[Feature] toggleable 'private' mode instead of completely separated locked folder

[LnLcFlx]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

The locked folder is advertised as a feature to hide sensitive images from being displayed in the main timeline, as to not be seen by other people.
In my opinion, what this feature ends up doing is completely shutting a picture off from most of immich's functionality, something that I would rather expect from the archive feature.

E.g. I have albums where I want to include sensitive pictures (e.g. to share with partner/ other users).
I just don't want them to appear in my main timeline when I'm scrolling for a picture in public.
Also when I am at home I don't bother the pictures appearing in my timeline.

A better way to implement this would be to have toggle 🔒 in some corner to switchg to/from a 'private' mode.
When activating the private mode you are asked for a PIN like when accessing the current locked folder, and once activated private images are shown everywhere in immich (timeline, albums, map).
When turning it off (no PIN required), all the private images are hidden.

The 'locked folder' tab can remain to only see the private images (though I find "private images" a more intuitive name).
Also I would call it "flag photo as private" not "move to locked folder" if this feature would get implemented.

Might be related to #18470

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[ckewok]

Came here to create this same feature request since the locked folder is fine for a small number of private photos, but a photographer that has lots of private photos still needs all the search and display functionality. The best way I have seen this done so far is Mylio's use of Spaces. Instead of just having a "private" mode, having custom views would let the user set up all their own ways of viewing their photos based on tags.

For example, if a user has tags of 'private', 'work', 'family', etc., then custom views could be created (and when the view is created the user should be able to specify if changing to the view requires a pin) based on those tags. When the Private view is selected, all the photos tagged with 'private' would display. The Work view would display photos tagged with 'work', etc. Maybe have some out of the box views created by default like the ones listed.

For more examples, here is how Mylio uses their Spaces feature and the sub-page shows how to create custom Spaces with passcodes. https://manual.mylio.com/24.3/en/topic/browse-by-category-with-spaces

By using custom views, it's simply a matter of displaying photos with specific tags when in that view which maintains all the functionality and saves the headache of having to put files into a separate 'locked' folder or trying to create separate albums inside the locked folder

[zertap]

Tag based solution would be great.
I'd like to emphasis, that this would expand to many other possibilities as well.

Also currently, you cannot edit tags in a shared album view.

One example use scenario to describe the problem that this would solve:

• User has multiple shared albums with different people
• Albums may contain both sensitive and non-sensitive images. Consider the albums to be "all photos I have with this specific person or friend group"
• One friend doesn't want to see photos containing snails due to phobia, but the images are still relevant to the album and the rest of the people it is shared with. Or album with a person has photos from a vacation but also contains NSFW photos. Having the photos in the same album, makes sense, but you still might often not want to be shown the NSFW photos by default.

Solution, much like described in the above post:

• Tags can be edited from shared album view.
• Tags get synced to all users of the album
• Users can create filters based on tags
• Users can choose an immich-wide default filter (so for example nothing tagged 'snail' would show by default anywhere)
• Users can choose to have a "spoiler" or "blur" applied to assets with a specific tag, for example 'sensitive'
• Albums can have predefined filter-views, synced to all users. For example, album "Jesse & James" could have views "Everything", "Food photos", "Trip to Malta"

This tagging solution would provide many versatile ways to organize large albums, and collaborate on such organizing in case of shared albums.

[zertap]

Somewhat relevant feature requests that I found with a quick look.

[Feature]More support for tags #15313
[Feature] save searches as albums #8331
[Feature] Shared Albums in Search Results #2995
[Feature] Show only selected photos on a map - album, person, object, place, or search results #8681

Better sharing in Immich #12614

[Cedric-Boucher]

Upvote on this. I have the same or similar use case as @LnLcFlx, where I would like to share images in an album but not have those images show up in my timeline (and I might also want them to either not show up in my albums, or show up with no preview image)

[fivestones]

I like the approach @ckewok outlined. I'd add that I'd really like these types of photos to be optionally shareable, especially for partners sharing. I think @ckewok's approach would work well for this. If you shared an album that included private photos, they wouldn't be shared by default but there would be a pin protected option to go ahead and share them too.

[jjvanrossum]

Upvote on this.

I'd like to add that it would be nice to have a blurred thumb of the picture instead of no picture at all - even in the timeline. Otherwise there's no overview of what's in an album for instance.

Clicking on the blurred picture could open the pin-modal asking for authorisation.

[e3e6]

So I have a similar idea: blur 18+ photos or hide under 18+ icon so they all still exist in the feed

[SpeeterYT]

and detect via ml?

[grzywek]

❤️

YES. The +18 flag, AI detection, and blurring (not only of thumbnails but also full images — the idea is to avoid accidentally displaying them while browsing). I’m wondering if this should be reported as a separate feature. Or maybe it could be linked to the tag suggestion from #18645 (comment) ?

[SureSRM]

I’m fully in favor of adding this feature. There are many everyday situations where it’s useful to hide certain photos without moving them to a separate album. For example: I come back from a trip and want to show the photos to a coworker, but I have some pictures at the beach or in a sauna wearing swimwear that I’d rather not show. A simple “hide” toggle would be enough to avoid awkward moments without altering the original organization of the library.

I’ve also come up with a possible temporary workaround while this feature is being developed, and I’d like your opinion on whether it’s a reasonable idea or if it could cause issues:

1. Manually identify (or find via semantic search) the IDs of the photos I want to treat as private.
2. Locate the generated thumbnail for each of those photos in the library disk storage.
3. Apply a manual blur to those thumbnails using ImageMagick or a similar tool.

In theory, as long as the thumbnails aren’t regenerated, this should make the timeline view display a blurred version of those images. Do you see any technical drawbacks or anything that could break with this approach?

[developery-nl]

Upvote! Need something like this. Locked folder is not sufficient for a lot of use cases. But only 1 toggleable mode as suggested here seems too limited for me also..

I like to see the possibility to select for example only all images I categorized (or tagged as toggleable) like 'Work' , 'Private' , ' Family' , 'Hobby' or whatever , so I can easily switch from a different view showing a different set of images depending on the place I am (work, at home, friends).

So basically a toggleable 'View' of a set of images , as prepared by the user. Default is showing all images like now..

[bo0tzz]

That sounds like you’d be better off with separate accounts

[ensignvorik]

Agree with many of the comments here. I'm a fashion photographer but do the occasional art nude stuff, that I put in the locked folder, however I still need the search functionality to work when the folder is unlocked so I can find a particular model or location, but the images remain unusable with the rest of the apps functionality.