Siftr

Sift through your photo library with smart renaming, browsing, and deduplication.

Siftr is a self-hosted photo manager that ships as a single all-in-one Docker container — React frontend, Node/Express API, SQLite index, and the czkawka_cli deduplication engine all bundled and served from one port.

Features

• Library browser — fast, virtualized photo grid that stays smooth at 1,000–10,000 photos. Hover quick-actions (download / select) and corner badges (duplicate indicator, file size).
• Deduplication — czkawka_cli finds exact (hash-based) duplicate groups. Compare copies side-by-side and pick which to keep; deletions move to a .trash you can restore from or empty at any time. (A perceptual "similar images" pass is also wired up, behind DEDUP_SIMILAR=true; off by default for now.)
• Bulk rename — pattern tokens ({date:…}, {seq:N}, {original}, {camera}, {custom}) with a live preview and collision detection.
• Metadata editing — view and edit EXIF (date, GPS, camera) individually or across a selection; changes are written back into the files with exiftool.
• Folders — the sidebar mirrors the actual directory structure of your photos on disk; pick a folder to browse just the photos it contains.
• UX — card dashboard, left sidebar (folders / filters / stats), top nav, dark mode, and low-friction bulk selection (click, shift-click range, ctrl-click toggle, drag-select marquee).

Quick start (Docker)

docker build -t siftr .
docker run -p 8080:8080 -v ./data:/data siftr

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Put your photos under the mounted volume at ./data/photos (sub-folders are scanned recursively) and click Scan. All persistent data lives under the one volume:

data/
  photos/       # your images (the watched library — source of truth)
  thumbnails/   # generated WebP thumbnails
  db/siftr.sqlite
  .trash/       # files removed via "Move to trash" (restore or empty from the UI)

Install on unraid

Siftr ships as an unraid template (unraid/siftr.xml) backed by the prebuilt GHCR image ghcr.io/daneng66/siftr. Until it lands in Community Apps, add it manually:

1. Docker → Add Container, then in Template repositories (under Docker settings) add https://github.com/Daneng66/Siftr and Save.

2. Back on Add Container, select the Siftr template.

3. Set the port and path mappings, then apply. Each row below maps a value on your unraid host to a fixed location inside the container — only the Host value is yours to choose; leave the Container value as shown.

   Port (Config Type: Port)

   Name	Container port	Host port	Notes
   WebUI Port	8080	8080	TCP. Change the host port only if 8080 is already taken.

   Paths (Config Type: Path)

   Name	Container path	Host path (example)	Access mode	Notes
   App Data	/data	/mnt/user/appdata/siftr	Read/Write	Database, thumbnails, and .trash. Keep on a fast cache/appdata share.
   Photo Library	/data/photos	/mnt/user/Photos	Read/Write	Your existing photo share. Must be writable so Siftr can rename files and write EXIF. The container path is intentionally nested under /data, but its host path can live on a separate (e.g. array) share.
   Trash Folder (advanced, optional)	/data/.trash	/mnt/user/appdata/siftr/.trash	Read/Write	Where "Move to trash" relocates removed files. Defaults inside App Data; map to its own host share to keep trashed files off appdata or recover them elsewhere.

4. Open the WebUI on the host port from above (default 8080) and click Scan.

Advanced options (similar-image dedup, scan concurrency, thumbnail size, etc.) are exposed as template variables; see Configuration.

[!NOTE] The image is linux/amd64 only — czkawka has no ARM build — so Siftr targets standard Intel/AMD unraid hardware.

Architecture

A single Node.js process serves the API under /api/* and the built React SPA for everything else.

• Backend: Express + TypeScript, better-sqlite3 (in-process, no DB daemon), sharp (thumbnails/dimensions), exifr (EXIF read), exiftool (EXIF write), czkawka_cli (dedup) via child process. An in-process job queue runs scans and dedup with progress exposed at /api/jobs.
• Frontend: React + Vite + Tailwind, TanStack Query (server state), Zustand (selection/UI), @tanstack/react-virtual (grid virtualization).

server/   Express API, scanner, dedup, exif, db
client/   React app
Dockerfile  multi-stage build (client + server -> slim runtime)

Local development

Requires Node 20 or 22 LTS (native modules better-sqlite3/sharp ship prebuilt binaries for LTS releases). exiftool and czkawka_cli must be on PATH for metadata-write and dedup features (or point EXIFTOOL_BIN / CZKAWKA_BIN at them); everything else runs without them.

npm install
npm run dev        # Express on :8080, Vite dev server on :5173 (proxies /api)
# or, production-style:
npm run build && DATA_DIR=./data npm start

Run the backend unit tests (rename pattern engine + czkawka output parser):

npm test

Configuration (environment variables)

Notes

• czkawka_cli flag/output formats vary across versions; the parser is tolerant of both duplicate and similar-image result files. The Docker image pins a version via the CZKAWKA_VERSION build arg.
• Metadata edits are written in place with -overwrite_original. Keep backups of irreplaceable originals.