Bug in organizing folders

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#1

I believe that Organize Folders has a serious bug. I just selected a folder containing photos from my iPhone. Clicked organize by year/month. It proceeded to organize the photos in that folder AS WELL AS the photos from my wife’s iPhone.

This is going to cause major marital problems. My wife has told me repeatedly that she needs a way to see HER photos. Now, thanks to “Organize Folders” they are all mixed in with mine.

In addition, the photos seem to be placed at random places within the folder hierarchy. I’d do it again to be more specific but I’m now afraid to use the feature.

#2

Do you have the same type of phone? You could organize the folder by camera if you have different phones.
Albums might be another solution for her to see her photos.
Lastly, if you apply her photos to a category and yours to another category, it would be super simple to filter hers vs yours.
In hindsight, where were you when you clicked organize folders? It will (or should) only organize the photos inside of the folder you select.

#3

@katie180, thanks for the reply. We both have the same model of phone. However they have different names. Mylio has been placing her photos in one folder (with her camera’s name) and my photos in another (with my camera’s name). That worked great until I used “organize folders”!

My folder hierarchy was:

  • Apple Photos
    – Phonon. (my iPhone)
    – 2020 (with subfolders by month)
    – 2019 (with subfolders by month)
    – New photos
    – iPhone. (my wife’s iPhone)

The photos I wanted organized were in “New photos”. (I forget the exact name.). I selected that folder (bold border around it) in the folder view and chose “Organize folder…” from the menus.

It appears that someplace it got the idea to organize “Apple Photos” instead of “New Photos”.

#4

this trips me up all the time. It might be the folder/photos inside that folder that you’re supposed to select? It would be cool if this feature was a bit more clear and allowed you to dictate exactly what should happen.
I wonder if there is a way for Mylio to pick up exactly which phone took which photo but in my experience with organizing folders, it only picks up the make and model (so wouldn’t know the difference).
Cant help you pick out the photos unfortunately (unless maybe Map view gives some good hints?). However, I would definitely put your phone’s folder in a category and your wife’s in another, this would help in these types of situations going forward.

#5

I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one that gets tripped up by this. I’m pretty sure I saw someplace else in the forum that someone else got tripped up, too.

That shouldn’t happen. Either there’s a bug in the code or this part of the UI needs to be redesigned. The photos to reorganize should be all the photos in the single folder that is selected (and its nested folders, if any). The obvious place to put the newly organized photos is inside that selected folder.

#6

@bwbecker Have you synced this issue to all other devices? If not, you can do a Catalog repair on the affected devices and Mylio will bring the catalog from the unaffected device over.

#7

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately the other devices were running, so sync started almost immediately.

I’ve fixed things up, but it’s a useful feature that I’d like to use. But after today’s experience (and some less wonky ones in the past) I’m now afraid to go near it with my actual library.

Is there a way to set up a small test library to test it?

#8

Do you have access to another device? If so you can create a new Mylio account with a throw-away email and try on there.

#9

@Mylio_Deon: Thanks for the tip. I simply created another user account on my machine for testing.

The crucial detail that I learned in testing that wasn’t in the on-line documentation is where the new hierarchy is placed – in Mylio’s root folder or in the Apple Photos folder (on a Mac) if that’s where you start from. If you already have photos in the destination location that are organized the same way (eg by year at the top level), the newly organized photos get merged. That’s often the right thing, but not always.

I was able to override the destination location by using the “Custom” organization.

I hope that the documentation at https://support.mylio.com/auto-folder-organizing/ can be updated to clarify where the new hierarchy is placed and that there are special rules in the Apple Photos folder.

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#10

Yes, it looks as though you figured out how the makers of Mylio set up the “organize folders” feature. I was also stumped by this feature and posted my concerns on this website.

Mylio organizes only the folder of images that is selected, but it places them under the default “Mylio Pictures” main folder UNLESS you use the custom feature to place them in another folder under that same directory.

You summarized it nicely when you said “The photos to reorganize should be all the photos in the single folder that is selected (and its nested folders, if any). The obvious place to put the newly organized photos is inside that selected folder.”

I agree, it should organize your photos inside that directed folder by default (or at least have an option for it) instead of assuming you want all of them under the “Mylio Pictures” folder.

I’m doing a similar thing that you are by keeping certain photos separate from others (my hobby pics versus my usual social pics) but also do this by selecting the custom feature and then type in the folder I want them all before the year / month option and then it organizes them the way I want.

I believe I had also revealed another “bug” or confusion with Mylio when I thought I’d save Mylio a little sorting time by selecting just the pictures of the folder-within-a-folder that I wanted reorganized and Mylio proceeded to resort ALL of my pictures again from all sources in to the Mylio Pictures default directory tree.

#11

Looks like even after a few software updates there is still some major problems with this feature. Using the auto-organize on my iPhone folder messed up big time. Good thing I tested this out at least with my single phone before importing my wife’s collection.

Let me recap:

  • A couple weeks ago when I setup Mylio initially with my iPhone. It synced all my iOS photos into a “Apple Photos / Jason’s iPhone Library” folder. But inside the photos were just dumped in there with no organization. So I ran this Auto-Organize on the “Jason iPhone Library” folder (by Year/Month) but now I see a bunch of Year folders sitting beside the “Jason iPhone Library”, instead of inside that folder which would be the intuitive location. So I then Moved all these year folders to inside the Jason’s iPhone Library folder. All good it seemed.
  • Jump ahead to today when I synced up my phone again. Now some more unorganized photos appeared in the Apple / Phone Library root. So I ran Auto-organize again, expecting it to distribute those files into the existing 2020 year folder. Instead it re-arranged all the previous year folders back out into the Apple Photos root folder. So then I moved the years back inside the Jason’s phone folder again, now the real disaster occurs as it ends up putting some of the Month folders up into the very root of the Mylio db entirely - ie. outside the Apple Photos folder beside a bunch of my other older photo collection source folders (non apple). So I see multiple January month folders for example. some have photos in the some do not. Total mess. And quickly it replicated across all my vaults and devices!!

Clearly there is something very wrong here, and in fact possibly this feature should not be used with Apple Photo syncing. The UI should warn more about what could happen, and perhaps not even allow this action on child folders. I dunno.

My confidence in Mylio has taken a hit, and that saddens me as I thought this might finally be the ultimate photo solution. It looks like after some more forum scanning there are various issues with using Mylio in combination with Apple Photos and iCloud. Not sure how to proceed…

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