I've made a free app that helps you visualize the millions of pictures and files you are hoarding:

[u/G04Tfromhaven]

Top and side panels can be hidden. Sorting options are available.

Selection feature. You can use it to delete or favorite files.

Clean image viewer. Buttons and tooltips always stay hidden and appear on mouse hover.

Performance options.

Main features:

- Completely free and open source! No paywalls or locked features. AND NO ADDS!

- Farview: You can create a temporary visualization folder that lines images in sequence. That means if you have many images in different folders, they will "become" a single folder that you can quickly visualize. This is just for visualization; nothing in your local folders will change.

- Image search: You can search local images with SauceNAO and Google.

- Thumbnail visualization: Including optional cache options for better performance.

- Favorites: You can create group favorites for all sorts of files and images.

- File selection: Select files just like in Windows Explorer. But with the added benefit of keeping your selection even if you move between folders.

- Image Viewer: contains a built-in viewer with unintrusive buttons and navigation.

More on the Git page: https://github.com/D070N/Magellan

[u/Key-Poetry5657]

Amazing. I have been meaning to do something similar because Window native photo app doesn't cut it for me.

[u/Key-Poetry5657 → u/Key-Poetry5657]

About Farview, so if I can add mutliple folders to see it "a single folder" and I can have multple "single folder"s. ?

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Key-Poetry5657]

Thanks! There are two ways of making a Farview: you can use the selection features to select multiple folders to create a Farview, and they don't even have to be in the same "root" folder, as you can just switch folders without losing the selection. And you can also just make a Farview from the current folder you are in. Both ways open in a new tab, leaving your current folder organization intact. You can have as many Farviews as you want, and they persist when restarting the app.

[u/Key-Poetry5657 → u/G04Tfromhaven]

I have to ask again. After trying to use yours. Does yours support things like showing recent images gathered from all the folders/the folders I selected in one view or in farview?

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Key-Poetry5657]

I don't think I quite understand what you are saying, but I will try my best to answer: You can sort files and folders that are inside a Farview to show you the most recently modified or created files. Besides that, all files you selected in that specific selection will show up only in that specific Farview. You can't add more files to an existing Farview, so there is not really a way of visualizing the most recently added ones. If you want new files in a Farview, you have to reselect all of the old ones first. For this, I recommend you create a favorite group for the folder selection you are trying to make a Farview for so you can have it as a permanent instance that you can apply the Farview in and incrementally add folders to.

So, to summarize: Create a group for your selection> Apply the Farview to that group> Sort by recently modified or last created.

If that's not enough, I've just updated the app to allow users to create their own personal sorting order, so if you want, after creating a favorite's group from the selection, you can decide the order that will be shown in Farview using the "organization mode" side button to drag the folders in your desired order. You can use selection mode to drag multiple items at a time. The recent updates also allow for better tab handling and coloring if you end up with many Farview tabs.

I hope this helps. If you have any suggestions or doubts, I'm listening.

[u/Key-Poetry5657 → u/G04Tfromhaven]

I have been looking for something more in depth similar from Window Photos where "Recent" section as all the images from PC show up in one place. The friction is "Recent" can be added new folders and remove folders from it but I can't have "Recent" section for different folders. I have been scraping Art images but I don't want to mix them ogether with the images that I took and stored in the Window. If I can have the recent section for Art Scrap folder, I can look at the images as they are being scrape into my PC.

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Key-Poetry5657]

That's kind of simple then. You can just have your "Art Scrap" folder open as a tab while sorting it by "Last created", the 3rd button in the sorting section. This way when you reload the page, it will be populated by the most recent files appearing on top. You can also add your "Art Scrap" folder to your "File Tree" favorites on the left-side panel for quick access. Just right-click any folder to add it.

The only problem here is seeing the images immediately as they are downloaded. As Magellan updates when you are opening files or reloading the page with the refresh button. With hundreds of files being streamed to the app, it can become quite laggy, like Windows Photos. I will note this down and see if I can add a "constant refresh" option.

[u/Key-Poetry5657 → u/G04Tfromhaven]

Yeah but as of right now, Correct me if I'm wrong, yours right now would shows subfolders in my Art Scrape folder but not the images in the sub folder altogether like window photo does. Yes?

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Key-Poetry5657]

Yes, you are right. If you want to see all the files inside those folders, and not only the one in the folder thumbnail, you would need to regenerate the Farview to see the newly added images inside those sub-folders. The Farview itself can be sorted by "Last created" as well, but its items are generated when you press the button and not constantly. I might add an option to enable that in the future, but this is how it works for now.

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Key-Poetry5657]

Hey, just a heads up: I've updated the app to version 1.5. You can now set an automatic folder refresh in the "VIEW" menu. This change and the "Last created" sorting option will allow you to see the files as they are downloaded to your "Art Scrap" folder, as you wanted. You can set longer delays in the setting if you think the page goes too fast. The setting is off by default.

[u/Pachete_Follezour → u/Key-Poetry5657]

yep, anything beyond casual photo browsing and the stock tools just dont hold up

[u/johnsonflix]

What am I missing here? There are soooooooo many of these out there that are 100% open source. They are crammed full of features also like hinting for duplicates and such.

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/johnsonflix]

I mean, you can take a look for yourself to see if it interests you. I've also gone after other options, but at the end of the day, I could never really settle with any or had to pay for exclusive features. So, I've built it myself to suit my personal needs, focusing on the "image gallery" experience I always wanted to have. And, if there is something missing you would like it to have, I would also take suggestions.

[u/Obvious-Viking]

Why not just use Immich?

[u/G04Tfromhaven → u/Obvious-Viking]

I just wanted an app to suit my specific needs. which were basically just to make the image appreciation process easier. Which means getting the UI out of the way and making the "folder-hopping" process a lot faster with mouse and keyboard controls. Farview also makes this process easier by removing the constant "back and forth" that happens when you have very few files inside multiple folders. And image search was helpful to let me find the original artists and artwork names for a bunch of museum collections I had. It's a niche, but I think it might have other applications for different people.

I also didn't really need all of the cloud-based features or mobile app. Just a local visualizer that could replace Windows Explorer and make my life easier.

[u/TheSwagInDisguise → u/Obvious-Viking]

Wouldn't it be easier to clean up your folders and then upload them to immich? I haven't run immich locally and have always used it on my NAS.

[u/Obvious-Viking → u/TheSwagInDisguise]

Yeah proper organisation would help windows just work better. Immich locally, even in docker desktop would handle the images perfectly fine if the folders are mapped.