🖼️ Viewing Photos

Photo Views

LibrePhotos provides several ways to browse your photo library. You can switch between views using the navigation menu or the header dropdown on the main timeline.

Timeline (Home)

The default view showing all your photos grouped by date, from newest to oldest. A scroll scrubber on the right edge lets you quickly jump to any date — click or drag it to navigate through large libraries.

Newest or oldest first

New in 1.5.0 Up to 1.4.0, every list was newest first.

To read your photos the way they happened, for example a holiday from the first day to the last, pick Oldest first under Order in Photo Display Settings (the gear button above the photos). The order is by date taken, not by when a photo was added, and it changes nothing on your photos or in your albums. It is saved to your account, so your other devices and browsers follow it, and it applies to every list grouped by day:

the timeline and the Favorites, Photos, Videos, Screenshots, Documents, Hidden, Archive and Trash views,
your albums and the albums shared with you, people, places, things, tags and folders,
search results grouped by day (semantic search results stay in order of relevance),
a shared library's timeline and public pages you open while signed in. Visitors without an account see public pages newest first.

The photos within a day follow the same order, and the scroll scrubber turns round with the list: its top is your oldest year. Photos without a date stay at the end in both orders. While the order is oldest first, the line under the page title ends with Oldest first.

Events always read oldest first, as they happened: on an event the Order control shows that and cannot be changed.

Scroll bar style

New in 1.5.0

The scroll scrubber appears when you point at the right edge or scroll a long way, and runs from just under the header to the bottom of the window. Pick how it looks under Scroll Bar in Photo Display Settings (the gear button above the photos). The choice is saved to your account and applies to every photo list:

Simple: a thin track with a handle you can drag. A bubble next to the handle shows the date you are at, and the years (or months) appear beside the track while you point at it.
Photo Density: one bar per month, as wide as the number of photos in it, so busy trips and quiet years stand out. A frame marks the part you are looking at, and pointing at a bar shows its month and how many photos it holds. Very long timelines show one bar per year instead.

Click a year or month label to jump there.

Filtering the timeline

New in 1.3.0

The Filter button next to the display options narrows what the timeline shows:

Media type: all, photos only, or videos only.
Hide from timeline: leave out Screenshots and/or Documents (see Fixing a wrong category).
Show only: Favorites.

While a filter is active the button is highlighted with the number of active filters, and the header says what is filtered. The filter lives in the page address, so it survives a reload and can be bookmarked.

Save as default makes the current filter what the timeline shows every time you open it, for example to keep screenshots out for good. Reset to default goes back to your saved default. A saved default applies to the main timeline only: Favorites, Screenshots, Videos, Hidden, Trash, albums, folders, search, people, places and public pages are never filtered by it.

Selecting all photos on a filtered timeline selects only what it shows, so Select all followed by Move to trash never reaches the screenshots or documents the filter hides.

Favorites

Photos you've marked as favorites. To favorite a photo, click the star icon in the lightbox toolbar (or press f), or use the selection actions menu. The star turns yellow once the photo's rating reaches the Minimum image rating to interpret as favorite value in your user settings.

Removing a favorite sets the photo's rating to 0, which also clears a star rating it had (for example a 5-star rating imported from Lightroom or digiKam). If you rate with stars, switch to stars mode instead.

Rating photos with stars

New in 1.4.0 Set Rating style to Stars in Settings to rate photos from 1 to 5 stars instead of marking favorites:

In the photo viewer, five stars replace the favorite star in the toolbar, and on the photo page a Rating tile replaces Favorite. Click a star to set the rating, click the current rating again to clear it, or press 1 to 5 (0 clears it). On a photo someone shared with you, the stars show the owner's rating and cannot be changed.
In the grid, a rated photo shows its rating, such as 4 ★, in the top-right corner. Unrated photos show nothing.
To rate several photos, select them and choose Set rating from the selection actions menu. Set rating is not available after Select all: select the photos one by one instead.

The rating is the same 0-5 rating that is read from and written to the file's metadata, so it matches what the mobile app and other photo tools show. Photos at or above Minimum image rating to interpret as favorite still appear on the Favorites page.

Hidden

Photos you've hidden. Hiding a photo takes it out of every view (the timeline, albums, people, places, search and folders) without deleting it; this page is the only place it still shows. To hide photos, select them and choose "Hide" from the selection actions menu. To keep a photo in your albums but off the timeline, archive it instead (see Hidden or archived?).

Where the photo shows	Archived	Hidden
Timeline (Photos)	No	No
Memories	No	No
Albums, events	Yes	No
People, places, things, tags	Yes	No
Search	Yes	No
Folders	Yes	No
Favorites, Videos, Screenshots and the other views in the Photos dropdown	Yes	No
Its own page	Archive	Hidden

Recently Added

Shows only your most recent batch of imports — the photos whose added date falls on the same calendar day as the most recently added photo in your library. They appear in a single flat grid under one "Added on …" line in the page header; there is no per-day grouping. Older imports are not listed here — use the Timeline to browse your whole library. With a media filter, the page shows the latest day a matching photo was added, for example the last day you imported videos.

Photos Only

Shows only still photos, filtering out all videos.

Videos Only

Shows only video files, filtering out all still photos.

Screenshots and Documents

Screenshots lists the photos detected or marked as screenshots. Documents lists the photos of receipts, letters, forms and other paper (see Documents). Both are in the Photos view switcher in the page header and in the command palette (Ctrl+K). When a photo is in the wrong one, change its Category.

note

New in 1.4.0 This applies to the Documents page.

Filtering a list by media type

note

New in 1.4.0 This applies to the labelled media button, its Documents only choice, and the filter on Trash, Recently Added, Without Timestamp, Without Location and folder pages.

Favorites, Hidden, Trash, Recently Added, Without Timestamp, Without Location, Not in an Album, search results, and the album, person, place, thing, tag and folder pages have a media button next to the display options. It names what the page shows: All media, Photos only, Videos only, Screenshots only or Documents only. Click it to pick another. While a filter is on, the button is highlighted, the header says what the page shows, and Show all next to it goes back to all media. On a phone the button is an icon with a dot while a filter is on.

The choice is part of the page address (for example ?media=videos), so it survives a reload and can be bookmarked. Every page starts with all media: the saved default of the timeline filter never applies here.

Selecting all photos on a filtered list selects only what it shows. In Trash, filter to Videos only, then Select all and Delete permanently removes the trashed videos and leaves every other photo in the trash.

Without Timestamp

Photos that don't have a date/time in their EXIF metadata. Useful for finding and fixing photos with missing timestamps.

New in 1.4.0 To give them a date, select them and choose Change date and time… from the selection actions menu, then Set (see Changing the date of many photos).

Without Location

New in 1.4.0

Photos that have no GPS coordinates, oldest added first. Open a photo and set its location from the Location section of the details sidebar; once it has coordinates it leaves this view. A photo whose coordinates could not be turned into a place name still has a location, so it is not listed here.

To give many of them one place, select them and choose Set location… from the selection actions menu (see Setting the location of many photos). Select all reaches every photo on the page, not only the ones loaded so far, and the page has the media filter.

Not in an Album

New in 1.4.0

Your photos that are in none of your own albums, newest first, so you can see what is left to sort. An album another user shares with you does not count: a photo of yours that is only in their album still shows up here. Hidden and trashed photos are left out.

Open it from the Photos view switcher in the page header (under Without Timestamp and Without Location) or from the command palette (Ctrl+K, "not in an album"). Select photos and add them to an album from the selection actions; they leave the list once it refreshes. Select all reaches every photo on the page, not only the ones loaded so far, and the page has the media filter.

My Public Photos

Photos you've marked as publicly visible, accessible at your public profile URL.

Folders

Browse your photos by filesystem directory structure. The root view shows the subfolders of your scan directory, each with a count of the photos inside it (including photos in nested subfolders). Click into any folder to see its photos and subfolders. Only folders that contain indexed photos are listed — folders that are empty, hidden (names starting with .), or not yet scanned will not appear.

When you click on any photo in LibrePhotos, it opens in the photo viewer (also known as the lightbox). This provides a full-screen view of your photo with navigation controls and a details sidebar. The photo sits on a plain black background in light and dark mode, so nothing of the page behind it changes how its colours and exposure look. New in 1.4.0 Up to 1.3.0, the page showed through a dimmed, blurred layer around the photo.

Arrow keys or swipe to navigate between photos
Thumbnail bar at the bottom shows nearby photos for quick navigation
Close button (X) or press Escape to return to the gallery

Linking to a photo

The open photo is part of the page's address, as ?photo=<id> (for example /favorites?photo=<id> or /album/user/12?photo=<id>). New in 1.4.0 Up to 1.3.0, opening a photo left the address as it was. That gives you:

Back in the browser, or the back gesture on a phone, closes the photo and leaves the grid where it was, scrolled to the photo you looked at last. Stepping to the next or previous photo does not add a step to the history, so one Back always closes the viewer.
Reload reopens the same photo.
A link to this photo in this view: copy the address while the photo is open. Whoever opens it sees the same page with that photo open, and can step through the rest of the list from there. A photo the list does not hold (on a page of the timeline that has not loaded yet, or hidden by a filter) opens on its own, without previous and next. A photo the person may not see, or that no longer exists, leaves the grid as it is.

On a public album the same works for visitors, as long as the photo is in the album. The photo page at /photo/<id> is a separate page for one photo, without the list around it.

The toolbar at the top provides quick actions. From left to right:

Slideshow - Start or stop an automatic slideshow. While it runs, a dropdown lets you choose the interval (3, 5, 10, 15 or 30 seconds).
360° view - New in 1.5.0 Look around in a 360° photo sphere instead of seeing it flat. Shown only for photo spheres.
Select text in photo - Lay the recognised text over the photo so you can select and copy it. Shown only on your own photos where text recognition found text.
Zoom in / Zoom out - Magnify the image. Available for still photos only, not videos. See Zooming into the original.
Fullscreen - Enter or leave fullscreen mode for distraction-free viewing.
Copy to clipboard - Copy the photo as an image to your clipboard, ready to paste into a chat, a document or an email. It copies the display-size version the viewer shows; use Download for the original file. The button is shown for still photos, and only when LibrePhotos is served over HTTPS, because browsers allow clipboard access on secure pages only.
Hide / Show (eye icon) - Hide the photo everywhere but the Hidden page, or unhide it.
Archive / Unarchive (box icon) - Take the photo off the timeline and Memories, or put it back (see Archive). The box is teal while the photo is archived.
Favorite (star icon) - Mark the photo as a favorite, or remove the mark. In stars mode this is a row of five stars instead (see Rating photos with stars).
Share link (globe icon) - Create a revocable link to this one photo and show it with a copy button, plus Replace link and Revoke. The globe is green while the photo has a live link. This does not make the photo public; see Revocable Photo Links.
Delete - Move the photo to trash.
Rotate counter-clockwise / Rotate clockwise - Rotate the photo 90° in either direction (see Rotating Photos).
Toggle info panel - Show or hide the photo details sidebar.
Close - Return to the gallery.

The Hide, Archive, Favorite, Share link, Delete and Rotate controls are only shown when you are signed in. On a public or shared album page the toolbar shows just the slideshow, zoom, fullscreen, copy, info-panel and close buttons.

There is no download or share button in the lightbox itself (only the Original link on the zoom label of a RAW or other preview). To download photos, select them in the gallery grid and choose Download from the selection actions menu; the download dialog can also include the other photos from each selected photo's stack. To share photos with other users, select them in the grid and choose Sharing from the same menu.

To put a single photo on the clipboard, open it and press the Copy to clipboard button or Ctrl + c (⌘ + c on macOS). The browser's own right-click menu on the picture offers Copy image as well.

Zooming into the original

New in 1.5.0 The viewer shows a display-size version of each photo, 1080 pixels high by default. When you zoom in (the zoom button, a double-click, z or a pinch), it loads the original file in the background and switches to it once it is there, so the details stay sharp. Up to 1.4.0, zooming only enlarged the display-size version.

A small label in the photo's lower-left corner says what you are looking at while you are zoomed in:

Loading original while the file is on its way. The display-size version stays on screen until then.
Original · 6000 × 4000 once the original is shown, which shrinks to Original after two seconds. The viewer keeps the original until you move to another photo.
Preview with the reason when the browser cannot show the original: RAW, HEIC, TIFF and JPEG XL files, and photos you turned with the rotate buttons (the file itself is not turned). The Original link next to it downloads the file.
The original did not load with Try again when loading it failed.

Photos no bigger than the display-size version need nothing more, and animated GIFs always show the original. The original loads only when you are signed in and may download it anyway: your own photos and photos shared with you. Visitors of a public album or a public photo link keep the display-size version.

360° photo spheres

New in 1.5.0 A photo sphere is a 360° panorama: a phone's Photo Sphere or Panorama 360 mode, a 360° camera (Ricoh Theta, Insta360, GoPro Max) or a stitching program saves it as one picture twice as wide as tall. LibrePhotos marks one in the grid with a 360° badge in the lower right corner of its tile, and the viewer shows it flat, like any photo, until you ask for the 360° view:

Press the 360° view button in the toolbar, or v. The photo becomes a sphere you are standing in: drag (or swipe) to look around, pinch or scroll to zoom. With the keyboard, the arrow keys look around and + and - zoom, so while the view is on, the arrow keys do not step to the next photo: use the arrows on the sides or the thumbnail bar, or leave the view first.
The bar at the bottom of the sphere has Zoom out, Zoom in and Face forward, which turns back to the direction the photo was taken facing.
Press 360° view again, v or Escape to see the photo flat again. The next photo always opens flat.

The view loads the original file, so the sphere stays sharp when you zoom in; this can take a moment for a large panorama. It loads only when you turn the view on, so stepping through photo spheres costs no more than stepping through other photos. Where the original is not offered (visitors of a public album, a HEIC file, a photo you turned with the rotate buttons), the view uses the display-size version, which looks softer. The view does not turn by itself, and with Reduce motion set in your system it also stops at once when you let go.

The 360° view needs WebGL. In a browser without it, the button stays visible, greyed out, and says so when you point at it or focus it. If a photo cannot be shown as a sphere, the viewer goes back to the flat photo and says so.

Which photos are photo spheres: the scan reads the panorama information Google's Photo Sphere format puts in the file (GPano:ProjectionType is equirectangular; see what LibrePhotos reads). Phones, 360° cameras and most stitching programs write it. A photo without it counts as a sphere when it is exactly twice as wide as tall and at least 6000 pixels wide, which is what a stitched sphere without that information looks like; narrower ones are left flat, since some phones take photos twice as wide as tall. Flat panoramas (cylindrical) and 360° videos are not shown in the viewer.

Photo spheres you added before 1.5.0 are found when they are scanned again: run a Rescan once after updating (on the Library page, in the dropdown next to Scan).

Rotating Photos

The two rotate buttons in the toolbar let you reorient a photo in 90° steps — useful for images that were captured at the wrong angle or whose EXIF Orientation tag is missing or incorrect.

Rotation in LibrePhotos is non-destructive:

The original image file on disk is not modified. Instead, the rotation is recorded as an EXIF Orientation override stored in the database, and the thumbnails are regenerated so the new orientation is visible everywhere in the UI.
Each click composes on top of the previous rotation, so two clicks of the clockwise button produce a 180° rotation and four clicks return the photo to its original orientation.
The change applies to the photo for every viewer, not just your own session.
Rotation is only available for still images. Videos cannot be rotated from the lightbox.

Your Write edits to files setting (Settings → Metadata) controls whether the rotation also reaches the filesystem. This is a three-way choice, not an on/off toggle:

Off, the default: only the LibrePhotos database and thumbnails are updated, and the file on disk stays byte-for-byte identical.
Save to sidecar: the original stays untouched and the new orientation is written to the photo's XMP sidecar as XMP-tiff:Orientation, for every image format. Apps that take the orientation from a sidecar, such as digiKam, show the photo turned the same way (darktable ignores it). The value is relative to the image as stored in the file: for a HEIC or AVIF photo it starts from the file's own rotation (its irot and imir), not from its EXIF Orientation, which can disagree.
Save to media file: for JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WebP files, LibrePhotos writes the new EXIF Orientation into the original, so every viewer shows the rotation. HEIC, AVIF, RAW and the other formats are not rewritten: their viewers ignore that tag, so the rotation stays in LibrePhotos.

New in 1.4.0 Up to 1.3.0, a rotation never reached the sidecar, and Save to media file wrote a wrong EXIF Orientation into HEIC, AVIF and RAW originals (often the opposite turn), replacing the camera's own value. LibrePhotos' own thumbnails were not affected. If another app shows such a file turned the wrong way, set its orientation there or with exiftool -Orientation=....

The sidebar displays detailed information about the current photo and provides quick access to related content.

New in 1.4.0 While you edit the date, the caption, the tags or the location, a dimmed line under the editor says where the change is kept: Saved in LibrePhotos only, or Saved in LibrePhotos and written to the sidecar file (or to the photo file). It follows your Write edits to files setting, which its Settings link opens. All four are written to files.

Unsaved changes

New in 1.4.0 An edit is kept only once you save it: the check (✓) of the date, caption and tags editors, or Save in the location picker. While the date, caption or tags you typed differ from what is saved, an orange Unsaved mark sits next to that editor's title. With such an edit, or a spot picked in the location picker and not saved yet, stepping to another photo (with the arrows, the arrow keys or a swipe), picking a stack or similar photo, closing the viewer, or going Back then asks Discard unsaved changes? first: Keep editing leaves you where you were with your text intact, Discard drops the edit and goes on. An editor you opened but did not change never asks. On the photo page, leaving with an unsaved edit asks Leave without saving?, and reloading or closing the tab asks through the browser's own dialog in both places.

Timestamp

Shows when the photo was taken. You can click the edit button to modify the date and time if needed. Save stays greyed out while the time field is empty or incomplete, and the editor stays open until the date is saved; if the save fails, LibrePhotos says so and your input is kept. After a save, an Undo timestamp modification button next to the date puts the previous date back.

New in 1.4.0 A date you set this way wins over the date rules and is marked Set by you. To drop it, edit the date and click Remove timestamp: the date rules decide the photo's date again, so it keeps a date read from its file if it has one.

Changing the date of many photos

New in 1.4.0 A camera with a wrong clock, or one left on summer time, puts a whole trip off by the same amount. To fix it, select the photos in the grid (or Select all), open the selection actions menu (⋮) and choose Change date and time…. The dialog has two tabs:

Shift moves every selected photo by the same amount, so their order and the time between them stay the same. Pick Earlier or Later and enter the days, hours, minutes and seconds, or click 1 h earlier or 1 h later. A line spells out the shift ("1 hour, 30 minutes earlier"), and a table shows the oldest and newest selected photo now and after the shift. Shift stays greyed out until the amount is more than zero. Photos without a date are left alone; the dialog says how many.
Set gives every selected photo the same date and time, picked with the same calendar and time field as the Timestamp editor. Use it for scans and photos without a date. The photos then share one time, so their order on the timeline is lost.

When you save, a message says how many photos got their new date and how many a shift skipped. The new dates count as set by you: they win over the date rules, a rescan keeps them, and Remove timestamp in a photo's Timestamp editor hands that photo back to the rules. With Write edits to files on, LibrePhotos writes them to the photos' files or sidecars in the background, as XMP:DateCreated.

File & Camera Info

Near the top of the sidebar, LibrePhotos shows a summary of the current file: the filename (a link that opens the original file in a new tab), the image dimensions, megapixels and file size (for a video: its dimensions, duration, codec and size), and, when the photo has more than one file, the +N formats toggle described under File Variants below.

When the photo carries camera EXIF, two rows follow, as on a camera's own info screen:

Camera: the camera's make and model, with the shutter speed, the ISO and the exposure bias (1/250 · ISO 200 · +0.7 EV).
Lens: the lens, with the aperture and the focal length, plus its 35 mm equivalent when that differs (ƒ/5.6 · 23 mm (35 mm equiv.)).

A row the photo has nothing for is left out; without a lens name, the aperture and focal length join the camera row. Numbers follow your interface language, so German shows ƒ/5,6 and 8,4 MB. A shutter speed of a quarter second or longer is given in seconds (2.5 s).

Show more reveals the rest, with labels: whether the flash fired, the white balance, the metering mode, the subject distance and the digital zoom, then the folder of the file and any duplicate file copies. The button is not shown when there is nothing more. For the full list of EXIF fields, see EXIF Data. New in 1.4.0 Up to 1.3.0 the camera and lens shared one line, without the exposure bias, the megapixels, the flash, white balance or metering mode.

File Variants

If a photo has multiple file variants (e.g., RAW+JPEG pairs, Live Photos with embedded video, or edited copies), the file info row shows a +N formats toggle that lists them with type badges (JPG, RAW, VIDEO, META). Downloading a photo always includes every one of its file variants in the zip — there is no separate option for that. The download dialog's only checkbox, "Include all photos from stacks", controls whether the other photos from the same stack (bursts, brackets, manual stacks) are added as well. A RAW badge overlay is shown on photos that have RAW file variants.

For more details on how file variants and stacks work, see Stacks & File Variants.

Location

Displays the location where the photo was taken (if GPS data is available). An interactive map shows where the shot was made — you can pan and zoom it with the on-map navigation controls, and clicking the marker opens a small popup with the photo's thumbnail. To set or correct a location, click the pencil icon next to the place name to open the Pick location dialog. (The pencil is hidden on publicly shared photos.)

New in 1.4.0 On your own photos, the coordinates are shown under the place name (37.08990, -8.41280), with a button that copies them in that form for a map or a search box, and the altitude when the photo has one (31 m above sea level). The copy button needs HTTPS, like copying an image. People you share a photo with, and visitors of a public album, never see this line.

People

Shows faces detected in the photo. You can:

Click on a face to view all photos of that person
Edit the person's name by clicking the edit button
Mark a face as "Not this person" if incorrectly identified

Caption

The AI-generated or manually entered caption for the photo. You can:

View the things OpenCLIP detected, displayed as green badges under Things; click one to search for it
Edit the caption manually — type # to get autocomplete suggestions for thing album tags
Generate a new AI caption using the suggestion button
Use the AI suggestion button to quickly fill in a machine-generated caption

Albums

Shows which user albums contain this photo. Each album is displayed with:

Cover photo thumbnail - A preview of the album's cover
Album title - Click to navigate directly to that album
Photo count - Number of photos in the album

This makes it easy to see the context of a photo and quickly jump to related albums without leaving the photo viewer.

Similar Photos

Displays photos that are visually similar to the current one. This is useful for:

Finding duplicates
Discovering related photos from the same event
Browsing photos with similar content

Click on any similar photo to view it directly.

Photo Page

Every photo also has a page of its own at /photo/<id>. You get there from a link to the photo, by Ctrl + clicking (⌘ + click on macOS) a photo in a grid, and from a similar photo in the details.

note

New in 1.4.0 Up to 1.3.0 the page was titled with the file name and its full folder path and had no actions.

The photo or video is shown as large as the window allows on a neutral background, with Back above it (to where you came from, or to the timeline when you opened a link) and Open in viewer below it. Open in viewer shows the photo in the lightbox, for zoom, fullscreen, the slideshow and the keyboard shortcuts. When text recognition found text in one of your photos, a Select text in photo button lays it over the photo there too. New in 1.5.0 A photo sphere has a 360° view button there as well, which shows it as a sphere on the page; opening the viewer shows it flat again.

Beside the photo (below it on a phone), the page title is the date the photo was taken, with the time and the place under it. On your own photos the pencil next to the date opens the date editor described under Timestamp.

Under the title, labelled buttons hold the photo's actions:

Favorite: mark the photo as a favorite, or remove the mark. The button is yellow while it is one. In stars mode it is a wider Rating tile with five stars instead, which work as in the photo viewer (see Rating photos with stars).
Share: create a revocable link to this photo, as the globe in the lightbox does (see Revocable Photo Links). The button is green while the photo has a live link.
Album: add the photo to one of your albums, or to a new one.
Download: download the original file. When the photo has more than one file (a RAW next to its JPEG, the video of a Live Photo), it opens a list to pick the file from.
More: Copy image (still photos, HTTPS only), Rotate 90° counter-clockwise and Rotate 90° clockwise (still photos), Hide photo / Show photo, Archive photo / Unarchive photo, Open in viewer, and Move to trash / Restore from trash.

A photo in the trash, hidden or archived says so above these buttons, with a button to restore it, show it again or unarchive it.

Then each subject has a card, with the same editors as the details sidebar:

People: the faces in the photo. Hovering one marks it on the photo; you can name a face, confirm a suggested name, mark it as not this person, delete it, or mark a face the scan missed with the button at the top of the card.
Caption: your caption, with the Things found in the photo under it.
Tags: your tags, marked when they came from the file's keywords.
Place: the address and a map; the pencil opens Pick location.
Place's coordinates line, with the copy button and the altitude, is the same as in the Location section.
Camera: the camera and lens, with aperture, shutter speed, focal length (and its 35 mm equivalent) and ISO, the exposure bias, and the same Show more list as the sidebar.
File: the file name (it opens the original), its dimensions, megapixels and size (a video's duration and codec), the Category badge, the photo's other formats with a download button each, the folder it is in below your library folder, copies of the file and its stack.
Albums and Similar Photos, when there are any.

Details a photo does not have yet are not listed as empty cards: they are buttons in one Add details card (Add a caption, Add tags, Add a place, Mark a face). Each opens its editor straight away.

On a photo someone shared with you, the page shows the photo, its date and the name of its place, Open in viewer and Copy image, and says who shared it. Everything else stays with the owner, as in the lightbox.

Going to a page with the keyboard

New in 1.5.0 Anywhere in the app, press g and then a letter to go to a page. After g, a hint at the bottom of the window lists the letters; it goes away after a moment or on any other key.

Keys	Page
`g` then `p`	Photos
`g` then `l`	Library
`g` then `s`	Settings
`g` then `a`	Admin Area (admins only)
`g` then `j`	My Jobs
`?`	The list of keyboard shortcuts

The account menu shows the same keys next to its pages, and Keyboard shortcuts in it opens the list. The keys do nothing while you type in a field or while a dialog or the photo viewer is open: the viewer has its own keys, listed below, where g toggles fullscreen.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
`←` / `→`	Previous / Next photo
`Shift` + `←` / `→`	Jump back / forward 10 seconds (videos only)
`Ctrl` + `←` / `→`	Jump back / forward 1 minute (videos only)
`Escape`	Close photo viewer
`Space`	Play / pause (videos only)
`z`	Toggle zoom (still images only)
`v`	Toggle the 360° view (photo spheres only); while it is on, the arrow keys look around and `+` / `-` zoom
`i`	Toggle sidebar
`f`	Toggle favorite (favorites mode)
`0` - `5`	Set the star rating, `0` clears it (stars mode)
`h`	Hide / unhide photo
`a`	Archive / unarchive photo
`p`	Open the photo's share link dialog
`d`	Move photo to trash
`g`	Toggle fullscreen
`s`	Start / stop slideshow
`t`	Select text in the photo / stop selecting it (only on your own photos where text was recognised)
`Ctrl` + `c` (`⌘` + `c` on macOS)	Copy the photo to the clipboard (still images only; when text is selected, the browser copies the text instead)

The f, 0-5, h, a, p and d shortcuts act on the current photo and are disabled on public (unauthenticated) album pages. f does nothing in stars mode and 0-5 do nothing in favorites mode.

Seeking in Videos

Space starts and pauses a video. Holding Shift with the arrow keys jumps ten seconds back or forward, and holding Ctrl instead jumps a full minute — the same split VLC makes between a short and a long jump. The plain arrow keys keep moving between photos even while a video is playing, so skipping through a clip never costs you your place in the album. Each jump is confirmed on screen — the player's own control bar stays hidden when you drive it from the keyboard, so there would otherwise be nothing to see.

On macOS, Ctrl with the arrow keys is claimed by Mission Control for switching between desktops, so the one-minute jump may not reach the page there; Shift is unaffected.

Seeking is unavailable while a video is still being converted for playback: the first time you play a video your browser cannot play as it is, or any video when you have Always transcode videos turned on in your settings. For as long as that conversion is running the browser is never told how long the video is or how to jump within it, so the player says so rather than ignoring the key.

Videos your browser cannot play

Not every browser plays every video. H.265 (HEVC), which most phones record in, plays in Safari, and in Chrome and Edge on a machine with a hardware decoder for it, but not in Firefox or in Chrome without one. Older cameras' formats, such as MPEG-2 or Motion JPEG, play nowhere.

LibrePhotos asks your browser, for each video, whether it can play it. If it can, you get the original at full resolution. If it cannot, the video is converted to H.264 for you as it plays, capped at 720 lines, and kept for the next time you watch it (see Experimental options for how converted copies are stored). A video your browser says it can play but then fails to decode is converted the same way, automatically. You do not need Always transcode videos for any of this.

This applies to you and to anyone you share a video with who signs in. Visitors to a public album without an account are never served a conversion: they get the original, or a copy without its metadata unless every Photo Details setting of the link is on.

note

New in 1.3.0 On 1.2.1 and older, a video your browser could not play needed Always transcode videos.

HDR Videos

Most phones record video in HDR by default: iPhones in Dolby Vision, most Android phones in HLG. Wherever LibrePhotos converts such a video — the gallery thumbnails, and playback whenever it is converted (see Videos your browser cannot play) — it maps the picture down to ordinary SDR colours, so it looks like itself instead of washed out and grey.

In the photo grid, an HDR video carries an HDR badge next to its duration. Whether a video is HDR is worked out once, when the scan adds it, together with its codec and pixel format. Videos that were already in your library before this existed are checked by the Probe Videos job, which runs by itself after your next scan and rebuilds the thumbnails of the HDR ones, and of any 10-bit or 4:2:2 ones, so thumbnails that looked washed out or did not play are corrected then. See Job System.

note

The HDR badge, the scan-time check and Probe Videos are new in 1.3.0. 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 already mapped HDR videos to SDR, but could turn bright skies and highlights flat white; older releases converted them washed out.

Photo Views​

Timeline (Home)​

Newest or oldest first​

Scroll bar style​

Filtering the timeline​

Favorites​

Rating photos with stars​

Hidden​

Archive​

Hidden or archived?​

Recently Added​

Photos Only​

Videos Only​

Screenshots and Documents​

Filtering a list by media type​

Without Timestamp​

Without Location​

Not in an Album​

My Public Photos​

Folders​

Photo Viewer (Lightbox)​

Navigation​

Linking to a photo​

Toolbar​

Zooming into the original​

360° photo spheres​

Rotating Photos​

Photo Details Sidebar​

Unsaved changes​

Timestamp​

Changing the date of many photos​

File & Camera Info​

File Variants​

Category​

Location​

People​

Caption​

Tags​

Albums​

Similar Photos​

Photo Page​

Going to a page with the keyboard​

Keyboard Shortcuts​

Seeking in Videos​

Videos your browser cannot play​

HDR Videos​

Photo Views

Timeline (Home)

Newest or oldest first

Scroll bar style

Filtering the timeline

Favorites

Rating photos with stars

Hidden

Archive

Hidden or archived?

Recently Added

Photos Only

Videos Only

Screenshots and Documents

Filtering a list by media type

Without Timestamp

Without Location

Not in an Album

My Public Photos

Folders

Photo Viewer (Lightbox)

Navigation

Linking to a photo

Toolbar

Zooming into the original

360° photo spheres

Rotating Photos

Photo Details Sidebar

Unsaved changes

Timestamp

Changing the date of many photos

File & Camera Info

File Variants

Category

Location

People

Caption

Tags

Albums

Similar Photos

Photo Page

Going to a page with the keyboard

Keyboard Shortcuts

Seeking in Videos

Videos your browser cannot play

HDR Videos