Gallery Recycle Bin / Recovery Storage

I really love the watermarking features and the ability to set download limits on galleries. However, there is one major issue that can create a lot of unnecessary work for photographers.

Sometimes clients simply forget to download their photos before the gallery expires or is deleted. Other times, they may have technical issues — for example, their laptop may not have enough storage, they may think the photos have already been downloaded, or they may assume they can access the gallery later.

The problem is that once the gallery has been permanently deleted, the photographer may have to re-upload the entire gallery just because the client didn't download their photos in time. This can be extremely time-consuming, especially for large wedding galleries.

Proposed Solution: Recycle Bin

It would be extremely useful to have a Recycle Bin or Recovery folder, similar to the way Google Drive handles deleted files.

When a gallery is deleted, instead of immediately removing the files permanently, the gallery could be moved into a Recycle Storage area. The photographer could then restore the gallery if a client contacts them after the gallery has expired.

Even better, the recycle bin could preserve the gallery's existing settings and client activity, such as:

Client photo selections/favourites
Download limits
Photos that have already been downloaded
Gallery settings
Watermark settings
Any other relevant client activity

This would be particularly valuable when a package includes a limited number of downloadable images. If the client has already selected or downloaded part of their allocation, restoring the gallery should ideally preserve that information rather than treating it as a completely new gallery.

Storage Consideration

The Recycle Storage doesn't necessarily need to be free or separate from the photographer's storage allowance.

It could continue to count toward the photographer's Unscripted storage allocation, similar to how deleted files in Google Drive/other cloud services can remain in a bin while still occupying storage.

For example, if a photographer has 100 GB of storage and 20 GB is sitting in the Recycle Bin, that 20 GB would still count toward their 100 GB allowance.

This gives photographers a safety net without creating unlimited free storage.

If the photographer needs to reclaim the space, they can simply permanently delete the items from the Recycle Bin.

Why This Would Be Valuable

This feature would save photographers a significant amount of time and frustration. Instead of having to locate the original files, rebuild the gallery, re-upload potentially hundreds of gigabytes of wedding photographs, recreate settings, and potentially lose client selections/download history, they could simply click Restore.

It would essentially provide photographers with a safety net for those inevitable situations where a client says:

"I forgot to download my photos."

Rather than turning this into a time-consuming re-upload job, the photographer could simply restore the gallery and give the client access again.

I believe a Recycle Bin/Recovery Storage system would be a relatively simple feature that could have a huge practical benefit for photographers using Unscripted.