Add a "Photos" Category

[AkiraKusanagi]

The PS3 and PSP had a Photos Category, it would be nice if the launcher had it too. Like, if the launcher had some kind of built in image viewer.

[EmiyaSyahriel]

About the Photo category, I have a bit of worry implementing this category.

A lot of people have a tendency to (accidentally) stores a whole lot of images in their device, either images from camera, screenshots, meme, images from WhatsApp contacts, etc. showing the list of photos stored in device might either slows the launcher a lot, or uses too much memory.

And also I don't think that an Image Viewer is a good addition for the launcher since there are tons of Image Viewer app available at Play Store, Well, it's simple to implement after all.

But, I might implement the category anyway, except that it will be hidden by default due to the given technical restriction, users might enable it, Only if they know these restriction.

And also I might need to refactor the code a lot to acommodate gallery streaming to reduce more memory.

Just a personal note

I don't know how much images I have in my Tab rn since I didn't install any gallery app there, But my previous phone have 2000+ images in it even though images that actually came from it's camera is less than 100 ever since I bought it at 2018 😅

[AkiraKusanagi]

What if the feature only added photos put in some kind of directory, for example, id.psw.vshlauncher/files/dev_flash/photos or something

[AkiraKusanagi]

That way, it would not have to put every photo and use like, 2gb of ram, it would only put the photos that person would want to see.
(Also, it would be horrifying and make the launcher run at like... 1fps if it scanned all the PPSSPP hd textures for my games...which is...over 40,000 files...😰)

[EmiyaSyahriel]

That's a good idea to only browse some folder for images, except that only this launcher and permitted file managers can access the Android/data/id.psw.vshlauncher directory (I will do read from it anyway), You cannot easily put files in there except you have hacked your phone.
But by your solution, I think to implement a list of user-specified Photo directory list, with the listing approach is one of these options :

• Filtering Media Database by the directory list. The launcher is still need to read all images from devices media database but not all of them will make it to Photos menu, I think this will be fine and a safe approach although it may cause the initial Spinning Clock loading will be longer.
• using File API directly and scan the directories in the list, This is faster than previous approach, however, Android will be upset and gives permission error if the Launcher is not Allowed to Manage All Files.

Do you have any thought from these options? Or you have any more ideas for this.

[AkiraKusanagi]

What if it had an option to select a specific directory to scan, like if on the "Photos" category, it was empty, but it had an option to "Select a directory". That way, it could just scan the photos in that specific directory. Like for example, in PPSSPP, you have to select a specific directory for games, or the directory for memstick.

compressed_recording_20230801_060458867.mp4

[AkiraKusanagi]

Like, it could say in the (Empty) Photos Category, "Select a directory", The person would then Press X (A, B, or click depending on the input device) on it, it would open the files manager, then select a directory, such as storage/emulated/0/Cross Launcher Images. It would then say something like, "Would you like to give Cross Launcher access to Cross Launcher Images?" Then they'd pick "Yes" and it would scan that specific folder and add the images within. Also, that way, it would be easier to put files for the launcher to view since it does not have to be in android/data/id.psw.vshlauncher/xxxx/xxxx, but a regular directory. (As in, something not in storage/emulated/0/android/data/xxxx)

[EmiyaSyahriel]

Oh yeah, the Directory Access permission request, I kinda forgot about that 😅. Sure, I'll implement it when I have the time, and It might not in the next update.

[Darthagnon]

Another idea: ability to pin photo gallery apps (e.g. QP Gallery) under the Photos category? Similar could work for Video and music categories: pin VLC, Cloudstream, MXPlayer under the Video category, Musicolet, VLC, etc. under the Music category.

I believe Android has some automatic categorisation built-in these days to the app drawer, maybe this could be leveraged to pin apps under the correct category?

[EmiyaSyahriel]

@Darthagnon Yeah, that's another great idea! The customization data (in addition to Android's app categorization on their manifest) is already there currently, so there shouldn't be any difficulties to implement it.