Improve Your Nextcloud Photo Experience: A Recursive Example

If you're a Nextcloud user, you might have noticed that your photo albums take a while to load. This is because Nextcloud generates previews and thumbnails on-demand, which can lead to slow load times. However, with the right tools, you can pre-generate these previews and improve your overall photo experience.

In this article, we'll show you how to use the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud in combination with Exiftool to create a recursive example that will generate previews and thumbnails for all your photos at once.

The Problem: Slow Load Times

By default, Nextcloud generates photo previews and thumbnails as you access them. While this might not be a problem if you only have a few dozen photos, it can become frustrating when dealing with large collections of images. This is because each preview and thumbnail takes time to generate, leading to slow load times.

The Solution: Preview Generator and Exiftool

To fix this issue, we'll use the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud in combination with Exiftool. The Preview Generator app allows you to pre-generate previews and thumbnails for your photos, while Exiftool is a powerful tool that can extract metadata from your images.

Here's how to set it up:

1. First, install the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud. You can do this by navigating to the Apps section of your Nextcloud account with admin permissions and locating the Preview Generator under the Multimedia category.

2. Once installed, navigate to the app's settings and enable the 'Download and generate previews' option.

3. Next, use Exiftool to extract metadata from your images. You can do this by running the following command: `exiftool -r -b -a -T /path/to/your/photos`

4. This will create a recursive directory structure that contains all the metadata for each image in your collection.

The Recursive Example

Now, let's put it all together with a recursive example:

`find /path/to/your/photos -type f -exec exiftool -r -b -a -T {} \; | preview-generator -i -`

This command uses the `find` command to search for all files in your photo collection, and then pipes the output to Exiftool. Exiftool extracts the metadata from each image and passes it to Preview Generator, which generates previews and thumbnails for each photo.

By using the Preview Generator app for Nextcloud in combination with Exiftool, you can pre-generate previews and thumbnails for all your photos at once. This will improve your overall photo experience by reducing load times and making it easier to flip through your photos quickly.

Remember to install the Preview Generator app and enable the 'Download and generate previews' option, then use Exiftool to extract metadata from your images. Finally, put it all together with a recursive example that uses `find`, Exiftool, and Preview Generator to generate previews and thumbnails for all your photos at once.

Exiftool recursive example