`gphoto2-album-check.sh` — Album Verification Tool¶

Compares album membership between Google Photos (from Takeout metadata) and Proton Photos (live via the proton-drive CLI). It reads the albums-takeout.json files produced during import to determine the expected member set, then queries the Proton Drive API for the actual member set, and diffs them by SHA-1 hash.

Platform: Linux (must run where import logs and proton-drive CLI are installed).
Language: bash (bash 4+; tested on 5.2).

Usage¶

gphoto2-album-check.sh [options] [album-name-filter]

Options¶

Flag	Description
`--missing`	Only show albums where membership is not aligned.
`--verbose`	Also list individual member files (filenames of missing/extra photos).
`--list-albums`	Fast overview: list all albums found on both sides (no deep check).
`--json`	Output results as JSON (machine-readable, includes full summary).
`-h, --help`	Show the script help.

Positional argument¶

An optional album name filter (case-insensitive substring match). When provided, only albums whose name contains the filter text are checked.

Environment¶

Variable	Default	Description
`CLI`	`proton-drive`	Proton Drive CLI binary.
`LOG_DIR`	`$HOME/gphoto2proton/logs`	Directory containing `run-*/` artifact dirs with `albums-takeout.json`.
`STATE_DIR`	`$HOME/gphoto2proton/state`	Directory with per-archive progress files.

How it works¶

Takeout data — scans all logs/run-*/<archive>/albums-takeout.json files and builds a map of album name → expected member SHA-1 hashes.
Proton data — calls proton-drive album list --json to get the list of Proton albums and their UIDs. For each matched album, calls proton-drive album photos -d --json /albums/{uid} to retrieve actual member SHA-1 hashes.
Comparison — for each album (or the filtered subset):
aligned — expected and actual SHA-1 sets match exactly
mismatched — some photos are missing on Proton (missing) or present on Proton but not in the takeout (extra)
missing on Proton — album found in Google Takeout but not in Proton
Report — per-album results and a summary table.

Examples¶

# Check all albums
./gphoto2-album-check.sh

# Check only one album (substring match)
./gphoto2-album-check.sh "Mercatini"

# Only show albums with issues (fast check for large libraries)
./gphoto2-album-check.sh --missing

# Show issues with detailed file list
./gphoto2-album-check.sh --missing --verbose

# Fast overview of both sides
./gphoto2-album-check.sh --list-albums

# Machine-readable JSON output
./gphoto2-album-check.sh --json "Mercatini"

JSON output schema¶

{
  "summary": {
    "takeout_albums": 216,
    "proton_albums": 430,
    "ok": 210,
    "mismatched": 5,
    "missing_on_proton": 1,
    "total_missing_members": 99,
    "total_extra_members": 0
  },
  "albums": [
    {
      "name": "2008 - 13 Dicembre - Mercatini Strasburgo",
      "expected": 512,
      "actual": 413,
      "status": "mismatch",
      "missing": 99,
      "extra": 0,
      "takeout_archive": "takeout-20260729T191210Z-1-002.tgz"
    }
  ]
}

Limitations¶

Live Proton API required: the script calls proton-drive album photos for every album it checks. This does not work while the import script (gphoto2proton-import.sh) is running, because the CLI can only handle one operation at a time.
Auth: uses the same pass credential store as the import script. Run proton-drive auth login if the session expires.
Takeout source: only albums present in the albums-takeout.json files from prior import runs can be compared. Albums created directly in Proton (not from a takeout) will show as "only on Proton".
Photo identification: missing photos are identified by their SHA-1 hash and the filename from the takeout manifest. The Google Photos API cannot be used for live verification (it was restricted to app-created data in 2025).

gphoto2-album-check.sh — Album Verification Tool¶