Third-party app access support + Better Setup Documentation

[Moccassins]

Hello, I have already emailed @scubajeff about this topic, but unfortunately, I have not received an answer. So, I am now trying it like this.

I'm having a hard time setting up LesPas correctly, especially because I couldn't find any instructions on how to do it.

I currently use a Samsung mobile phone, which syncs the pictures and videos created with the camera to OneDrive via the Samsung Gallery app. This app also takes care of cleaning up my phone memory afterwards.

I would like to replace OneDrive. For this reason, I have tested various self-hosted cloud alternatives, including NextCloud. Uploading pictures has never been a problem, but cleaning up the phone and accessing uploaded data has been.

I would like to have it as follows:

1. Take a photo on the mobile phone → photo is saved in the gallery on the mobile phone.

2. An app, possibly LesPas, transfers the data to the cloud server at regular intervals.

3. After a certain time interval, e.g., after half a year or when the phone's memory is full. A cleanup is started on the phone, which removes all photos that have been uploaded and are older than the configured interval from the device.

I have been able to achieve steps 1 – 3 with LesPas so far. Now the question is, how can I access these pictures again? They are no longer visible in the gallery app used by the phone. They don't show up in the LesPas app either, but I can see them with the Nextcloud app.

I could now create a remote album in the LesPas app and link the pictures manually, but that would be quite a hassle. In addition, these pictures no longer appear in third-party apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.

The ideal behaviour would be for LesPas to replace the local files with a placeholder that downloads the original from the server when used.

Alternatively, when pictures are removed from your device, they are automatically moved to a remote album with the same name as the local album.

However, it is solved, the pictures stored on the server should still appear in WhatsApp or similar and be downloaded from the server if necessary.

Can I achieve this behaviour with LesPas and if so, how? Without the possibility of using the images stored on the server in third-party apps, this variant of cloud storage is unfortunately not suitable for me either.

I could cope with the behaviour myself, but I can't impose this overhead on my family.

Best regards

[scubajeff]

Seems like Gmail put your mail in spam. Anyway, I will try to answer this here.

I see the request feature is restore some photos from server archive to phone's gallery. Another user suggested the same feature in #128 from a different use case. My answer to this is still 'Not Planned' now, if not never. You can refer to #128 for my position on implementation of this feature. Having said that, there is a work around for your particular use case. a long time user @steviehs had made a scripts to automate the process exactly as you want it to be. Please take a look at it and we can continue this discussion.

In addition, these pictures no longer appear in third-party apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.
However, it is solved, the pictures stored on the server should still appear in WhatsApp...

I don't quite understand these, aren't those photos you shared to these social network been uploaded to their severs? Why you still need a copy of them in your phone in order to keep them shown on the web?

[0verEngineer]

I still don't get why you do not wanna build it in a way that it is usable for normal users as well.
I mean you have such a great app why not add features like easy setup and easy restore for users that are non techies.. I would like to use LesPas for the whole family as well but with the current workflow especially when setting up a new phone it is not usable for normal people, they expect to login and have all their stuff under their fingers.
I do not wanna stress you or anything but i wanna make clear that i think you are out of touch with your userbase.

[Moccassins]

Ok, I'm going to split this answer up as there is just too much mixed up here.

Point 1, restore photos as in #128

The issue of changing devices and therefore viewing already uploaded images should really be addressed. This is not an uncommon UseCase. Many people change their devices every year or two. Should these people all no longer have access to their already uploaded images?
The expectation is -> log in and you have access to all your uploaded content. I doubt most people want everything to be downloaded automatically.

Point 2, Uploaded images in the Gallery/Thirtparty Apps

Images that I have uploaded, I most likely do not want to keep on my phone. Simply if only to save memory. LesPas uses NextCloud to back up the images to the server. That's fine. However, I still want to be able to see the pictures on the phone.
Let's say I took a picture of the bride at a wedding. I know I have the picture and now I want to send it years later via WhatsApp. Then I go into WhatsApp and want to be able to select it. If the picture is on the phone, that's not a problem. However, if it is on the server, I cannot add it because it no longer shows up in the gallery and I also have no selection option for LesPas.
The desire here is to offload the images away from the device to its own server and download them only when needed. Presumably this requires a small thumbnail of the original to remain on the device so that the image is recognized by the user. When this is then selected, the original must be downloaded and used. I currently miss this feature in all cloud solutions I tested that are not called Google Photos or Samsung Gallery in combination with OneDrive.

Point 3, Why an album?

For photo enthusiasts this may seem like sacrilege, but for the majority of users out there it is reality. People want to have as little work as possible with their photos. This is why the automatic creation of "albums" or the assignment of pictures is so popular. Everyone you know uses Google's or Microsoft's AI features, for example, to sort and assign their images. Almost no one does it themselves anymore. Most users simply don't care how the images are stored on the server in the process. I used to work for a very large photo company and I know all these discussions about albums and how much work users want to put into their photos. 90+% don't want to have any work with it at all. Meanwhile even whole photo books are printed, which are completely created by AI.

I hope I have explained the UseCases well. If anything is unclear, I can try again.

[scubajeff]

The answer is No. I like the idea of making album. If not for this idea, I would not spend so much time in making Les Pas. I would end up with Syncthing a long time ago. I would recommend you try Syncthing too, if all your care is the gallery, I believe it covers all your needs.

[0verEngineer]

I like albums as well, nobody said you should remove albums...

Your answer does not address any of the 3 points made by Moccassins and i greatly agree with the first 2 points.
We would not create these issues and go through this sometimes painfully discussions if we would not care about the app. I find it very weird how you handle issues (feature requests) like this, we had discussions in the past and your behavior has stopped me from even trying to contribute to the codebase. This does kill a lot of the benefits about open source. We are not against you.

Have a nice day.

[scubajeff]

I have also made my point very clear if you care to read. If your requirement is backup and restore, syncthing will cover it nicely. Forking this repo will do benefit to open source for sure.

[0verEngineer]

No you ignored every single point that was made (you should care to read) and somehow managed to think we suggested that you should remove albums.
And we are not only talking about backup and restore here, there were more points made.
Also Syncthing will not cover the features and that is not even the point here.

I don't want to discuss with you again as it is a very hard thing to do i just wanted to give my advice and my thoughts because i think this could be a lovely app but i cannot stand this stuff.

Bye

[scubajeff]

I never think you were suggesting removing album. I'm merely suggesting user should go with a more proactive way to manage their photos, which is making albums, rather than dumping all their stuff in a garage and rely on some AI to sort them out.

[scubajeff]

@Moccassins your point 1 and point 2 seems to be similar requirement, which if I may, I would summarize as Archive Management. If you follow Les Pas's development long enough, you would know that user could browse and search on server archive in the past releases. I scrape that in the latest version because a new UX of Gallery management was introduced. I found it not ideal to blend the Archive view and Gallery view together like they did in the past. A new Archive Management feature is under development, you would expect browsing, searching and some other stuff.

Regarding your point 3, I'm already retired, Les Pas is a pet project for me to kill my time. Considering I will never gonna monetizing it (even if I do, Les Pas should be the last one in the list if it ever make it into the list), I think I do have a say here. I stated it not because I want to build a tool to entertain as much users as I can, after all there are plenty of great Gallery products out there already. The thing I want to do is to promote a way, which I believe it's better than relying solely on machine's computing power, to save our memory. And that is the practice of making albums. By revisiting, screening, enhancing, annotating the photos and sorting them into albums one by one, the memory will be much more vivid than asking AI to do it for you. I know most people would rather go the 'convenient' way, so be it. This is a tool I build for myself and to whoever like to share the same vision with me.