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Use your Personal Space in View

Use View in Tuvima Library for your photos, videos, and other local media. This five-minute guide explains your Personal Space, sharing, and current limits.

Choose a space

Each enabled profile owns one Personal Space. Several folders or devices can feed it. They do not become separate libraries.

Mine shows your personal media that you can access. Shared Library holds accepted household media in separate storage. Shared access does not open another profile’s whole Personal Space.

Your admin controls View access. Check the scope selector before you share or sort items. It tells you whose media you are browsing.

Add files

There is one place to put new photos and videos: the Import area. It sits outside every library folder, so a library folder only ever holds filed photos.

  • Add files from a browser. Open View > Photos and select Mine, use the upload action and choose your files. They are checked and filed straight away.
  • Copy files in. An administrator opens Settings > Libraries > View > Photos (or Personal videos) and sees the Import folder’s path on the Folders tab. Copy files there, or use Add files and Scan now on that page. A file in a folder named Shared goes to the Shared Library, a folder named after a person goes to that person’s library, and anything else goes to the first administrator’s library.
  • Phone backup goes through the same checks into the person the phone backs up.

Library waits until a copied file stops changing, then files it by the day it was taken (the camera’s date, otherwise a date in the file name, otherwise the file’s own date) as Year/Year-Month-Day/original name. A RAW with its JPEG and sidecar, and a Live Photo with its video, are filed together under the same base name. An administrator can change the folder layout on the File handling tab; only files filed from then on follow it.

Before anything is copied Library checks that the drive has room and says how much is needed and how much is free if it does not. A file that is damaged, empty, not a photo or video, or has a name the disk cannot store is refused with a plain reason: it moves to the Rejected area, is listed on the library’s Activity tab, and is removed on its own after 30 days (an administrator can remove it sooner). An exact copy of something already in your library is skipped and counted as “already in your library”; the Keep one copy / Keep both setting still decides what happens to a copy that is allowed in.

Each library page for Photos and Personal videos has an Activity tab: what was added, skipped and refused, newest first, as counts and reasons only.

To add a folder source, ask an admin to open Settings > Libraries > View and choose Photos, Personal videos or Documents. The page has the same tabs as any library: Folders, Access and File handling. In Folders, Add folder defaults to a new managed folder; everything inside a folder is read, subfolders included. Import folder copies files into managed storage. Link existing folder scans an outside folder read-only. It leaves the original files where they are.

Tidy this folder and duplicates

On the Folders tab, a managed folder has Tidy this folder by date. It renames the files already in the folder into the date layout, inside the same folder, so nothing is copied and no extra space is needed. Library tells you how many files will be renamed and warns that new files for that library wait until it finishes. A run can also be set to repeat every night. If the server is stopped part way, the run carries on from where it stopped without losing or repeating a file.

On the File handling tab, Duplicates lists exact copies that are already in the Shared Library or in your own library, found by a nightly check or Look for duplicates. Keep this one moves the others to Trash (never straight to deletion); Leave them dismisses the group until more copies turn up. An administrator never sees another person’s private photos here. Contributing a photo to the Shared Library that is already there is refused with “Already in the Shared Library”.

Detaching a source does not delete its files. Source and device records exist today. Phone backup, device sync, and auto-upload clients are not complete products yet.

Browse Photos

Photos groups items by date and offers search and filters. Open an item in the viewer. Select several items for the bulk actions shown.

Each source folder has a Show in Photos timeline switch on the Folders tab of Settings > Libraries > View. With it off, that folder’s photos stay out of the Photos timeline, whatever subfolders it holds. They are still found by search and can be added to Galleries.

You can favorite, hide, archive, move to Trash, or restore your own items. Archive removes an item from the normal Photos view. Moving to Trash can be undone, and only Empty Trash ever removes files from your disk. Browsing and making thumbnails do not change original files.

Move items to Trash and empty it

Move to Trash can be undone. In Photos or Documents, select one or more items, or open one, and choose Move to Trash. Phones and tablets can do this too. Restore is in the Trash view (Photos > Trash or Documents > Trash) and brings an item back where it was. While an item is in Trash it is out of Photos and out of your Galleries, and it cannot be a Gallery’s cover. Restore puts it back in its Galleries. Moving an item to Trash never changes the file on disk.

Items in a read-only folder cannot be moved to Trash. A folder you have linked to Library is there for looking at, so the button is not shown for them. If you select a mix, the other items go to Trash and Library tells you how many stayed: “3 items are in a read-only folder and weren’t moved to Trash.” Favorite, Archive, Hide and Galleries still work on them. Items in the Shared Library cannot be moved to Trash either.

The Trash view shows how much it holds, such as 128 items · 4.2 GB, on every device, so you can see the space Trash is using.

Empty Trash deletes the files of everything in your Trash, for photos and documents together. It works only on a computer. On a phone or tablet the Trash view shows its size and “Empty Trash on a computer.” Only you can empty your own Trash, from your own Personal Space; household members, administrators and the native apps cannot. You cannot pick items out of Trash to delete. To keep something, restore it first.

On a computer, open Photos > Trash or Documents > Trash and choose Empty Trash…. Library first checks what is in Trash, then shows:

  • how many items will be deleted from your disk, split into photos, videos and documents, with the space they use;
  • which Galleries will lose items, from A to Z;
  • anything that stays in Trash and why: an item waiting to be added to the Shared Library (cancel that contribution first), an item in a read-only folder, or a file Library will not remove safely.

Live Photos and RAW sets count as one item, and all their files go together. Cancel is selected when the dialog opens, and Escape cancels. Only the red Delete N items from disk button deletes anything. Deleted files cannot be recovered, and Library has no other copy.

If the Trash changed while the dialog was open, Library shows the new list and deletes nothing; confirm again. If one item cannot be removed, for example because its file is in use, the others go and that item stays in Trash with a note on its tile, such as “Couldn’t delete: the file is in use.” After a successful run Library says how many items were deleted and how much space was freed.

Find and file documents

View > Documents lists the PDFs, Office files, scans and photos of paper in your Personal Space. Tuvima Library reads their words on your computer, so searching finds what a document says. New documents wait in the Inbox with suggested dates, correspondents, types and tags. File them with one tap, or make Auto-filing rules so Tuvima Library files them for you.

  1. Open View > Documents. If the tab is missing, an administrator has not turned on Documents for your profile (child profiles start with it off).
  2. Choose Inbox to see what is waiting, or All documents to browse and search.
  3. Use the filters on the left for tags, correspondent, type, date and custom fields. Save this view keeps a filter set under a name. Saved views are private to you.
  4. Choose Select to add tags or set a correspondent, type or date on up to 500 documents at once, or to move them to the Trash. Export list (CSV) downloads the list you are looking at.

A television can browse and open documents but not change them. A phone can search, read and file from the Inbox, but editing every detail of a document and editing rules need a computer with a mouse or trackpad. Read Documents in View for the whole picture, and How documents are filed for the Inbox and rules.

Make Galleries

  1. Open View > Galleries.
  2. Create a manual Gallery or a rule-driven Smart Gallery.
  3. Add items to a manual Gallery, or set rules for a Smart Gallery. Save your changes.
  4. To share, choose allowed profiles and the access each can have.

A Gallery groups media. It is not a new file source. Deleting a Gallery does not delete its media. Profile sharing follows access rules. Public-link sharing is not ready.

Send items to Shared Library

  1. Select owned items in Mine and open the contribution action.
  2. Check the preview and target shared folder or timeline.
  3. Submit the batch if you have that right.
  4. Follow it in Shared Library > Contributions.

A household administrator accepts or declines the batch (so can a server administrator). The transfer checks the shared copy before making it a shared member. Managed originals move only after that check. Linked originals are copied and stay in their source folder. When you send someone else’s photo, the Shared Library always gets a copy and their original stays in their own space. Everyone in a household can open and send; a child profile can send only after a household administrator allows it.

Browse your household

Open the scope picker at the top of Photos or Places. Your own space stays first, then a Household group lists each person in your household by name, then the Shared Library. You can open, search and share from anyone’s space in your household, but you cannot edit, hide, move or delete their photos, and their hidden photos stay hidden. People in other households never appear, and none of their photos, counts, map pins or contributions are visible to you.

See other households as a server administrator

Server administrators have an Other people group in the scope picker. It lists every other household, each person in it, and the household’s Shared Library. Everything there is read-only: you cannot edit, hide, move, delete or send anything, hidden photos stay hidden, and household administrators and members never see the group. When the administrator screens are locked with a PIN, unlock them first.

Every time you open someone’s space or a household’s Shared Library, Tuvima records it. The person whose photos you opened sees the date, your name and what you opened under Settings > Security > Who viewed your photos, read-only (for a household’s Shared Library, the household’s own administrator sees it; a server administrator of another household does not). No one else can see it, and it cannot be deleted from there. The same space is recorded at most once an hour.

Switch View on for a person

People outside your household start with View off. Open Settings > Users and Sign-in and use the Can use View switch on their row when you want them to use it. People in your own household keep whatever you chose when you added them.

Browse People and Places

People shows named or reviewed people annotations and their sources. If no usable names exist, it explains that state. It does not claim to run face recognition.

Places opens Tuvima Atlas from real GPS and place facts. Select a place to browse its media that you can access. Use time, media, and other offered filters to narrow the view.

Places can make external map requests. It first tries OpenFreeMap’s dark style. That style can load outside map resources. If the request fails, Atlas uses a local country map. Opening Places is not always an offline or network-free action.

Face recognition, object/scene detection, captions, semantic search, and AI memories are planned work. Reading the words in scanned documents and photos of paper is already live (see Documents above). Stored annotations and browse pages do not prove that those AI workers run today.

Technical details

A phone backs its photos up to one person that is chosen for the phone, not to whoever the phone is browsing as. The phone’s app asks for that person’s PIN when they have one; an administrator can also choose under Settings > Security > Devices (Backs up to). Until one is chosen, backups from that phone are refused.

Settings > Libraries chooses the managed View root. Current paths use stable profiles/<profile-id>/sources/<source-id> folders. Accepted shared originals live in a separate Shared tree. Do not move files by hand to match old View/Profiles wording.

View uses an internal personal library bridge. Local-only/manual personal media skips retail matching, Wikidata, canonical claims, and Review Queue. Each media request and browse query checks View access again.

The map tries https://tiles.openfreemap.org/styles/dark. On failure it falls back to /maps/world-countries.geojson. See View architecture for storage and access rules.

The profile name inside your files

In a managed View folder, Library writes the name of the profile that added a file into the file itself. Your originals in read-only folders are never changed.

  • Photos (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, WebP, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF and camera RAW such as DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF and ARW), phone videos (MP4, MOV and M4V) and PDFs get the name as an XMP field, written by ExifTool.
  • Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (.docx, .xlsx and .pptx) get a Tuvima Added By custom property.
  • MKV, WebM and AVI videos, older Office files, OpenDocument files, text files, and signed or encrypted PDFs and Office files are kept in Library only. The folder row shows how many, as N files kept in Library only. Library does not retry them.
  • Author and other existing fields are never touched.

Each write goes to a temporary copy first. Library checks the copy before it replaces the original. If anything fails, the original is left exactly as it was.

The name is written on the run described in when changes reach your files, so it can take up to an hour to appear. A photo you share into the shared library from a personal or read-only folder gets the name on its shared, managed copy. The original is never changed.

Writing these fields needs ExifTool. Library downloads it by itself when it is missing. If it is not ready, the Photos, videos and PDFs wait with the message waiting for ExifTool. Check Settings > Tools and requirements.

Next steps