What Sluice deletes

This page is for anyone about to point Sluice at photos they could not get back. It says what the app deletes, what each deletion needs to be true first, and where everything else ends up so you can go and look.

Sluice deletes a photo or video in one situation only: when a file with the identical bytes is already somewhere else on your disk.

There is no undo

Sluice keeps no journal it can wind back. It does not need one for a delete, because a delete only ever happens where the file already exists elsewhere. What it does mean is that a move is a move: to put a folder of photos back where it came from, you move it back yourself, and every folder is where the app said it was.

The five ways that happens

Each one checks the other copy before it removes anything.

• It is already in your library. A file arriving in the Inbox that matches something in your library byte for byte is dropped rather than filed a second time. The copy in your library is untouched.
• Two of the same file in one batch. Where a batch holds the same bytes twice, one is kept and sorted as normal.
• You asked to move, not copy. Importing a folder can move it rather than copy it. The original goes only after the new copy has been read back and matched byte for byte. If it cannot be matched, both sides are left exactly as they were and the file is counted as unverified.
• Sending a photo back that is already back. Rescuing a photo from Review puts it back among the sorted ones. Where a file of the same name, the same size and the same bytes is already sitting there, the one in Review goes instead of landing beside it as a second copy.
• The app's own copy of a near-copy. When a sift finds several shots of the same thing, it puts a copy of the one it kept into the group's folder so you can compare them. The original never leaves Sorted. Sending the copy back would land it beside that original, so the copy goes and the original stays.

Deleted, and not a photo

• The small date files a Google Takeout export puts beside each photo, once no photo left in your Inbox belongs to them. They are notes about photos, not photos. A .jsonwith a long name that no photo in your Inbox belongs to goes the same way, whether or not Takeout wrote it, because a truncated export name is what a leftover one looks like.
• Empty folders inside your Inbox, once a sort has taken everything out of them.
• The sheets it built for a sift, once that sift is finished or thrown away.

What it will not do

• No bulk delete of your photos. Photos and videos go one at a time, each with its own check. The one folder Sluice does clear out wholesale is the one it built the sheets in, which it empties when a sift over that same timeframe starts again. If your agent writes its answers there, finish the sift before starting another over the same months.
• No overwriting a photo. A photo or video arriving where the name is taken is filed as name (2).jpg, and nothing else is ever written over the top of it. Sluice does rewrite its own files in place: your settings, and the note it leaves beside a group of near-copies.
• Your photos stay in the folders you named, with two exceptions. Sluice works in your Inbox, your Working root and your Library. One other place it touches a photo is a folder you point it at to import, and only when you chose Move rather than Copy. The other is your computer's temporary folder: opening an iPhone photo means unpacking it, and the unpacked copy is written there and deleted as soon as it has been read. Its own settings file and your API key live in your account's application data, the way any application's do, and no photo ever goes there.

Where everything else goes

Everything not covered above is moved rather than deleted. Each of these is an ordinary folder you can open.

Every folder under Review carries a _reasons.txt beside the photos, naming each one and what was judged about it.