Search not working in Synology Photos

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Search not working in Synology Photos

146
32
NAS
DS916+
Operating system
  1. macOS
  2. Windows
Mobile operating system
  1. Android
  2. iOS
Hi, I migrated to DSM 7 yesterday and with it Photo Station > Photos.
I finally figured out how to get the Face Recognition working in Shared Spaces but the Search function does nothing.

All of my photos are in folders and the folders are all named like “Birthday” or “Holiday” etc. If I search from either a mobile app or web browser, type in “Holiday”, either nothing happens (browser) or search returns zero results (app). I have tried searching at top level folders and sub folders but get nothing, any ideas?
 
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I might give it a test but not something I really want to do, I have well over 50,000 photos going back - 20 years. (Sorted by Year/ Month/ Event)

I’m assuming a named folder should actually be searchable though? I wonder if search is using file attributes rather than folder attributes.

I have also just noticed that my smart filters don’t have anything in them to filter on either.
 
It seems that filters only work on the sub folder level when you are looking at a page of photos already. It seems to assume that ALL of your photos are in one place.

Search only seems to pick up on file level names, people found in Face Recognition or geo locations which is total shit.
 
I opened a ticket with Synology support and received a reply confirming that Search does not work in the scenario above. They have submitted a Feature Request for consideration (assume it’s been added to the pile of similar requests).

I find it staggering that a basic feature like that isn’t included by default. Who the hell writes the product specs for these things??
 
I had seen something before about all photos needing to be in one place before and frankly didn't believe it.
I wonder how Synology (who after all specialize in bulk storage) consider how it is good practice to have 50k photos (or even 1k photos) in one single folder.

Or are folders now considered passé? Next-gen computing / doc mgmt is here, clearly, and we didn't realise it.
 
I find it staggering that a basic feature like that isn’t included by default. Who the hell writes the product specs for these things??
Someone/group that has preconceived ideas of how things should be. I guess the requirements forgot that in iOS/Mac/etc Photos there is no concept of folders so searching doesn't address it in those applications, but in Synology Photos (Moments / Photo Station) the folder structure is visible and should have search available.
 
*meant to edit the reply above and add this. Oh well!
Or are folders now considered passé? Next-gen computing / doc mgmt is here, clearly, and we didn't realise it.
I've never got on with these tag-based, data dump approaches. Owning my own storage means I know where most stuff is and is organised in folders, to some extent.

I'm the the type that has very little dumped on whatever OS I'm using's desktop.
 
I can sort of understand that in this Mobile Device centric world that photos automatically backed up from such devices to an individual account/ space on the NAS could perhaps be used as a dumping ground and where face recognition and geo tagging could come in handy, but surely the shared space should be more organised than that?
Not to mention, a lot of people who do photography for a living use these NAS as storage and workflow, surely they use / need / require an organised file structure and some way of searching it.
 
Not to mention, a lot of people who do photography for a living use these NAS as storage and workflow, surely they use / need / require an organised file structure and some way of searching it.
And Synology Photos is supposed to merge the best of Moments and Photo Station!
 
January 2022, 6 months later, and this is not fixed yet. If I had known, I would have never migrated to DSM 7 because I’ve had so many problems since I did!
 
for a heavy photos catalogue use:
Piwigo (12.x ver) + MySQL and all is solved
include your existing photo folder structure (a symlik to them or a direct mapping)

Some corrections are necessary:
- avoiding spaces or diff special characters in the file or directory name solved by single bash command (due to the PHP setup)
- tunning the MySQL performance, when more than 60k photos are in the catalogue. What was tricky, but works. 100x better than the unclear and undefined setup of SynoPhotos - the reason for the slow performance with heavy catalogues.
OFC, for such heavy catalogues you need min. 8GB RAM in your NAS or whatever you called it ;)

Nothing is perfect. But one added value is there - you can't change your habits when saving your photos due to the SW for the photos viewing. Plus you have a direct touch with developers by Github channel, so you don't need to use the terrible Syno Support channel.
 
I have much regrets on updating to DSM7. A lot of problems:
- in the iOS photos app, it is only possible to search if you’re logged in as an administrator. With lesser rights search is just not available;
- same in the Android photos app
- in folder view, trying to scroll MOVES your folders, without any warning. Makes app unusable. Messing up data on a NAS by a regular user is NOT what you want!;
- photo’s cant be shown on a smart TV because the (only available) DS photo app does not work anymore and no new photos app is available;
- search (when logged in as an admin) does not recognise folder names. VERY annoying and makes the app useless;
- all kinds of basic photo app features are lacking. Did the developers ever use Picasa? Take a look!
 
I have much regrets on updating to DSM7. A lot of problems:
- in the iOS photos app, it is only possible to search if you’re logged in as an administrator. With lesser rights search is just not available;
- same in the Android photos app
- in folder view, trying to scroll MOVES your folders, without any warning. Makes app unusable. Messing up data on a NAS by a regular user is NOT what you want!;
- photo’s cant be shown on a smart TV because the (only available) DS photo app does not work anymore and no new photos app is available;
- search (when logged in as an admin) does not recognise folder names. VERY annoying and makes the app useless;
- all kinds of basic photo app features are lacking. Did the developers ever use Picasa? Take a look!
I agree 100%. You can add to your list the inability to share a picture from the photo app. I also regret deeply the update!
 
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I noticed the other day that Photos had an update on the DSM desktop. I have hardly even looked at Photos since the search function was useless. I noticed now that when searching for a folder name as something like “holiday” that it now populates some results, however (and I’m using an iPad for this) when tapping on the search result, the list just disappears.

I tried searching from both the iOS and Android apps but nothing comes up at all, hopefully this just needs an app update to get it working.

anyone else had any new experience with the search function in Photos?

edit, I just noticed Timo’s post above, yes, there is “some” search functionality if logged in as an Admin, but only appears to be face recognition, still not folder names etc. I also noticed previously that when trying to scroll through folder view that I ended up moving folders around which is really bad!
 
Just found another issue in addition to the above, search only populates 5 results even though there are many more folders labelled as "holiday" or "birthday" etc.

Also, Search only seems to work from an Admin level account.

I have reported all of the above to Synology.
 
I mentioned above that search needs to be done from an Admin account, however it only needs the user to be set to "full access" within Synology Photos.
I'm not actually sure what other implications that level of access had for a user though.

Synology confirmed in their reply to me that they are working on the search functionality in the mobile apps as well to be released later.
 
Synology confirmed in their reply to me that they are working on the search functionality in the mobile apps as well to be released later.
Well, we're still waiting for the much needed update....
 

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