Where are Windows photo albums actually saved

3

2

The Windows 10 photo app allows you to save pictures to "Creations" such as photo albums. Where are these albums located in Explorer?

The implication from what I've read is that they are somewhere on the user's OneDrive - but I don't imagine the photos themselves are saved into an album, merely their filepaths. Either way I can't find this information.

Can I access the file paths associated with the images contained in one of these albums?

(NB, I don't want to upload to onedrive, I just want to know where the album data is saved on the machine usually, and whether I can access it from explorer or the command line say)

Greedo

Posted 2018-01-16T17:05:28.313

Reputation: 365

Should be ../Pictures/Camera Roll. I assume you are talking about where the pictures taken by the UWP Camera application are stored. – Ramhound – 2018-01-16T17:10:13.590

1@Ramhound No, I'm actually referring to pictures (say on my camera's memory card or in my documents), which I open with the Windows Photos App, add select Add to creation -> album. As far as I'm aware this doesn't move the photos themselves (maybe it copies them to the App's data somewhere), but I'm guessing it does create some sort of data file that associates those images with that album. I'd like access to this information if I can – Greedo – 2018-01-16T17:19:48.777

Basically I'd like a list of photos in an album I created, and I can't see any option in the photo app's UI (other than laboriously uploading everything to OneDrive) that allows me to do this – Greedo – 2018-01-16T17:26:05.007

"maybe it copies them to the App's" - Instead of speculation, check if the data exist, and update your question. You failed to indicate you were using the Photos UWP application in your question. However, albums created by that particular application, are indeed stored within your OneDrive directory and synced to your account. – Ramhound – 2018-01-16T17:34:12.733

You can manually create an Album from the photos in a directory. "Folders" should indicate which folders the program is scanning. – Ramhound – 2018-01-16T21:08:17.633

Answers

3

The albums are stored locally in a SQLite database that you can find at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\MediaDb.v1.sqlite This database contains details of all your albums, as well as metadata from images (date taken, camera models, etc.) as well as information extracted using the AI engine (such as recognising faces, types of scenes, etc.).

Deleting this file will not delete the online versions of the albums, and these will travel from device to device (unlike the image metadata, and facial recognition).

OneDrive doesn't store the albums in a discreet file, but instead stores it as part of the database it uses to correlate files to their filenames, modified date and other metadata that would normally be stored in the filesystem.

Rowland Shaw

Posted 2018-01-16T17:05:28.313

Reputation: 3 607

Fantastic, I've opened it up in a browser and it looks like it will have everything I need. Out of interest, how did you find this info (the location of the file)? Do you know of any resources that will help me navigate it; e.g a website explaining how it's laid out, what all the id strings mean etc.? Or did you just browse the app folder and use intuition to work out which file would contain the database of info? – Greedo – 2018-09-09T09:11:40.780

I used a tool called procmon to find the folder, and a tool for browsing sqlite databases, with a hint of reading the OneDrive documentation to work out how it does it :)

– Rowland Shaw – 2018-09-11T15:53:11.770

Asked: 2018-01-16T17:05:28.313

Viewed: 15 341 times

Active: 2019-09-22T15:53:10.940