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Hey, thanks for the response. For a bootstrapped, engineering-driven company like Ente, product offers the best leverage for growth. We are not P0-ing nested f

Hey, thanks for the response. For a bootstrapped, engineering-driven company like Ente, product offers the best leverage for growth. We are not P0-ing nested folders right now because we believe there are areas within the photos app investing into which will provide higher revenue returns, that we can re-invest into increasing our engineering bandwidth. Now I understand the disappointment around us not prioritizing a feature that is blocking you from even using the product. It is a loss for all parties, but it is important for us to plan long-term. And while we're not prioritizing this specific feature, I don't think it is fair to say that we do not invest time into polish. We do care about our craft[0][1][2]. In case it helps, here's our product lead addressing the timelines for nested albums, and our perspectives around organization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lkTspvi_mM&t=367s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lkTspvi_mM&t=367s [0]: https://ente.com/blog/offline-gallery-faster-ml-family-feed-and-more/ https://ente.com/blog/offline-gallery-faster-ml-family-feed-... [1]: https://ente.com/blog/likes-comments-admin-settings-ente-photos-biggest-update/ https://ente.com/blog/likes-comments-admin-settings-ente-pho... [2]: https://ente.com/blog/introducing-rituals-public-links-ente-photos/ https://ente.com/blog/introducing-rituals-public-links-ente-...

codethief 6mo ago
Thanks again for the YouTube link – I hadn't had time to watch the entire video yet, so I wasn't aware your product lead addressed nested folders specifically. So how would nested tags interact with albums? Will I also be able to share (or contribute to) tags like I can share (or contribute to) albums? Actually, aren't albums already "tag-like" in the sense that photos can be assigned to multiple albums at the same time? > And while we're not prioritizing this specific feature, I don't think it is fair to say that we do not invest time into polish. We do care about our craft[0][1][2]. This was overly harsh, my apologies!
- vishnukvmd 6mo ago
  You will be able to create "smart albums" with nested tags, and share (and contribute) to them. Albums are tag-like in the sense you described it, but might be an overkill[0] for the outcome we wish to achieve - organization, sharing, and ability to respect original folder structure when a user exports their data. [0]: https://ente.io/architecture https://ente.io/architecture
  - codethief 6mo ago
    So if I understand you correctly, users will be able to share tags from a given album but you don't want to make tags separate collections (inside the existing album collection). But what is the alternative here if you want to secure access to the tags cryptographically (which I hope you do)? A few thoughts: 1. Let's say files inside tags use the collection key of the parent album. Access to a tag (e.g. if I shared it with someone) therefore requires access to the collection key, thereby potentially exposing the entire album. (E.g. if a government agency got hold of a public link I've shared to a single tag inside a bigger album.) Bad. 2. Alternatively, let's say all file keys of files belonging to a tag will also be encrypted with an additional tag key (separately from the encryption with the collection key). This is certainly doable and I assume you already do a similar thing for photos belonging to multiple albums/collections. However, with nested tags this might get annoying fast if a file key needs to be encrypted not only with the tag key of the tag "foo/bar/baz" but also with the tag keys of "foo/bar" and "foo". If you wanted to avoid this, you'd encrypt the tag key of "foo/bar/baz" with the tag key of "foo/bar" and the latter with the tag key of "foo". But then isn't this more or less exactly what you would do if you implemented nested collections? On top of this, you will need to store an encrypted map of tag -> tagged files somewhere both for performance reasons, for privacy reasons (if you stored the tags inside the files, you'd risk exposing them to people the tags weren't shared with), and to manage write access (contributions) to a tag. All this, I assume, is also what you do for collections. So then, all in all, how different from collections would tags really be? -- Irrespective of the encryption questions, wouldn't the addition of tags complicate your domain model quite a bit? You'd likely also need new API endpoints, and separate UIs for viewing photos belonging to a tag (as opposed to an album), sharing a tag, editing/renaming tags, …
    - vishnukvmd 6mo ago
      The way I've thought about this, we will not have "files inside tags", but we will have tags (foo, bar, baz) attached to a file as additional encrypted metadata. We have existing client-side infrastructure[0] that can create auto-updating albums based on metadata, and this can be extended to enable sharing workflows. [0]: https://ente.com/help/photos/features/albums-and-organization/auto-add-people https://ente.com/help/photos/features/albums-and-organizatio...

codethief 6mo ago

Thanks again for the YouTube link – I hadn't had time to watch the entire video yet, so I wasn't aware your product lead addressed nested folders specifically. So how would nested tags interact with albums? Will I also be able to share (or contribute to) tags like I can share (or contribute to) albums? Actually, aren't albums already "tag-like" in the sense that photos can be assigned to multiple albums at the same time? > And while we're not prioritizing this specific feature, I don't think it is fair to say that we do not invest time into polish. We do care about our craft[0][1][2]. This was overly harsh, my apologies!

vishnukvmd 6mo ago
You will be able to create "smart albums" with nested tags, and share (and contribute) to them. Albums are tag-like in the sense you described it, but might be an overkill[0] for the outcome we wish to achieve - organization, sharing, and ability to respect original folder structure when a user exports their data. [0]: https://ente.io/architecture https://ente.io/architecture
- codethief 6mo ago
  So if I understand you correctly, users will be able to share tags from a given album but you don't want to make tags separate collections (inside the existing album collection). But what is the alternative here if you want to secure access to the tags cryptographically (which I hope you do)? A few thoughts: 1. Let's say files inside tags use the collection key of the parent album. Access to a tag (e.g. if I shared it with someone) therefore requires access to the collection key, thereby potentially exposing the entire album. (E.g. if a government agency got hold of a public link I've shared to a single tag inside a bigger album.) Bad. 2. Alternatively, let's say all file keys of files belonging to a tag will also be encrypted with an additional tag key (separately from the encryption with the collection key). This is certainly doable and I assume you already do a similar thing for photos belonging to multiple albums/collections. However, with nested tags this might get annoying fast if a file key needs to be encrypted not only with the tag key of the tag "foo/bar/baz" but also with the tag keys of "foo/bar" and "foo". If you wanted to avoid this, you'd encrypt the tag key of "foo/bar/baz" with the tag key of "foo/bar" and the latter with the tag key of "foo". But then isn't this more or less exactly what you would do if you implemented nested collections? On top of this, you will need to store an encrypted map of tag -> tagged files somewhere both for performance reasons, for privacy reasons (if you stored the tags inside the files, you'd risk exposing them to people the tags weren't shared with), and to manage write access (contributions) to a tag. All this, I assume, is also what you do for collections. So then, all in all, how different from collections would tags really be? -- Irrespective of the encryption questions, wouldn't the addition of tags complicate your domain model quite a bit? You'd likely also need new API endpoints, and separate UIs for viewing photos belonging to a tag (as opposed to an album), sharing a tag, editing/renaming tags, …
  - vishnukvmd 6mo ago
    The way I've thought about this, we will not have "files inside tags", but we will have tags (foo, bar, baz) attached to a file as additional encrypted metadata. We have existing client-side infrastructure[0] that can create auto-updating albums based on metadata, and this can be extended to enable sharing workflows. [0]: https://ente.com/help/photos/features/albums-and-organization/auto-add-people https://ente.com/help/photos/features/albums-and-organizatio...