Concepts and Glossary

This page defines the terms used throughout the Yaffo guide.

Library

Library

The collection of photos and videos Yaffo has indexed, together with the metadata it records about them. The library points to your originals; it does not replace or relocate them.

Media item
A photo or video that Yaffo knows about. Media items come from the folders you add in Settings.

Media directory
A folder Yaffo scans for photos and videos. Yaffo does not require your media to live inside its own data folder; it indexes the folders you choose.

Index / indexed

The index is Yaffo's local record of the files in your media directories and the metadata it has processed for them. A media item is indexed when that record is ready to appear in the library. Indexing can include thumbnail generation, metadata extraction, face detection, automatic labels, and location data.

Thumbnail
A smaller preview image Yaffo creates for fast browsing. Thumbnails are stored in Yaffo's app data, not next to your original photos.

Orphaned item
A database record for a file that is no longer found in the configured media folders. The indexing utility can show these so you can clean up the library index.

Organization

Tag
A user-editable name/value pair on a media item. Tags are useful for custom organization that does not fit into people, labels, or locations.

Label
A machine-assisted category such as beach, dog, or wedding. Labels come from the classification vocabulary in Settings and can be used in filters.

Person
A named person in your library. People are connected to photos through assigned faces.

Face
A detected face crop from a photo. You can assign faces to people, remove incorrect assignments, and use people in gallery filters.

Location name
A human-readable name for a GPS-backed photo location, such as The White House or Grant Park. A photo may have GPS coordinates without having a location name yet.

Favorite
A simple marker for photos or videos you want to find again quickly.

Album

A collection you curate by hand. Albums keep chosen media items together in your preferred order and can be shared with another Yaffo device.

Workflows

Background job
A task Yaffo runs outside the current page interaction, such as indexing, reclassifying labels, generating a page, or scanning for duplicates.

Duplicate group
A set of photos Yaffo believes are duplicates or near-duplicates. You review the group before deciding what to keep or remove.

Automation
A scheduled or event-driven behavior. Some automations are built into Yaffo; others can be created for your own workflows.

Custom page
A page built from your photo library, often with AI-generated widgets. Custom pages can be used for dashboards, albums, summaries, or experiments.

Widget
A single interactive part of a custom page.

Theme
A visual style for Yaffo's interface.

Ask Yaffo
The built-in assistant. It answers from Yaffo's documentation, checks this computer when troubleshooting, and proposes changes to your library. See Ask Yaffo.

Change card
A change the assistant proposes, shown with the exact number of items it affects. Nothing changes until you approve it, and most changes can be undone.

Sharing

Sharing
Pairing two Yaffo installations so one can copy selected parts of the other's library. Sharing copies media; it never moves or deletes your originals.

Paired device
Another Yaffo installation you have paired with this one. Pairing lets the two copies recognize each other, but on its own it gives the other device access to nothing.

Share
An authorization that lets a paired device pull one specific part of your library: a media directory, a folder inside one, or an album. You can revoke a share at any time; files the other device already copied are kept.