Memory Vault

A native Android photo journal for organising memories into stories. Dark, rounded, game-HUD look. Photos, videos, tags, notes, voice dictation, and a home-screen widget.

---

Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Screenshots
• Getting started
• How it works
• Project structure
• Tech stack
• Permissions and privacy
• Known limitations
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License

Overview

Memory Vault groups photos and videos into stories. Each story has a cover, a scrolling row of memories, and a row of tags (cut-outs of people, places or objects taken from your pictures). Every memory, tag and cover can carry a name, a description and journal notes, typed or dictated.

Everything is stored on the device. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.

Features

Albums

• Opens straight into the albums grid.
• Each tile shows the story's thumbnail and name, in the order you arranged.
• Long-press and drag to reorder; the order is saved.
• Toggle between a 3x3 and 4x4 grid (remembered between launches).
• Floating button to create a story.

Stories

• Large cover that can be a photo or a video. Video covers autoplay with sound, looping or playing once depending on a per-story setting.
• Tap the cover to reveal video controls and a menu: rename the story, change the thumbnail, edit the thumbnail's own details, toggle looping, add media, delete the story.
• Sideways-scrolling Memories row (the cover is not repeated here), each with an optional name.
• Sideways-scrolling Tags row at the bottom.

Detail drawer

• Tap any memory, tag or cover to open a bottom drawer with the picture or video, its name, description and journal notes.
• Pen icon edits the text. Mic icons dictate it with the phone's own speech recogniser.
• Edit photo: crop, rotate, flip, brightness, contrast, colour. Save over the original or as a copy.
• Switch out: replace the photo or video with another one; the name, description and notes stay exactly as they were.

Choosing pictures, everywhere

Anywhere a picture is needed (new story, adding to a story, cover, tags, switching out) you can pick from the gallery, take a photo or record a video. When adding several, the camera keeps offering "Capture another?" until you tap Done.

Covers

Changing a thumbnail never loses the old one: it drops into the story's memories row. The new cover can come from the story's own memories or from outside (gallery or camera).

Tags

Cut a tag out of:

• one of the story's own photos,
• any other photo from the gallery, or
• a freshly captured photo.

Several outside photos can be queued and cut one after another. Tags belong to one story and open the same drawer as any memory.

Share into the app

Select photos and videos in the Gallery, WhatsApp or any other app, tap Share, choose Memory Vault, then add them to a new or an existing story.

Home-screen widget (Beta)

Add Story slideshow from the widget picker. It cycles every story's cover, in album order, on loop: a photo is shown for 20 s, a video plays once. Tapping it opens the albums page with the story that was showing highlighted.

Android widgets cannot host a real video player, so a video cover is shown as a frame-per-second preview (up to 30 s). The actual video, with sound, plays in the app.

Screenshots

Add your own screenshots to docs/screenshots/ and link them here.

Albums	Story	Drawer	Editor	Widget
todo	todo	todo	todo	todo

Getting started

Requirements

• Android Studio Koala (2024.1) or newer
• JDK 17 (bundled with Android Studio)
• An Android 8.0+ (API 26) device or emulator

Build and run

git clone https://GitHub.com/Arcxelix/Memory-Vault
cd Memory-Vault

1. Open the folder in Android Studio and let Gradle sync.
2. Pick a device and press Run.

The Gradle wrapper script and jar are not committed. Android Studio handles this on its own. For command-line builds, generate them once with a local Gradle install:

gradle wrapper --gradle-version 8.7
./gradlew assembleDebug

The APK is written to app/build/outputs/apk/debug/.

Trying the features

Feature	How
Share import	In Gallery, select several photos or videos, tap Share, choose Memory Vault
Widget	Long-press the home screen, Widgets, Memory Vault, Story slideshow
Dictation	Tap the mic in any text field (needs a speech recogniser such as Google voice typing)
Camera	Choose "Take a photo" or "Record a video" in any picker (needs a camera app)

How it works

Data model

Two SQLite tables, accessed through a small Java helper:

Table	Purpose
stories	name, order, loop setting, and a cached copy of the cover's path/thumbnail (used by the grid and widget)
items	every picture or video: kind = memory (0), tag (1) or cover (2), plus path, thumbnail, name, description, notes, order

The cover is an ordinary item of kind cover. That is why it has its own text, why changing a cover is just a kind swap, and why the old cover can slide into the memories row without losing anything.

Files

Everything you add is copied into app-private storage (files/media). Shared content from WhatsApp and similar apps often disappears or loses access; copying makes every memory permanent. Video thumbnails are generated once and stored in files/thumbs.

Editor

The editor previews a downsized image (max 1600 px) for speed. When saving, it reloads the photo at up to 3072 px and replays the same rotate, flip, crop and colour steps, so the result stays sharp. The original file is never modified by the editor itself; the caller decides whether to replace it or keep a copy.

Widget

A RemoteViewsService feeds an AdapterViewFlipper that advances every second. A photo cover is repeated for 20 slots; a video cover becomes one cached frame per second of video. Because the flipper runs inside the launcher, the slideshow keeps moving without the app running. The data is refreshed whenever stories change.

Project structure

MemoryVault/
├── build.gradle.kts, settings.gradle.kts, gradle.properties
└── app/src/main/
    ├── AndroidManifest.xml
    ├── java/com/memoryvault/app/
    │   ├── AlbumsActivity.kt        albums grid, drag reorder, 3x3 / 4x4, widget highlight
    │   ├── StoryActivity.kt         cover, memories, tags, cover/tag flows
    │   ├── EditorActivity.kt        crop + basic editing (tag mode and edit mode)
    │   ├── ImportActivity.kt        receives Share from other apps
    │   ├── data/
    │   │   ├── DbHelper.java        SQLite schema, migrations, queries (Java)
    │   │   ├── Models.kt            Story, Item, kinds
    │   │   └── Repository.kt        data + file handling, cover logic, widget refresh
    │   ├── ui/
    │   │   ├── ItemSheet.kt         detail drawer
    │   │   ├── MediaPicker.kt       gallery / camera chooser
    │   │   ├── VoiceInput.kt        speech-to-text helper
    │   │   ├── CropView.kt          crop frame, rotate, flip, live colour filter
    │   │   ├── BitmapOps.kt         shared image maths for preview and final save
    │   │   ├── Adapters.kt          albums, memories/tags, picker grids
    │   │   ├── Dialogs.kt           text prompt, busy dialog, helpers
    │   │   └── SquareCardView.kt
    │   └── widget/
    │       ├── StoryWidgetProvider.kt
    │       └── StoryWidgetService.kt
    └── res/                         layouts, drawables, themes, widget + FileProvider XML

Tech stack

Area	Choice
Languages	Kotlin (UI, logic) and Java (database layer)
UI	Android Views, ViewBinding, Material Components 1.12 (Material 3 dark theme, custom styles)
Lists and drag	RecyclerView, ItemTouchHelper
Images	Glide 4.16
Video	Media3 ExoPlayer and PlayerView 1.3
Async	Kotlin coroutines and lifecycleScope
Storage	SQLite (SQLiteOpenHelper) and app-private files
Build	Gradle 8.7, Android Gradle Plugin 8.5, Kotlin 1.9.24

Permissions and privacy

The app declares no runtime permissions.

• Gallery access uses the system Photo Picker.
• Camera capture uses the system camera app through a FileProvider, so no CAMERA permission is needed.
• Speech-to-text uses the system RecognizerIntent.
• Shared files arrive through temporary read grants and are copied immediately.
• There is no network code and no analytics.

Known limitations

• Portrait only. Remove screenOrientation in the manifest to allow rotation.
• The widget previews a video cover as frames; it cannot play video or audio.
• Saving an edit with "Save" replaces the original photo. Use "Save copy" to keep both.
• Editing is for photos only, not videos.
• Large photos are processed at up to 3072 px on the longest side when edited.
• Speech recognition and camera capture depend on apps installed on the phone.
• No backup or export yet. Uninstalling the app removes its data.

Roadmap

• Export and backup of stories
• Drag to reorder memories inside a story
• Search across names, descriptions and notes
• Dates and map locations for memories
• Optional lock screen for private stories
• Landscape layouts and tablet support

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

1. Fork the repository and create a branch: git checkout -b feature/short-description
2. Keep changes focused and match the existing code style (Kotlin official style).
3. Test on a real device when a change touches the camera, widget or video playback.
4. Open a pull request describing what changed and why.

License

Released under the GNU Public License v3.0 . See LICENSE.