The library

Where it lives

By default, a Mauvely Snap folder inside your Pictures directory. Change it in Settings ▸ Library.

The folder is created if it does not exist, and Snap always points at a real directory — a missing library is created rather than reported, because there is nothing useful you could do about it.

The structure

Mauvely Snap/
├── snap-20260731-142201.png
├── snap-20260731-142201.snap.json     ← annotations for the image above
├── Onboarding/                        ← a collection
│   ├── snap-20260731-150310.png
│   └── Step 3/                        ← a nested collection
└── Release notes/

• A collection is a directory. Nesting works.
• A capture is an image file. Nothing is imported and nothing is converted.
• A .snap.json sidecar holds the annotations for the image it sits beside.

Drop an image into the folder from anywhere and it appears in Snap without a manual refresh — Snap watches the tree.

The sidebar

Filters

Four rows, which are filters over your whole library rather than places:

Filter	Shows
All captures	Everything
Screenshots	Images
Recordings	Video
Sent to Compose	Captures flagged as already sent

Collections

Below the filters, your folder tree, with a count on each. Selecting a collection shows that collection and everything nested inside it.

Picking a collection widens the filter back to everything — “recordings in this folder” is a combination that reliably shows nothing and looks broken.

Search

Matches file names, case-insensitively, and combines with whichever filter or collection is active.

Viewing

Grid or list, toggled in the library view and remembered. Sort by newest, oldest, name, or largest first.

Double-click a capture to open it in a tab. Ctrl W closes the tab; the Library tab is permanent.

Working with captures

Action	Shortcut
New collection	Ctrl Shift N
Import an image…	Ctrl O
Rename	F2
Delete	Del
Export a copy…	Ctrl E
Copy to the clipboard	Ctrl C
Show in file manager	Ctrl Shift E

All are also on the right-click menu, the Edit menu, and the inspector.

Rename changes the base name and keeps the extension, moving the sidecar with it. Import an image… copies an existing file into the library. Delete asks for confirmation by default — turn that off in Settings ▸ Library if you prefer.

Performance on a big library

A folder has no index, so answering “how many captures, how big, sorted by date” means walking the tree. Three things keep that quick:

• The scan runs in the background, so a large or network-mounted folder never freezes the window.
• Per-file details — size, dimensions, annotation count — are cached and re-read only when the file actually changes.
• A file added from outside triggers a rescan automatically.

Settings

Settings ▸ Library

Setting	Default
Library folder	<Pictures>/Mauvely Snap
Collection new captures land in	The root
View mode	Grid
Sort order	Newest first
Confirm before deleting	On

Backing it up

It is a folder of ordinary files — any backup tool covers it. Include the .snap.json sidecars, or you keep the images and lose the markup.

Cloud backup of the library is planned and will mirror the folder rather than replace it.