I can tell that this is a beta App, there is a lot to be fixed, but this is exactly the app I was looking for thank you so much for creating it.
I have a few suggestions
I have encountered a bug that my photos will “fail to load” when on the OG Plex app load the same pics perfectly fine
There have been other freezes but I can’t quite tell what I did to cause them
This app needs the ability to easily save photos directly from the app to my phone. (I have family, friends and clients photos and it would be frustrating when they say “send me that” and I can’t do that directly from the app.)
The UI is very nice but I prefer viewing from library view, it would be nice to make that the default instead of it defaulting to “recommended” which I find useless.
Thank you so much for making this app I’m so excited for what it can become!
this Beta looks great.
the only thing MISSING here is the Auto backup of the library.
or even an option to upload manually would do the trick.
is there a plan to implement this?
as soon as this is implemented i’m ditching iCloud storage.
Not having phone backup made me stop using the app. I liked it and all, but I don’t want to use a 3rd party app just to sync.
Heif/heic are stuff the server side should add if they want people to use this app. Right now it just freezes or doesn’t load a ton of my photos.
Heic and mobile backup are the two things for me to remove the library. I could use onedrive for a backup, but what’s the point if I’m going to be using Plex as a “no online cloud” alternative? As of the current moment, it is definitely cool to see photos making a comeback as its own app with “google like features”, although no mobile backup still kills it.
Been using Plex since the XBMC era… and yet this is my first post on the forums - hope this underlines my interest in the dedicated Photos app. Half a minute into playing around with the Beta, the thing I’d like to know is where do you want to get with the app?
Do you want to contend in features and functions with other commercial offerings e.g. Google or Synology Photos (or in the free, self hosted world, IMMICH), or is this just a side project to offload “bloatware” from the main Plex app? If - hopefully - the former is your answer, then pretty please have a look at what the competition has on offer and make that the bar to pass. I am fully aware that the app is currently a BETA, but based on the looks and features, compared especially with other in-house builds like the fab Plexamp, this lacks a multitude of features (time + date + location displayed while scrolling, collections + adding + removing items, search, custom thumbnail sizes in both the timeline and scroll-bar) that are required in today’s day and age to even be considered to contend with the above offerings.
Sorry if I come off a blunt and direct, but I’d rather give you my honest opinion and feedback than see this project end up dead in 4 months. If there’s already a feature request board, please share this with the community, so we can help you shape the best possible app that appeals to the broadest audience that benefits us all!
To add to the auto back up it would be cool to beable to do this from any device being that currently you are only able to do this from the host meachine. Another thing that would be cool if possible would be the ability to move photos from another cloud system without the need to download then upload to plex meachine. Thanks
This will be an amazing app if it will eventually allow us to automatically backup images from our phone to our Plex photo folder and also share images outside of Plex (along with shared albums). I used to use Google Photos until they limited storage space on their servers. Basically, I hope this will become the equivalent of Google Photos that I can save my images and videos on my own server.
With the current way of analyzing photos in Plex’s server app on Synology NAS devices, it is not doable to analyze photos. When you add 100 photos, you can already assume that your server completely hangs up. Analyzing takes way too much CPU and seems to be far from being up to par.
So why making an brand new app if you can’t even add photos to a library decently or faster on the server itself?
This needs to be improved before the app can really work. Otherwise, it’s not worth putting energy into this.
Especially with servers or Synology NAS devices, you have something to gain from this app because then you can really access your photos remotely.
And eventually there should also be a download option, that way you only need Plex Photos to get to your photos on all devices.
I also used plex for photos years ago when the auto-backup feature was still a thing, and would LOVE to see that again. Like many of us who run our own media servers, I would love to have my photos backed up on my own storage I’ve already paid for, rather than pay extra for Google One or the like. That said… I have grown attached to features like search, and AI-type integrations. PhotoPrism has the capabilities I’d like to see, I just haven’t made the switch yet. If Plex Photos could have the ability to integrate those features, I would absolutely use Plex instead of PhotoPrism.
I do love the idea of a dedicated photos app, btw. Loading the whole Plex app would often take too long when I just wanted to pull up a picture, so I do think that’s a good idea.
Auto-backup is a must though. I probably won’t be switching until that feature is back.
Have to agree, I was assuming the auto upload was coming along at some point too. It was there before.
Again, I’m very glad Plex is doing something about this problem of Photos/Videos. It is a true pain in the backside dealing with the GBs of data our families are producing with their phones and Google and Apple’s library solutions are to use them as spyware.
Plex has a golden opportunity to own this space. Whip out our phone and start browsing through with your family and friends wondering how they can do the same. They all know about Plex, making a Plex server meaningful to them can increase the market.
Photos are the gateway. Movie and TV Shows seem too complex to them, and honestly take up too much space for most people to handle. Photos will fit on their current 1TB or 2TB drives; just install a Plex server for Photos and call it good…“Now, how do I use this server for movies?”
I’m looking at the iOS (iPad) version. Photos take far too long to switch from the low resolution version to the true resolution (just like normal Plex in fact). How come it’s not as quick as other photo browsers?
It’s nice to see development here. I don’t have any feedback on the app as it is inoperable, as are most of the functions in the photo library in web browser and main plex app, because plex is still scanning my photo library. My library is large 1-2Tb and in the 100s of thousands of assests. The scanner agent is just woefully slow compared to competitors to ever think of moving to Plex. I started a photo library 7 days ago and plex is still scanning. This is on a dual Xeon server with 96GB of memory. Total cpu usage by plex has never exceeded 10% usually around 1%. I initially turned off some services expecting 80-90% usage. And there is no indicator as to the completion level of the scan. I may give it another week, but with the scanner being this slow I have little interest in using it as I am concerned uploading even a few GB of pics from flash drives would take days for plex to finish scanning.
Also to add, the scanning of the photo’s is slowing down the scanning for all other media. Adding media to any other library, music, or video is now slowed down by hours in some cases. Cannot force a scan from admin role and I have random crashes of all plex apps during navigation.
One main usage that would be very useful is the possibility to automatically upload/backup the phone pictures folder towards the Plex library for the android phones.
Loads of great suggestions in here, but my requirements are more basic.
Can we automatically upload from our camera roll? (I’m thinking as an alternative to Google Photos).
Can images and video be included, or is it only images?
Can I only view images that are on my server, and not images that are on my phone? I’m only seeing content from my server right now.
Can I create albums on the mobile app?
I’m delighted that Plex are exploring down this road and I’m hoping this eventually flourishes into a fully fledged Google Photos replacement. Thanks!
Edit:
Some feedback from brief testing. When clicking an image in “Library” view, the image shows “Failed to load image” with a scrolling gallery at the bottom. I can select other images from that gallery and they’ll mostly display fine but the image I select initially from the library view always shows the error message.
I routinely use Plex remote access to use Plex and Plex amp while visiting grandkids
Tried the Plex photos app. While it works fine when connected via lan, it does not find the photos while remotely connected. The library show up but there is an error message that there is no media
I have no issues doing this with the main Plex application
