is an excellent tool. A tag system like this would be great for immich.

[PJGitHub9]

+1 for this. reason im held back from moving to immich from local file storage is just for what is said above. I have everything sorted by month/event name and then inside those folders individual folders for different things. Eg. big event with pictures from different people. I like having albums based on each persons photos

Event
-- Friend 1 photos
-- Friend 2 photos

or

Main Event
-- Day 1(event 1)
-- Day 2(event 2)

[jrasm91]

Please just up vote the original post, that is why the feature exists in the first place.

[waclaw66]

I would suggest to make it as simple as possible like folders and files (albums) as described here...
#5078

[pakosalze]

+1 for me. I tried Photoprism and tried to discuss this feature. Got answer - there is no plan in near future. So trying to switch to anything else. From my perspective such kind of sorting photos is very natural to human brain sorting things (it is of course one of plenty possible ways). Eg. sorting by events, by group of people (family) would be very helpful.
Now I am using Synology Photo app. It has such feature - but its interface is not good for me. Also I going to go away from Synology NAS. Immich by now by now the best looking interface app, but it lacks of sorting capability. With hundreds of albums - that is number of albums I currently have, nested albums feature is must...

[j5k]

The very same here, I'm also using Synology Photos until I find another better solution. For me the following are a must:

• multi-user (for family and friends)
• folder-tree-like ordering with nested permissions

[sandersondigital]

Given the size of my photo library this is an essential feature for the next photo management application I move to as single level albums are too cumbersome to manage with larger libraries. I see that Piwigo does offer nested albums, whilst not easy, it must possible (admittedly on an older platform) however I would much prefer to go with Immich, this is the only thing holding me back.

[R0G-DEV]

Samsung Gallery on Android has grouped albums built-in. Very simple UI. Grouped albums can not contain photos.

Screen_Recording_20241109_185159_Gallery_1.mp4

[dwichers]

I believe this feature is absolutely essential. It's what everyone is accustomed to on their OS, they all work with a nested album structure. To keep work and personal photos separate, I considered creating multiple users since they each get their own directory (Storage label), but currently, it's not easy to switch between users.

I will purchase a license immediately if this feature is implemented.

[alextran1502]

Words can lose context, so let's keep our composure.

Nested albums and tags have overlapping functionality. We now have tags that we can potentially expand the mechanism to fit your needs

[alextran1502]

@pakosalze it sounds like you're expecting Immich to be a professional photo management sytem, but it's not - it's a Google Photos alternative.

Out of curiosity, do you know any such professional photo management system that one could self-host and that supports nested folders? The main source of comparison I know is from this table which focuses mostly on FOSS projects (I know at least photoprism has a paid tier).

@jdumas Looks like https://github.com/Webreaper/Damselfly is quite close. Maybe worth a try to spin up and see for yourself

[SubjectiveDonut]

@apeman76 "Stop spamming the thread I keep getting notifications for nothing. Your arguments are invalid. Feel free to fork, implement, and pull request. Its probably just not that much of a requested feature, 50k stars for immich and 120 upvotes for the feature. Just too much work atm im guessing. Project isnt even stable version yet."

Once again, please stop showing disrespect to people within this forum with your comments. Respect is a two-way street.

[NedPool]

Nested albums and tags have overlapping functionality. We now have tags that we can potentially expand the mechanism to fit your needs

If we were able to share a tag set with someone, sure, it would be a functional replacement, but you can only share albums; so people want nested albums to share. I absolutely do not want to share 30+ albums because that's how it organized out for a single trip; I want to share a single album with everything sorted in sub-albums.

[lordkitsuna]

I tried to read a lot of this thread I didn't get to everything however I have a use case for this that I didn't see mentioned.

I store art that i like rather than just photos using immich, there's also a lot of anime art in there and it would be nice if I could group them by show and then further by character so

Dragon maid (main album)
------> Tohru
------> Kobayashi
^(sub albums)

It would additionally be interesting if the UI allowed you to view all photos from the parent album. To be clear I mean that it would present you with all photos including the ones in nested albums. That way you could choose between viewing everything related to the main album or you could go into one of the nested albums for something more specific.

I understand i can use tags to achieve something similar, the problem is that I really want things in albums so that I can archive them off of the main timeline. I use my main timeline as a to-do list of unorganized things, I could just shove them all into a main album tag them and use tags to try and filter down but it just feels like a worse experience than it would be to be able to just click a nested album

[alexgpitts-dev]

I would love this feature. I wish I could create a shared link which would contain several albums. That way I could have a link I could send to my family where they could see all the albums I would like to share with them.

[alexgpitts-dev]

Is there any status update on if this is going to be made?

[bo0tzz]

There are no current plans to implement this.

[atsza661]

There are no current plans to implement this.

What if there were a possibility to make a guest user? Sharing would be user and password protected and multiple albums could be shared. Uploading could also be possible with a smaller quota. The admin would have control over what setting, if any, the guest user can change.

[NedPool]

There are no current plans to implement this.

So how do you send links to relatives that are technologically inept? Do you seriously send them a huge list of links for multiple albums? Or just throw hundreds (maybe thousands) of photos all in a single album?

[xnick123]

I understand that there are fundamental scope differences. It is supposed to be a Google Photos alternative, but from my point of view this goal is already achieved. Of course i understand if the team has certain refactoring or other features as goals, and i would support to prioritize these. But why not listen to users, it is the top most voted feature.. 322 as of now, followed by 197 votes for 2nd.

What I don’t understand is whether implementing this feature would break the architecture or conflict with Immich’s long-term vision. I struggle to believe it’s unfeasible, but I could be wrong.

No suggested alternative matches Immich’s look, feel, and capabilities. Users love it—I do too. I’m not looking for traditional photo management software. I want to self-host my pictures on a virtual server, use an app on top of a web UI, and share albums with family. Most of them can navigate folders within an app, but little beyond that. Folder view in the app would be "ok", though sharing subfolders selectively seems like a limitation.

Tools like Synology DS Photo have millions of users, and many want to switch. The main hurdle? Lack of folder-based organization. Synology locks users into its hardware, whereas Immich could thrive on virtual servers. There's a demand, evident in discussions, forums, similar apps being started but failing, and workarounds like this one. If users are putting in so much effort for a workaround, why not make it an official feature?

[filippogrande]

I completely agree, also being a Google photos alternative doesn't mean that it cannot be a competitor of google photos alternative, like iCloud Photos alternative that supports this kind of structure also giving user more freedom on using it as a saving structure could be also cool. Also RN Immich should have a big enough community that you could see witch functions are the most wanted and maybe the google functions that no-one use or very few people.

[FoZo]

Bummer. I like to organize my images in folders like so {YEAR}/{MONTH}/{EVENT}

[jdumas]

It doesn't look like #5078 is on the roadmap either though... but I'd be happy with the virtual folder tree. Without it, I can only use Immich to store a relatively small collection of photos...

[alextran1502]

@jdumas You can go to Account Settings > Features > Folders > Enable to turn on the folder views

[jdumas]

Thanks! Can you explain what is missing between this and #5078?

[alextran1502]

Ah, they are different features. One is for folder structure, and the other is for album structure.

[briandipalma]

@jdumas You don't need to use Immich for tagging, Digikam writes tags to the photos and Immich reads them, that's how I organize my photos. Although for what it's worth I believe Immich writes the tags to sidecar files and not just the database so they should be readable by programs other than Immich.

[tonoitp]

Came here just for this! I miss being able to structure albums something like

• Holidays/europe/norway/2022-07
• Holidays/europe/norway/2024-09
• Holidays/asia/hongkong/2021-03
• Activities/diving/egypt/hurgada/2009
• Activities/diving/netherlans/plompe toren/2007

[waclaw66]

With virtual folder tree you would be able to add the same albums into multiple folders like
Holidays/2024/Norway 2024
Holidays/2021/Hongkong 2021
Holidays/2009/Egypt 2009
Activities/Diving/Netherlans 2007
Friends/Holydays/Egypt 2009
Friends/Holydays/Hongkong 2021
Friends/Netherlans 2007
and share Friends folder with your friends (non native Immich users) with a single link - that's the request I've heard from many photographers

[briandipalma]

This looks exactly the same as hierarchical tags, I guess the only thing missing is being able to share tags?

[kalebwd]

My use case is just having multiple albums shared via centralized link, and being able to add more albums to that existing 'share' without having to start over with new shares/links. The only intuitive method I can think to do this would be with a nested album. (Open shared album > create a new sub-album within it).

I suppose the UI could have some sort of "Add to Existing Share" where it simply makes the new album visible on the same shared link, but it seems more intuitive for users to just have nested albums.

OR maybe the user would click on "Shares" on the side menu, see the existing share, select it, then click Add Album, to add more albums to the existing share?

So in a sense this way you wouldn't really have to create a nested album per se, because the share is taking care of at least one level of hierarchy (at least in my case).

I totally understand the other comments here and I do think just having nested albums would make a lot of sense and be more intuitive.

[kalebwd]

What if perhaps we had something new, like 'Collections' (sort of like Flikr) which allows us to associate groups of albums with each other. On Flickr you can put collections inside of collections for hierarchy up to like 5 levels deep I think. Then, we could share a collection? Maybe this would allow everyone to have what they need without all the dev work in changing how Albums work? I read that overhauling albums itself is somewhat a nightmare and thus it's being avoided.

[lordkitsuna]

This is a great idea and at least for me would solve the problem

[waclaw66]

Already proposed... #5078

[kalebwd]

@waclaw66 I can see what you were saying now, but the first time I read your suggestion a few days ago, for some reason I totally did not get that you were after the same thing.

I think everyone is getting hung up on the file structure changing and duplicate images blah blah blah, and I think you eloquently laid how it's really just a relational database. The the database really only needs to know is who the parent_id of a given collection is if any, and it's children collection_ids and children album_ids. Personally, I'd just assume the actual albums be handled this way also, but that's just me - and am trying to keep the other half happy too. 😂

[waclaw66]

Collections is more convenient name for that tree structure of collections/albums. 👍

[shadowjig]

I echo kalebwd's use case. I take pics for several different sports teams and I want to share those pictures with the parents/players of those sports teams only.

• 2024 Basketball
  - Game 1
  - Game 2
  - .................
  - Game 22
• 2024 Hockey
  - Game 1
  - Game 2
  - .................
  - Game 22

My goal would be to create a shared link to the 2024 Basketball album and share that with the relevant parents/players. I can share the pics by that top level album and then whenever I upload the next game it's already shared. Additionally, it would be great if the sharing feature brought along assets like tags/people/etc instead of ONLY the pictures.

Nested Albums and more advanced sharing are the only reasons I'm not using Immich.

[kalebwd]

It appears there are several people on here that would be willing to put their wallets behind this feature request, including myself. Is there an option to do some sort of 'bounty' for this somewhere?

[kalebwd]

I would much prefer an actual nested album. Shared folder structure is more complex in terms of dev and less efficient (in my opinion). In theory, a relational database should handle this with relative ease.

Although I don’t see this in my own use case, I think people may want to have a photo assigned to more than one album? Sharing an actual folder structure causes duplicate files on the server in this case.

Also reassigning a photo to a different album is as simple as updating the database entry rather than moving a file on disk.

[jdumas]

Assigning a photo to two different albums feels very niche tbh. Seems people want nested albums for either (1) sharing or (2) organization.

Personally I wouldn't like to be tied to Immich's database to define how things are organized, and I'd rather have the logical structure of my collection be defined by the underlying folder hierarchy. That means recognizing folders containing albums as "collections" that I can share or browse easily in the app.

[bcsteeve]

It is so painfully obvious that 1000 people here are discussing 100 different features and everyone seems to think they are slightly variations of the same thing. They aren't.

Nesting albums (what this topic is about) has NOTHING to do with folder structure at all. It has nothing to do with sharing, either. Or hiding porno collections or whatever else people have advocated for in this topic.

Nested albums are simple sub albums inside other albums (and I still think it is a worthwhile feature). It would probably assist devs if we could stay remotely on topic.

[kalebwd]

@bcsteeve I don't see the harm in advocating for better/alternative options or bringing ideas to the table if they indeed exist or solve the issue at hand or help the devs understand the value in adding this functionality, or the various problems we as users are experiencing (or use cases etc), but I agree that nested albums is the way to go and that the alternatives mentioned thus far are not really viable for the problems mentioned.

But I'm also sorry if I've managed to just piss everyone off. Immich is just hella cool - it's just missing one relatively minor feature that prevents me and others from using it as such. It excites me for what it's capable of, but also disappointing to see dismissed outright. Some of the comments I've seen are simply "we're not interested in nesting albums", ok so maybe it would help to explain why that functionality is indeed valuable (sharing, etc.) - hence the other comments slightly "off topic".

[jdumas]

I think people want different things out of nested albums, but "nested album" seems like a necessary step towards the other items I mentioned (sharing and grouping albums based on file hierarchy). I like the concept of Collections mentioned in the discussion (I don't think Collections can have images inside, they're just a way to group albums together in a tree structure).

[noobienoob]

After a lot of "Exploring" through the software it seems as if this feature has already been enabled. albeit via a backdoor. Now if it can be a bit further enhanced by allowing selective folders within the tree structure to be shared that would be brilliant. And sorry, I did not understand before about the 'bounty' but I do now

[kalebwd]

I wish that actually nested them but I don't think we're talking about the same thing. ;-)

[noobienoob]

I wish that actually nested them but I don't think we're talking about the same thing. ;-)

You don't think this nesting? Although yes we may be on a different wavelength

[atsza661]

My workaround is the create albums like "Vacation - Vacation 1", "Vacation - Vacation 2" and so on. Now I have way too much albums but there're somehow nested.

That wouldn't still fix the sharing problem many of us are pleading. You could make one new user for all of your family and share all vacation tag photos with that user, but if some fun family member gets the login info, they also get the password and could make the so called share unusable indefinetely by changing the password. Nested album sharing would be with a link to all vacation photos, optional password and optional upload ability from multiple devices.

[atsza661]

I wish that actually nested them but I don't think we're talking about the same thing. ;-)

You don't think this nesting? Although yes we may be on a different wavelength

That is nesting. That is also just a file explorer not unique in any way compared to what Immich is. Alternatively you could open Windows file explorer and be done. No need for any photo managing software.

[kalebwd]

I don't need Immich to help me arrange photos in my file system. I can't help but wonder if anyone else does either? I think the main struggle most, including myself are having though, is with sharing. Nested albums, while it's own feature, seems like a logical step in that direction, or for the various other functions other noted here.

[Dezc]

I think Nested album is not the best way to handle that, but more allowing to add Tag to album, and creating "meta albums" that way. So I can isolate albums that refer to any topic that I'd like, without the trouble of nesting.

[kalebwd]

Tags are great, but for me this is absolutely NOT the answer for everything.

For example, consider the case (as mentioned by someone else here) that is a photographer. They may arrange events into nested albums for their clients, for example by type (Basketball Games vs. Football Games), then inside of those, by date (January Basketball Game, or Homecoming Game, etc.). Then for a specific album inside of that which now only represents photos taken at a specific Football Game, that is the time where tags become really powerful. I can now tag a player that appears in a specific photo, or tag what is happening such as "Touchdown", "Score", etc.

This would allow the photographer to share all of the albums with parents or clients, they could browse down to a specific event, and then further filter etc. by tag if they wish, but requiring that same person to know all the tags they need to use in advance assumes too much, and is incredibly messy and overwhelming at the top layer because it's not intuitive to how they browse files/photos anywhere else or in everyday life.

Consider a binder of recipes in your kitchen. I assume you don't read every recipe in a random stack, every time you cook to manually decipher which one is applicable to the type of meal (breakfast/lunch/dinner/dessert/etc). That would be silly and not very efficient. You probably have them presorted into (nested) groups within your main group of recipes. And perhaps then inside of that you have them tagged with things like "tried this one" or "liked that one" or "Chicken" vs "Beef", or maybe "fast/15 minutes" or maybe "crockpot".

Using this example, in the case of Immich it’s sort of like my friend says “hey can I borrow that cookbook?” I currently have to say something like “sure, but I can only share the chicken recipes I have for breakfast”. Then maybe I can share the next group separately.

My best friend is a food stylist and organizes her photo portfolio in much this style, so this recipe example isn’t far off from a real use case.

Nobody is forcing you to nest anything if you don't want to though. If you prefer just have everything at the top layer and that's the style that works for you - great. But for many here, some sort of better organization is essential.

[rutgersmit]

Adding my +1 with a use case just in case it makes sense considering the development of this feature.

We organise a sports event every week on multiple locations in the country. Every event needs to drop their pictures in a shared album. It would be great to be able to add an subalbum per location so the organization can pick some photos per event (all pictures look about the same so it's not clear from the picture alone where it was).