Show HN: Ritt – Tag-centric file manager | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ritt – Tag-centric file manager

ritt.app

73 pointschenxy8825 comments

Hello HN! I am very excited to introduce Ritt, the tag-centric file manager. Tags are excellent for managing images, videos and documents, yet most file managers implement tagging functionalities as an afterthought. Not so with Ritt.

Ritt is an acronym for Representation of Independent Tag Trees. As the name suggests, tags are front and center in Ritt. Ritt is designed to allow for fast and efficient batch tagging of files (and folders). Drill down to your desired files by intersecting and/or excluding tags.

Other features include: - Sync tags across machines - Advanced search by combining tags using logical operations - Create links and backlinks between local files and folders - Auto Tag image files with AI - Powerful built-in previewer, hover over video to scrub - Create tasks within folders

If you have any comments or suggestions for new features, please do not hesitate to let me know!

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Looks nice and like a good idea, but according to the FAQ it's Windows only and there are currently no concrete plans to change that - maybe you should mention that somewhere in the introduction, e.g. "Ritt supercharges your Windows file management with the power of tag trees"? You might argue that Windows is still the dominant platform, but not so sure how true that is for your target audience (users who install a paid file manager). Of course, being cross-platform would be an additional selling point (people would be able to use the same file manager on several platforms).

Looks great and I might give this a try but I agree with rob74 that cross-platform would be better.

It makes sense that the Windows Explorer (or file system gui integration more generally) would be platform specific but presumably the tree walker and indexer would be fairly generic?

What about an open source core which does the file indexing and could be cross-platform? That part is also the kind of core tech where you might get bugfixes and new feature contributions from HN types. The shell integrations could then be part of the paid offering for the (majority of) people who don't care about that and just want something that works and is easy to use?

Yeah that’s disappointing. I have been looking for a good tag-based file-manager for around 3 years and would pay for a good one but never found something that fit the bill. Would’ve loved to try this but I’m not on Win.

Thanks for the comment! I am working to port this over to Mac and Linux with Uno platform, hopefully in the next few months!

I've been using Hydrus [1] for the longest time now. It covers all of my tagging needs. Using the API, I can tag images using AI models [2], and have a client [3] to search through files on my phone. Native features also include automatic imports, backups, deduping, and much more.

The maintainer is working tirelessly and pushes new updates every week. It's one of the most underrated pieces of software ever, in my opinion.

[1] https://github.com/hydrusnetwork/hydrus

[2] https://github.com/Garbevoir/wd-e621-hydrus-tagger (monkey patchable to use other models besides anime ones)

[3] https://github.com/floogulinc/hydrus-web

Interesting. Here would be my must-have requirements:

- Linux-centric, with native support for KDE tags.

- Nextcloud-centric, with native support for Nextcloud tags.

- Holistic: one single tagging schema not only for files/filesystems, but also for emails (Gmail tags), treat photo albums as tags (eg. in Google Photos, or in Nextcloud Memories, or in PhotoPrism, …), tag-based note-taking software. For example, renaming a tag in Nextcloud web filesystem browser will rename it also in all integrated systems…

- With extensibility "outwards" (I have my own homemade tools that use tags to organize information. The tool should manage those tags too) and "inwards" (I use FolderSync to bring WhatsApp pictures into my filesystem, the target of FolderSync should allow to get incoming picturs tagged with #fromWhatsapp, #WhatsApp<Name of Chat>, #yyyy-mm-dd).

- Without AI.

- Local-only (ie. without its own cloud).

In server development domain, object storage has become a widely accepted API and storage form. I'm curious why the PC domain hasn't entered the stage of object storage + label-based searching.

It's a storage form for content only. You don't store your binary, your database or your logs in object storages.

> You don't store your binary, your database or your logs in object storages.

I think the answer may be "yes", there are lots of database try to store binary data into S3 via parquet format in the current.

We're still stuck trying to properly implement 1990s ideas in "modern" filesystems, we'll probably get to these novel ideas by the 2050s or so.

I suspect it's mainly due to the intuitiveness of folder-based file management. It provides a sense of location since a file can only be found on one path, which mirrors the physical world.

People interested in such solution available for other platforms may want to try TagSpaces https://www.tagspaces.org/ or TMSU https://tmsu.org/ which provide mechanisms for managing tags of arbitrary files.

Ritt can tag arbitrary files too. I like TagSpaces, but I don't think modifying the user's files, either by renaming or sidecar files, is the best approach. Ritt handles tagging purely by linking to the tagged files and so is completely non-perturbative.

Hello, congrats on your launch!

How would I export my data outside Ritt? Would tags be converted to a hierarchy of folders?

Thanks for the question. There is no need to export your data outside of Ritt since it simply manages your files by linking to them at their current location. Your files are not touched or moved during the tagging process.

Looks nice, though in 2024 I don't have much files / photos / etc on my local computer anymore. My photos are now 100% taken with my phone, and they are searched / stored / synced through e.g. Google photo

I love the hamburger icon <3. Good luck!

Thanks :)

Just an FYI, the text in your top banner is unreadable in dark mode.

Dark mode/light mode unreadability has bitten me a few times on sites of my own…

And it seems as though it’s happened to the best of us, more or less the entire YouTube iPad app is unreadable in light mode

after reading "Auto Tag with AI", sorry but no

I should mention that this is done locally on your machine (in case your concern is regarding privacy)

I feel this tool is in the same space as [Eagle][1] and some other image organizers.

On another note, I feel it would be good if it could be used in combination with S3-based storage so one can use it to manage his/her online photo/image collection. Previously, this kind of app was typically a web app.

[1]: https://en.eagle.cool/

I really like the UI of Eagle! Great app!

Yes, cloud storage integration is on my to-do list.

This looks cool. However, anybody interested in a cross-platform option can look at https://www.tagspaces.org/

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