Ability to add sub albums/folders #552
Replies: 44 comments 25 replies
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Totally agree, it would be great! |
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Without sounding too +1sy, let me add that I tried achieving this with tags but that became messy quickly. Especially for people who previously organised their photos in folders and subfolders (e.g. to separate work and private photos, have albums for vacations etc) the flat structure of Ente albums is inconvenient. The only solution right now is giving these albums long names indicating some kind of structure, but with many folders that, again, becomes very messy. Thank you for considering this feature! |
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This feature is the main reason I use iCloud Photos and it would be great to have it in Ente |
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Lack of a nested album structure is the only thing holding me back from going all-in with ente photos. My photos are categorised firstly in folders by year, and then by event, particular date, person or topic. Allowing me to replicate this in ente would be a godsend. |
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Lack of a nested album structure is the only thing holding me back from going all-in with ente photos. |
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Currently on nextcloud (also sorting by year and then subfolders), but looking to switch to ente once/if nested albums become available. |
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Any word from the devs? This is a much needed feature. It's very clear that users want it. |
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Really missing the structure of nested albums / folders for organizing albums. |
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This is also a must for me. All our family photographs are organised into one folder structure on a PC, with sub-folders for years and then months/events under those. I have nearly 500 folders, and I've backed these up with the option to create an album for each folder, but now I can't share the whole lot with the family members I've invited into my account. It looks like I'd have to delete everything and start uploading everything again, losing the organisation of the files in Ente, or share all 500 albums manually! I've paid for a month to try it out properly and now I'm not sure if it's a good fit or not. But hey, it's still miles better than Amazon Photos! |
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I'm new to Ente. I like it but skeptical to subscribe to the premium plan due to the lack of nested folders feature. I read somewhere that this feature might be added to Ente. When will this feature be added? |
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Ability to use subdirectories is really needed. |
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I was testing out ente only to find out, that nested albums are missing. Too bad. I'll guess I have to wait untill this feature is here. Until then I'll have stick to some other solution. |
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I've already subscibed to ente.io and really love it. I'm already "all-in with 1TB. But the subfolder feature is something what i really miss! Tags are really nice to have but that isn't as helpful as subfolders would be. Please consider this feature request in the next releases. Thank you ente.io team! |
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Since more and more users are backing this feature, but nobody from the dev team seems to care: How certain it is for any activity on this forum to get attention? |
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Waiting for this as well. |
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I agree to @OsmoticAbsorption. I don’t mind having a flat album hierarchy if there is the additional possibility to browse the original folder structure (like in Nextcloud or Immich). Btw I observed a mismatch in the documentation in this regard. In the export section it is said:
What bothers me is that “folder structure” and “album structure” is not the same. Especially together with the statement from the albums section:
So does that mean when I export my data from Ente to a local machine, that the initial folder structure (I used during upload) will be gone and everything will be flattened? My suggestions:
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Seeing soon the option of structuring by nested albums / folders for organizing albums would be very much appreciated! |
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Much appreciated if this feature is implemented soon. Just a side note: It's not only about sub-folders but also about sub-sub-folders etc. A folder structure like it can be done on any file system. It is essential to be able to mirror the entire folder structure to ensure regular syncing between file system (OS) and Ente. I have about 1 TB of photos/videos and hundrets or even thousands of subfolders. |
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I just migrated a PC folder containing 20 years of pictures into Ente, only to realize afterwards that most of those had a subfolder "selection" to easily show a small subset of pictures of each event/holiday/... to friends. So in Ente, I now have about a 100 random albums called "selection". Oops. |
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Hello Guys, A +1 message here, but a highly motivated one: I am willing to spend some money with you the day this feature is implemented. The timing is very good actually, because one of your competitors (https://www.getmonument.com/) went bust, their device does not work anymore and we are many to look for an alternative. And because we are NOT coming from the ultra-simplistic world of Google photos, the nested structure is a must have here. We are approaching the Q4 2025. Any ETA to communicate, please? |
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Rather than implementing traditional nested folders, I propose introducing Spaces for logical separation and flexible access control. This approach would transform Ente's current fixed categories (Uncategorized, Archive, Hidden, Trash) into configurable spaces with defined attributes. Technical ImplementationThe existing special-purpose areas would map to the new architecture as follows: Each user-created space would have:
Gallery View BehaviorThe
This allows users to choose between:
Implementation BenefitsThis architecture addresses multiple pain points:
Technical AdvantagesFrom an engineering perspective, this approach offers several benefits:
Use Case ExamplesA typical user might configure:
There are many different reasons to keep pictures private. They might contain confidential data, be from past relationships, or be images that must be retained for work purposes but aren't pleasant to look at. The current hidden approach really doesn't cut it. This provides the organizational separation many users need without the complexity of deeply nested hierarchies that would complicate sync, sharing, and UI consistency. From my perspective, this would be the ideal solution. Implementation would primarily require adding a space ID column and updating views/queries, with permission logic implemented in just a few key places. Unlike a subfolder approach, no major rewrite of complex logic would be needed. More sophisticated permission features could be implemented incrementally over time. |
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Hey here, I would like to react to the message by ArminShupuk above: While I think your proposal is indeed very interesting, it does not solve the same problem we are dicussing here. Spaces are useful for cases when you want to split photos into... well, Spaces (work/home is a good example). But this absolutely does not tackle the point of the structure. Actually, the most important thing is to see that there are two different cultures of taking photos and this means we have two groups of users: 1/ A lot of people just take photos using their phone. The photos are organized in a single list and the people use built-in features of the phone operating system to find and browse the photos in the list. Yes - AI is and will be helping tremendously here. These people tend to have hundreds or thousands of photos in their "memory" and these photos have all the metadata needed and precise (time, location, etc). This is the market for google photos, apple photos and today's Ente. 2/ There are also people that take the photos with several devices: phone(s) but also digital cameras. These people then spend time treating the images, organizing them (copying to a single place) and they need to store them in their own structure. For this users, the manual sorting is an essential part of this workflow and cannot be replaced at all for many reasons. What's more important, these people tend to have many more photos: often tens of thousands plus lots of them being actualy digitalized versions of old pictures (so no clean metadata). There are dedicated products for the category 2 but they tend to target the professional photographers (which is a yet another category of users), they are very expensive, and have many useless features (like photo markets, etc). With the sub folders feature, Ente will clearly be able to addres this (not that small) group of users. The 174 upvotes in github shows that as well :) |
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Nested Albums will make me more likely to switch to a paid a/c. Multiple sub layers would be neat. Anyone know how many might be possible when feature arrives? |
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@maciekberry @iadaz I appreciate the discussion, particularly the distinction between the two user groups you've identified. That framework of mobile-first versus multi-device professional users is useful for understanding the different organizational needs at play here. While Spaces does limit depth compared to unlimited nesting, it's actually targeting the same core issue, just with a different philosophy about what depth is actually needed. The main point regarding folder structures is not to solve a UI problem by introducing more logic that ultimately needs manual management by the end user. Displaying year/month folders is fundamentally a UI problem and should be treated as such. I'll make an assumption, and if it holds true, then we don't need nested folders, just better sorting/UI features: There is no nested folder structure anyone uses with more than two levels that relies on context beyond date, time, people, place, file format, device used for capturing, or other popular EXIF data. Most "folders" in photo organization are actually metadata in disguise. These are attributes, not containers. However, we might want to use hard-to-parse, detect, or tag attributes as containers (spaces/albums) like event type (barbecue) or broader context (Private/Work), but two levels would be sufficient for that. Imagine a configurable view system where users arrange metadata layers to create their preferred hierarchy. In the settings, you'd have metadata cards you can toggle and reorder vertically: the top card becomes your first organizational level, the second card your second level, and so on. Example configuration: This dynamically generates paths like:
Notice the same album appears in multiple locations based on who's in the photos, essentially automatic symlinks, something most users wouldn't manually maintain in a traditional folder setup due to the complexity. Importantly, this dynamically generated structure could be synced back to your local file system, maintaining a 1:1 mapping between Ente and your device storage. You'd get the nested folder structure you want, but generated intelligently rather than maintained manually. For professional work: Here, "Work" is the space and "Marriage Photoshoot" is the album. Everything between (the year, month, client name, file type) is dynamically generated from metadata, not manually created folders. Here's the practical issue: if we implement unlimited nested folders today, within a week someone will open a feature request saying "I want my phone to automatically upload photos to Work/2025/December/ based on the current date" or "Please auto-file my RAW files into Client/ProjectName/RAW/ folders." Then we're building automatic folder creation based on metadata anyway. So why not skip the manual folder management entirely and build the smart system from the start? If we choose to implement both manual nested folders and smart metadata-based organization, we'll end up maintaining two parallel systems that accomplish the same thing, significant overhead for limited benefit. Smart metadata-based organization is where the industry is heading; if Ente doesn't build it, competitors will, and users will migrate to whoever offers the most intelligent photo management. Development resources spent on traditional nested folders are resources not spent on the AI-powered features that will define photo management in the next few years. Anyone skilled enough to maintain a large photo collection with many nested folders would also know how to automatically add metadata from the folders to the pictures. (If only the year is known, set it to January 1st at 00:00:00, making it clear it's a placeholder timestamp.) These power users are exactly the ones who would benefit most from smart organization features rather than continuing manual workflows that will inevitably become obsolete. It's crucial to distinguish between UI challenges and architectural decisions. Smart nesting, sorting, and filtering features would benefit both user groups (those who want automatic organization and those who prefer manual control) while traditional nested folders would primarily serve users willing to do manual organization work. Ultimately, both approaches converge on the same functionality, but one requires constant manual maintenance while the other leverages automation from the start. The question isn't whether we need organization (we absolutely do) but whether that organization should be static and manual or dynamic and intelligent. I'm genuinely curious: does anyone here currently use a folder structure with more than two meaningful levels that aren't just metadata in disguise? If you have folders three or more levels deep where the categories couldn't be expressed as date, location, people, file type, or other extractable attributes, I'd like to hear about it. I suspect these are absolute edge cases, but I'm open to being wrong. |
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Hey @ArminShupuk and thanks for your constructive comment. Two topics:
Classic example: I have a multi day event, and photos from myself several friends. What's more, some of the photos are special (like "kids portraits"). And the event did not happen in the same place. I could have such a structure:
As you see I am mixing things that could be automatic (like containerisation of the event in year/month) and things that make sense only in this situation. The final structure is absolutely custom and no AI in the world will be able to automatically create it. I could of course use custom EXIF metadata or other tags, and it would certainly be more powerful, but this would need an enormous investment in the user friendly software.
To sum it up: there are methods better than folders, I agree. In few years, perhaps they will take over. But in 2025, folders feel natural, can be powerful and their limitation is something that "average users" understand. |
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Good morning Ente team, I have read with horror on your Discord that finally, the nested folders are not planned for now "nested albums is currently the highest voted feature request but is not something we're immediately working on" This is bad. I trusted you and started to switch to Ente (and to pay) precisely because you promised you will work on it this year. I can very well understand that the feature may be slightly late, but such a statement is a serious blow for me. I am nicely asking you to reconsider that. Of course losing my business is not the end of the world for you, but stilll... It would be a shame. (I have also read that you plan to implement tags for now, instead. Perhaps some good communication about how the tags will fullfill the same need that folders would be helpful) |
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Lack of this feature is reason I won’t subscribe, had high hopes but seems will have to look elsewhere…. |
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Sorry to say that. But i am really annoyed how this ente is not responding to this major issue. We already explained why we would love to see this feature implemented. But until now there is no communication or any roadmap to implement this nor why this is not possible. As a premium user, already got 100k+ files and 500 GB of data on ente, i would like to see this this feature being recognized by ente. My subscription is still active till July. But I am already overthinking my subscription because my album is a mess already. Screenshots here, photos there, several different devices, documents somewhere in between. This is too much to handle if there is no subfolder management. |
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Hey everyone. Some of our engineers dedicated a month between September - October building nested albums, and came to the conclusion to pull it off with the finesse we would like, it will take us more than a quarter. Unfortunately, the infrastructure overhaul that is required is non-trivial. We understand this is important to many of you, but as an organization we are not at a point where we can afford to commit to this. We will add support for tags (#543) that will solve some of the use cases for nesting and sharing, but it will not cover all expectations discussed here. We do not wish to leave you hanging, so I will mark this feature as unplanned until we have more engineering bandwidth. Sorry for the disappointment. |
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Hey there, I may share my two thoughts,
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It would be good to organise albums into sub-albums to tidy things up.
Rather than everything all in one place it would be good to have seperate main albums such as "Phone Backup", "Personal", "Shared" which can contains albums within.
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