Browse & Search By Folders?

[JGKle]

I'm looking for an open-source alternative to Synology's Photos app; my use case is accessing a photo library hosted on a NAS from an Android device. I gave the Photonix Android app a try with the demo instance, but wasn't able to determine: is there any way to browse the "file structure" layout directly? And likewise, to have "Search" return photos based on terms in their pathname?

Specifically: Although I realize metadata tags are more versatile, I have a very large existing photo library that's organized via folder names. Thus it's essential to be able to navigate by folder, as well as search for terms that appear in pathnames. I don't think this is currently possible, but just thought I'd ask to be sure :)

Thanks in advance

[fred1701d]

I'm also looking for an application that allows to browse photos by folder. All my photos are already sorted by folder.
If this is implemented, I'll give Photonix another try

[sammy-assistant]

Hi! Thanks for raising this — browsing by folder structure is a commonly requested feature for photo management apps, especially for people who've already organised their collections into meaningful directories.

Good news: Photonix already stores the full file path for every photo internally (PhotoFile.path), so the data needed to support this is already in the database. What's missing is:

1. A GraphQL filter to query photos by directory path (prefix matching)
2. A query to list the unique directory tree from existing photos
3. A frontend UI for browsing/navigating the folder structure

This is on our radar as something we'd like to add. The backend portion is fairly straightforward given the existing data model — the main effort would be the frontend folder navigation UI.

We'll keep this open and update when there's progress. If anyone's interested in contributing, the starting point would be adding a path filter to PhotoFilter in photonix/photos/schema.py. 🦊