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• [x] I made sure that there are no existing issues - open or closed - to which I could contribute my information.
• [x] I have read the FAQ and my problem isn't listed.
• [x] I have taken the time to fill in all the required details. I understand that the feature request will be dismissed otherwise.
• [x] This issue contains only one feature request.
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Describe the solution you'd like I'd like the application to support tagging of media files, allowing users to tag any number of files with a short phrase that would return related items when searched. A single media item could be tagged with multiple tag phrases, and these should only appear within the application, without changing the EXIF data of the file.

Describe alternatives you've considered Users may consider grouping their media into albums (folders), but this somehow blocks the ability to discover different images based on numerous details. This feature would open up a great way to manage collections.

Additional context There are many ways to use this kind of feature, but trying to understand it can change the way you work with larger collections of images and videos. Separating vacation pictures tagged with "summer-2023" and "summer-2022", but still having some of the common pictures tagged with "beach", makes the whole collection more accessible and simply more user-friendly, if used properly.

It was reported several times in the original repo (issue 373), but unfortunately never made it into the application. I hope you will consider this idea.

This would simply be amazing for all users who manage their media files locally. There is another FOSS gallery app that already implemented this, Aves, but sadly the UI is outdated and this gallery app is simply better.

You could also add the ability to search for xmp/iptc metadata tags. In alot of professional photo editing programs you can automatically add tags to images - for example 'Mountains' or 'Cats'. Being able to search for these tags in the app would be amazing, since you can add the tags in one place and read them in another. This means that it doesn't matter what file/media viewer you use, the tags are visible everywhere. The same also applies to favorites.

Hope you are interested in implementing this!

@BabyBenefactor maybe #19 can help to automate this?

@BabyBenefactor maybe #19 can help to automate this?

Thanks, didn't know about this.

Still, it would be great to be able to search through the metadata with this gallery app. And maybe mark the files in metadata aswell when pressing the favorite button to improve cross-platform compatibility.

this seams like it could be broken down into 2-4 smaller feature requests such as:

• ability to view tag information on individual images
• ability to edit tag information on multiple images
• ability to filter image views based on a search query of tags
• ability to switch folder view to tag view

we should also consider the UI implementations of all of these

individual image things would prob just go in the hamburger menu on an image

but for the other two where should those go, should we add a new filter icon that opens a model to be able in the future for example be able to filter by other data such as image creation time, image location etc

and for the tag view option I would imagine that would go under the "Change view type" button

if we do go with adding the LLM tagging in the future we should also have an option to disable using the tags that it generates on both group and filter views as well as having a way to distinguish them and audit them on individual images

my personal desire is to identify faces. Not sure how that can be done on android locally but softwares have been doing that on desktop for a decade and phones are now just as powerful, maybe more but yeah. we should not have to reinvent the wheel.

@test2a grouping together similar faces is not that hard, the issue is the increase in app size depending on the implementation.

I don't think you understand what I mean. It's mainly about manual tagging, not some AI thing grouping images for you, nor modifying file EXIF data.

The user tags a group of images (img1, img2, img3, img4) with the phrase "landscape". In addition, the user wants to tag two of the first landscape images with "river". This way, when searching for river images, the user will only get img1 and img2 from this group, but all 4 files when searching for landscape. This is simple, but very useful.

Once the application has this simple tagging feature, we can discuss language models and other more advanced things. It's been requested for years, and if we have to wait a few more years because the approach is too complex, let's get it done in the simplest way first, please.

ya things should be 1 step at a time here:

• ability to even see tags on individual media
• ability to edit tags on individual media
• ability to filter view on tags for all media
• ability to groups view by tags
• auto person tagging
• auto image description tagging

we shouldnt be thinking about those last 2 until the first 4 are in because they mean nothing without the first 4, if you want those last two before the first 4 then just use another tool for it because it doesnt interact with the current tool as stands

Would love this as well, together to add comments to pictures. But I'd like this to be written in the exif data as well so that this is mot lost when importing images from a laptop (with digikam for me).

I'd also recommend targeting whatever metadata category/type is most common for desktop gallery apps, since images tagged in Aves show them as like comments or something in Gwenview. It was quite the buzzkill. I think it's XMP that Aves targets?

Tags seem interesting.

Though, I'm not sure it seem worth the hassle to tag photos unless the tags actually follows the file. So that they still appear when I either upload it to Nextcloud or to my computer and open it in Dolphin/Gwenview.

Then again, I can understand how someone wouldn't want the tags to follow the file.

I think it ideally should be possible to do both, optionally, although I'm not sure whether there are metadata standards for this or whether it needs to be hacked into the metadata where it "kinda sorta fits". For all I know, Nextcloud, Paperless, Dolphin and others might as well just have a db file for it.

There isn't any FOSS app that support searching EXIF data, at least that I'm aware of. Searching images by EXIF metadata seems feasible and would be extremely useful. I'm using Image Toolbox, which supports writing recognized text to EXIF as 'User Comment' value. I'd be extremely grateful for implementing this search feature in Fossify Gallery.

There isn't any FOSS app that support searching EXIF data

You mean mobile app or desktop? Digikam can definitely support searching via exif tags on desktop, hence the interest of being able to tag them on my mobile.

I also actually just realized that I can tag them on my phone with the default gallery app (not sure if it is FOSS though) by sliding up the picture, then I get the details of the picture (date, filename, size, path…) and on the image itself, bottom right corner, you can see a small hashtag symbol (it may take life 0.5s to be shown): clicking on it allows you to add tags to the picture… I have not yet tried to sync it to see if they are preserved but I have high expectations it will work ^^).

I think it ideally should be possible to do both, optionally, although I'm not sure whether there are metadata standards for this

I think I've seen 3 approaches (typically 1 and 2 used at the same time):

• Tag the file itself. Great for interoperability, but slow to index when searching and induce lot's of disk IO when adding tags (the whole file must be rewritten as its size is changed).
• Use an external database. Super fast indexing for searching a tag, but if you lose the DB, you lose all the data, and it will not sync. You can often sync the data back to the file, either on request, or automatically, e.g. doing batch edit to reduce IO if multiple tags are added to the same picture.
• Add a file next with extension .xmp to the picture (done for instance in Darktable), that only contains the metadata of the image. This way it will sync with the image, but has less disk IO since the file to modify is very small… But Darktable deals with huge raw files and edits them significantly (it even writes in this file the edits you made to the picture, like exposure change etc), so I don't think we really need this feature here.

So for me implementing 1 is the first priority, then 2 if FossifyOrg implements searching tags, and 3 is quite niche so I guess it's not needed.

There isn't any FOSS app that support searching EXIF data, at least that I'm aware of. Searching images by EXIF metadata seems feasible and would be extremely useful. I'm using Image Toolbox, which supports writing recognized text to EXIF as 'User Comment' value. I'd be extremely grateful for implementing this search feature in Fossify Gallery.

Pretty sure Aves can read and search EXIF tags, but I haven't personally tested that.

You mean mobile app or desktop?

Android app, I suppose there is more to choose from on desktop.

Pretty sure Aves can read and search EXIF tags, but I haven't personally tested that.

As far as I know, Aves supports tagging and searching images only by XMP tags (Dublin Core:subject). What I'm looking for is searching by EXIF UserComment tag ("0x9286"), which, according to Aves, belongs to EXIF SubIFD.

I hope I didn't mix anything up, I don't know much about image tagging.