![]() Whenever you move a file-through email, into or out of a sync or cloud storage service, or to another device-you’re likely altering its metadata. “It” is “metadata” and it’s something everyone works with, even if they don’t know it. But anyone else can access the same data and enter it directly into Google Maps to discover exactly where that picture was taken! Not quite as useful.īut if you know what this hidden information is-and how to use it-it can be incredibly helpful in diagnosing problems with files, organizing or protecting data, and even removing information you don’t want revealed! If you don’t, it can be a huge annoyance, and potentially even dangerous. For example, the image in the header reveals latitude and longitude details in an iPhone photo that you could use to organize the photo and find others taken in the same place. Install exiftool on your chosen Nextcloud client.The files you use every day on your Mac or PC, whether at home or at work, carry around a slew of hidden data that can be incredibly useful to you… or problematically revealing to others. To get started using exiftool, follow the instructions below on one of your Nextcloud clients. ![]() The disadvantage is that there are some extra steps involved that may take a long time depending on the speed of your server. The advantage of running it on the server is that you can automate periodic scans of your photos so they are always sorted properly and up-to-date. Run a script on the data directory on the server. Run a script from a synced client computer. This way, no matter how you sort the images in Nextcloud, they’ll display in chronological order. The feature that solves our problem is the ability to read the original capture date of a photo and apply it to both the last modified attribute and the filename. This powerful command-line application allows you to read and manipulate the EXIF data of a photo. That’s where the wonderful exiftool comes in. To be sure that all photos in Nextcloud display in chronological order, we need to get creative. This is great until you get to photo albums, where the EXIF metadata of the photo is more relevant to sorting than the filename or modified date. ![]() Nextcloud is first and foremost a file sharing application, so it views files just as your file system would. UPDATE : Added methods to run the script on both client and server systems. NOTE: If you have a specific version of PHP installed beyond your distro’s default, you’ll want to specify that version of the binary above (e.g. ![]() */10 * * * * /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/nextcloud/occ preview:pre-generate Set the default thumbnail sizes by using the following occ commands: You can tweak them depending on your needs. Note: I’ve found that the below settings provide a good balance of resolution, performance, and storage usage for my environment. SSH into your Nextcloud server and follow the instructions below. Fortunately, Preview Generator is highly configurable. Once you add a lot of photos, you’ll notice that these previews eat into your storage significantly (sometimes more than the photos themselves). While the default settings work well from a performance standpoint, they cause Nextcloud to generate a huge number of previews and thumbnails for each photo. Click Download and enable.Ĭonfigure preview and thumbnail settings. From a Nextcloud account with admin permissions, navigate to the Apps section and locate Preview Generator under the Multimedia category. Install the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud.That way, your photos are ready to view as soon as you open the folder. To fix this, we’re going to use the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud to pre-generate previews on a regular basis. By default, Nextcloud generates photo previews and thumbnails on-demand, leading to slow load times. Let’s dive in! Previews and Thumbnailsįirst we need to fix Nextcloud’s preview generation. There are (2) pieces of software we’ll be using to accomplish this:īoth are freely available from Nextcloud and your distro’s package manager, respectively. The good news is that because Nextcloud is a wonderful piece of FOSS that we’re self-hosting, we can make some modifications to smooth out these pain points. You may also notice that thumbnails and previews take a very long time to load and flipping quickly through a bunch of photos becomes a painful waiting game. Since Nextcloud does not read photo metadata, your albums will often appear out-of-order. Unfortunately, displaying photos is not one of them. If you host and use a Nextcloud server, you know that it’s good at many things. Better Nextcloud Photo Albums with Preview Generator and Exiftool
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