GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 760340
Shotwell removes pictures when external harddrive is not mounted
Last modified: 2021-05-19 14:47:02 UTC
Shotwell automatically removes the pictures that it does not find from the library. Sometimes, the external harddrive I use for my photos, is not mounted correctly, or just not plugged in. Starting shotwell under that circumstances leads to that shotwell removes thousands of pictures from the library, without asking, within seconds. To get all pictures back takes an hour or more. I find, it would be better if shotwell would ask if pictures should be removed. Or at least an option in the preferences to change that behavior. using Fedora 23
They are not actually removed from the library, but marked as missing (shown on the Missing Files section in the sidebar), but I agree that the system as it currently works is not ideal. Perhaps instead of a separate Missing Files page the files that are offline right now could be shown inline with an icon and a tooltip indicating that they are missing? Jens, opinions?
I'm also curious why re-adding previously known but missing files takes a full re-improt
I've been rifling through the source tree, but I can't find the place where offline images get excluded from the other views. Any pointers?
I have found some of the handling for this and the initial sorting of photos to different bins in `init()` in Photo.vala around line 5000. It seems that the changes required to have offline images inline might go quite deep, so I don't want to invest too much into that before getting some indication that the end result might be acceptable. I do believe it would be much better UX to have offline images inline and while touching that handling there could be all kinds of other improvements, such as telling the user where the file used to be, offering to give a new place in case it's really moved somewhere else, etc. It's terrifying to watch all your images disappear from their usual places one by one in quick succession the first time (before you know what's happening). Regardless, on init if there seems to be much more offline than online images it would probably be prudent to offer to stop scanning and try again after the user has plugged in a hard drive or network mount.
@Daniel I agree, the scanning should be stopped when to many pictures are gone. Something like a confirmation would be good: "X files could not be found, should they be marked as missed?". How about making the scanning optional for very large libraries. Or make let the user initiate it.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell/-/issues/4682.