Allow content apps to choose where Tracker looks for data
Problem
GNOME expects users to keep media content in XDG content dirs (~/Music
, ~/Pictures
, etc.) so Tracker will index them and core apps will show them. However, users may not want to store content like this (often due to storage constraints, e.g. media collection on external hard drive).
Users can customize Tracker index locations using GNOME control centre (docs. However, some apps (Music, Photos) limit results to XDG content dirs while querying so this doesn't always get the desired behaviour.
Related discussions:
Possible solutions
The general idea is ...
- apps allow user to choose folder(s) to index
- on startup, apps call org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files.Control.IndexLocation for each chosen folder, to ensure Tracker processes it.
- access from inside Flatpak is controlled via a portal
When a Flatpak app bundles Tracker, there needs to be a way to expose chosen content to the app, so Tracker can index them and the app can access the content.
Related discussions:
Edited by Sam Thursfield