hello guys, i'm a long time reader but first time poster so please excuse the normalgay language
i've head this idea for an app/desktop program for a long time now. it comes from my storage space constantly running out on my phone, with the vast majority of storage space occupied by image/video content from the thousands of images on my (android) phone, especially screenshots. it's basically a digital hoarder kind of issue
the idea is to create an app which randomly presents you with an image or video from your phone directory (like the DCIM, Download, Screenshot Messenger/WhatsApp/Telegram folders or whatever) and allows you to choose between keeping it or deleting it. this might be conveniently done in a tinder-esque left/right swipe interface. this would be more stimulating and careless than having to go through them chronologically which is impossible. a couple of minutes a day on this app and you could delete a bunch of stuff you dont need. also good if you have political/sensitive/explicit stuff on your phone that you forgotten you had and want to get rid of. this might be fun as well because you would discover a bunch of old photos/videos on your phone
this could be used on desktops as well for large files... just basically assigning every file in a directory a number and using a RNG to present you with a random file with you choose to keep or delete
any advice on more appropriate boards/websites to post this would also be appreciated. if i understand things correctly it should be too hard to create an app of this kind but it might require some pretty extensive permissions, idk
fix your zoomer attention span and go through your files normally
it's literally thousands of images, i'm sure many others have this issue. i just think it would be neat to be presented with random images and choosing whether to keep them or delete them. half of them are screenshots probably
take an hour to go through them
sure but then you have to keep track of what you went through... i want it to be an app you just effortlessly open and swipe through
then make the app already
you can do that, right?
no sorry man, i dont know how to code something like this. i'm above average and could definitely learn how to code but i need a sort of step by step on how to build something like this. i imagine this is what it needs to do:
1) scan directories containing imaging such as the default DCIM/Screenshot/Snap/WhatsApp/Messenger folders
2)assign every file a number
3) using an RNG, present the user with a random image
4) in the meantime, "render" och "cache" or load or whatever a queue of images forwards
5) allow the user to choose whether to keep the image, which does nothing, or to delete the file
that's it.
how do i make this?
you would need a computer to make an app and learn either android studio, flutter or react native BUT i think it would be overkill to make one when you could just do this in your gallery app. render image, you choose whether to delete. literally just do that
also, if your phone is 32gb storage or less, consider buying a new one. that's unusable now.
it's a 128GB phone, and the storage problem could be solved by just backing it up. the screenshot in the post isn't from my phone i know that's an old version of android
the original app idea was to free up space but lately i've just started to like the idea of making an app as it would show me old photos and let me delete anything compromising or embarassing such as screenshots of conversations or girls instagram pages or whatever that i don't want saved. later OS versions delete screenshots by default if you send them to someone but a lot of stupid shit like screenshots of a song still make up like probaby 20% of my camera roll
>girls instagram pages
sir why must you be like this?
You'd probably get the files in a list so they'll already have a number: their position (index) in the list. Then you can use RNG to decide which one to display. For example if the RNG spits out 3145 you display the 3145th photo in the list.
You set the upper limit of the RNG to the length of the file list, otherwise if your folder has less than 3145 files you'd get an error because the 3145th file doesn't exist.
Then you have to load it on the screen and figure out how to add a tinderlike swipe functionality to photos. Then figure out how to connect this swipe to actually deleting the file from local storage. You need to search forums and youtube for that.
You need to give this app max media permissions because none of the other alternatives shown here will do.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10467955?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpermitted-uses-of-the-all-files-access-permission
solid advice, thank you
>i'm above average
treat me like i'm absolutely moronic. what do I use for this? python? C++? kotlin? how do i give it permissions to delete files?
>it's literally thousands of images
just delete them all
works on my machine
just fricking transfer all the fricking files to a computer and put it in a directory named after the day of backup.
I don't have a computer.
ok then frick off
do the needful sir
https://www.xda-developers.com/guide-installing-and-running-a-gnulinux-environment-on-any-android-device/
how were you planning on coding an app without a computer
If you do have a computer, you shouldn't be on the technology board in the first place, then.
I could already tell that from the stupid "app" idea.
Why do you live in India? Why are you poor?
i think you guys are confusing me (OP) with whatever moron wrote this comment
i have fairly decent computer literacy and i used computers a lot as a id back when it was nerdy and weird to like computers. because i work as a doctor i never learned to code but i've tried building some simple things in python and taken the standard meme html/css/js online classes. but if you told me to build something like this i would know how. thats why i started the thread
I wrote a basic android app years ago but here's what I remember.
To make an android app you download android studio, and write the app in java or kotlin. You read the documentation (and forums) to see what tools are available to you to make it easier. Finally to test it, you download an emulator of your phone's model inside android studio and it will run the app inside it.
A script like this seems more logical and easier than an app.
1. Make a duplicate of everything first and don't touch it from within the script. It's a backup in case you rm rf ./*
2. Run your "save or delete script" in the original folder, moving anything you want to keep to saved_folder and things you want to discard to a "deleted_folder".
3. Once the original folder is empty you'll know that everything has been sorted.
4. If the results look good, wipe your phone of all photos and replace it with the ones from saved_folder.
If anything goes wrong you have two backups, the entire backup and the deleted_folder.
The hardest part will be opening the file itself if you're not in a PC (Termux can do some things with its native launch feature, but is limited thanks to Android's sandboxing, never used it much thi. On a PC, copying all files to a temp location (even RAM) then calling an image viewer through CLI is trivial) just get some refurbished 200$ laptop and install anything. Xubuntu or WSL or whatever, as long as SSH and Python are around.
Ssh? If you're just gonna copy everything to a PC to sort it there why not just use KDE Connect and do it in two taps? SFTP makes some sense if all data must stay within the device.
i back up my phone fairly regularly but i think i would like the idea of getting rid of stuff, like cleaning, weeding out the screenshots from the actual photos and "valuable" images
but yeah this is a good idea, maybe it's easier to move all the files to a computer and arrange them nicer, in the same folder or whatever. maybe this thing is easierto build on a computer. as you guys can tell i don't know how to code but would like some pointers on how to get started
You could do this with a Python script and mounting your phone's storage over SFTP. Walk over the directory, choose a random file, ask if you want to keep it, then move it into a safe spot (choose and set a directory beforehand) away from the rest while you delete what you don't care about. Just make sure you use a Venv if you need any dependency to access files through SFTP.
this was really good advice. thank you
Sounds like a good idea. If nothing else, you'll learn something from creating it. But try asking at lainchan. It's slow but higher quality posts.
thank you for your kind advice. i'll take a look
Sounds fun
ILL MAKE THE LOGO
bash script with viu or whatever terminal image viewer you want
i appreciate the help but i dont know what this means. i need someone to break it down to me without any prerequisite skills apart from above average computer literacy
it's 10 lines of bash script but I didn't notice that you're a phoneBlack person
damn that's crazy
yes this is exactly what i envisioned. import a random image from one or several specified directories and choose whether to delete or to go to the next photo. no fancy ui or anything.
this is exactly what i wanted to build
sure
#!/bin/bash
for jpeg_file in *.jpeg; do
viu "$jpeg_file"
echo -n "Delet? (Y/N): "
read -r choice
case "$choice" in
[Yy]) rm "$jpeg_file" ;;
[Nn]) continue ;;
esac
done
needs a terminal emulator with graphical capabilities (like kitty) and a terminal image viewer (like viu), that's all
you may be able to modify it for a lagdroid app but I wouldn't know how
this is so cool. yeah, looking at the code i see how simple it is
thank you very much, i'm pretty impressed
i imagined that it would be fairly easy to create for someone with coding skills. would you mind showing me how you did it? can you post the code?
Blast it with piss
actually guys i think i'm too stupid for making this, can you guys make it for me
Sirs please I have 10000 images of Whyte woman's boobies on my phone. Pls help sirs I need to must code an app. I am really smart sirs please do the needful.
Store your shit on a suitably large microSD card like adults do, or on USB C flash drives, or on your PC. Not being stupid is a useful trait and if you hoard you NEED backups in case of phone death.
Rule of 3s is life.
maybe i'm autistic for wanting to delete them instead of just moving everything to a hard drive but i think it would feel good. i think its fairly normal to have thousands of images on their phones especially if they screenshot an save lots of memes, picrel.
Move photos and downloads to SD card duh. Works on my poco x3 nfc
This would be fairly easy to make and would be a good "first app" goal to motivate you to learn to code.
I'd start by googling "android photo gallery app tutorial" and follow one of those to make a gallery, then modify to show images randomly and add the tinder UI.
Google files, the app, literally does everything op. Just download it and have it look for dupes and shit you're asking
Why would you even need to an app for that?
>le digital minimalism le need an app telling me to delete things le leeeeee
Good god you're mental.
Manually managing photos is stoneaged shit. These days you use your local AI model to scan all your photos and auto tag and sort them.
Do you have an iPhone?
OUR Idea op