Flask File Explorer (iPhone Photos Clone)

A modern, fast, and configurable Flask-based file explorer web app for your local folders. Inspired by the iPhone Photos app, it lets you browse, search, and view your files with thumbnails, categories, and a beautiful Bootstrap UI.

Features

• Configurable Folders: Specify one or more folders to index via .env.
• Recursive Scanning: Indexes all files, including subfolders.
• File Categorization: Images, Videos, Documents, Audio, Text, Others.
• Image Subcategories: Camera, Screenshots, Selfies/People (face detection), Other.
• Thumbnails: Generates and caches JPEG thumbnails for images and videos (including HEIC/HEIF).
• Fast & Multi-threaded: Uses parallel scanning for speed.
• Progress Feedback: Shows scan progress in terminal and frontend (with SSE).
• Cache: Maintains a JSON cache for instant startup and refresh.
• Bootstrap Frontend: Responsive UI with categories, grid view, and image viewer.
• Video Download: Save icon for each video to download directly.
• Configurable Options: All major options via .env.

Configuration

Create a .env file in the project root with options like:

FOLDERS=D:/Photos,D:/Transfer
THUMB_DIR=static/thumbnails
THUMB_SIZE=256
CACHE_FILE=file_index.json
MAX_WORKERS=8
ENABLE_FACE_DETECT=True

Installation

1. Clone the repo and enter the folder:

   git clone <repo-url>
   cd flask-file-explorer
   

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

   Required packages: Flask, Pillow, opencv-python, numpy, piexif, python-dotenv, pillow-heif

3. Set up your .env file as above.

Usage

Run the app:

python app.py

Visit http://localhost:5000 in your browser.

How It Works

• On startup, loads the cache for instant browsing.
• Click "Refresh" to re-scan folders and update cache.
• Browse categories (Images, Videos, etc.) and view files in a grid.
• Image subcategories (Camera, Screenshots, Selfies) for easy navigation.
• Click thumbnails to view images or download videos.

Project Structure

• app.py — Main Flask app and routes
• scanner.py — Scanning, categorization, thumbnail generation
• templates/ — Bootstrap HTML templates
• static/thumbnails/ — Cached thumbnails
• .env — Configuration
• requirements.txt — Python dependencies

License

MIT License