[digiKam-users] Scan for new items without removing deleted albums

[photo at whil.eu]

Hello,

is there a way to configure Digikam to scan for new items, without removing missing albums or
files?
I'd like to access metadata and thumbnails of photos that have been removed from the filesystem.

when I press F5 new photos in the filesystem are recognized and missing ones are removed from the
view of Digikam.

It seems that Tools > Maintenance > "Scan for new items" doesn't just scan for new items but also
removes deleted items. This was unexpected for me.

My use case is that I'm using a cloud provider to store my photos and synchronize only a subset of
all folders to my local machine. Still I'd like to be able to search through all available photos
and metadata that have been at the local machine at some point.

I tried mounting the cloud drive using webdav, but that's too slow to be usable.

In case someone has another suggestion, some context: I have RAW photos and write the metadata to
XMP sidecars only. Currently there's one local collection with many albums

Best