📚 Library Management
The Library page is your central hub for managing your photo library. Access it by clicking on your avatar (top right) and selecting Library, or via the spotlight search (Ctrl+K → "Library").
Overview Stats
At the top of the Library page, you'll see quick stats about your library:
- Photos — Total number of photos and the number of days they span
- People — Number of recognized people, with a breakdown of inferred, labeled, and unknown faces
- Faces — Total faces detected
- Events — Number of auto-generated event albums
Scanning
Scan Photos (File System)
Click "Scan photos" to scan your configured scan directory for new photos. The scan process:
- Discovers new image and video files
- Groups related files (RAW+JPEG pairs, Live Photos) as file variants
- Creates thumbnails
- Extracts EXIF metadata
- Runs face detection
- Generates AI captions and tags
- Performs reverse geocoding
- Calculates CLIP embeddings for semantic search
You can also rescan to re-process all existing photos.
Scan Progress
Scan progress is shown in the Job System. The scan is split into smaller tasks, prioritizing thumbnail creation so photos appear in the UI quickly while heavier processing (faces, tags) happens in the background.
Nextcloud Integration
If you have a Nextcloud instance, you can scan photos directly from it without manually transferring files.
Setup
- On the Library page, find the Nextcloud section
- Enter your Nextcloud server URL, username, and password
- A green indicator will appear next to "Nextcloud Scan Directory" once connected
- Click the folder icon to browse and select your Nextcloud photo directory
Scanning from Nextcloud
Click "Scan photos (Nextcloud)" to download and scan photos from your configured Nextcloud directory. Files are copied to the local filesystem under nextcloud_media/<username>/ before being processed.
Video files are currently not supported for Nextcloud scanning (#278).
Library Actions
The Library page provides quick access to common maintenance actions:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Scan photos | Scan for new photos in the file system |
| Rescan photos | Re-process all existing photos |
| Train faces | Run face clustering and classification |
| Rescan faces | Re-detect faces in all photos |
| Generate events | Create or regenerate auto albums |
| Delete missing photos | Remove database entries for photos no longer on disk |
| Scan photos (Nextcloud) | Scan photos from a connected Nextcloud instance |
Service Management
LibrePhotos runs several background ML services. Administrators can monitor and control them from the Admin Area:
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| image_similarity | CLIP-based image similarity index |
| thumbnail | Thumbnail generation |
| face_recognition | Face detection and recognition |
| clip_embeddings | CLIP embedding computation |
| llm | Large language model for captioning |
| image_captioning | Image caption generation |
| exif | EXIF metadata extraction |
| tags | Photo tag generation (Places365 or SigLIP 2 depending on your Tagging Model setting) |
For each service, you can:
- View health status
- Start or stop the service
- Services are automatically started with Django and monitored by a cron job
Server Information
Server Stats
Administrators can view system information in the Admin Area:
- CPU — Model, core count, usage
- RAM — Total and used memory
- GPU — GPU model and memory (if available)
- Storage — Total, used, and free disk space
- Per-user stats — Photo counts per user
Storage Display
The sidebar shows a storage usage bar indicating how much disk space your photo library is using relative to the total available space.
Server Logs
Administrators can download the server log file (ownphotos.log) directly from the Admin Area for debugging purposes.
Image Version
The sidebar shows the current backend Docker image version. Hover over it to see the full version tag and git hash.
Management Commands
For advanced users with shell access, LibrePhotos provides several management commands:
# Scan all users' photo directories
python manage.py scan
# Full rescan (re-process all photos)
python manage.py scan -f
# Scan specific files
python manage.py scan -s /path/to/file.jpg
# Build similarity index for all users
python manage.py build_similarity_index
# Save metadata to image files or XMP sidecars
python manage.py save_metadata
# Start ML services
python manage.py start_service
# Clear site-wide cache
python manage.py clear_cache
# Create a new user
python manage.py createuser
# Create an admin user
python manage.py createadmin