What's new in Photo Archive

Find what you haven't edited yet

• New: Not Edited in the Edited filter shows the photos with no Photo Developer or Camera Raw settings in their sidecar: the ones still waiting to be developed. Photos used in a Sandwich blend or a Refract piece still count as not edited.
• New: ⌥⌘S saves the current view (View ▸ Save View…), the same key Photo Developer uses for Save as Preset.

Several folders at once, and views you can come back to

• New: browse several folders as one grid. ⌘-click a second folder in the sidebar — 2025 and 2026, say — and both appear together. Only the folders you pick are scanned, so a large archive doesn't have to be read end to end to look at two years of it. They need to sit under the folder you opened; several separate drives or root folders at once are still one at a time.
• New: Saved Views. Save a set of folders together with a filter under a name — “2025 + 2026, ★4 and up” — from the bookmark button in the filter bar or View ▸ Save View…. Saved views are listed at the top of the sidebar and reopen with one click, even after their folder has dropped off your recent list. A view rescans its folders each time it opens, so it always shows what is on disk; it is a way back to a slice of your archive, not a live album.
• Changing an open view — a different filter, another folder — marks it edited and offers Update View or Save as New. Nothing is saved behind your back. Clicking a folder leaves the view.
• If a folder in a view has been moved or renamed outside Photo Archive, the view says which one and offers Locate…, instead of quietly showing fewer photos.
• New: Quick Filters of your own. The ⚡ menu keeps All Picks, Unrated and the rest, and now also holds filters you save there. They apply to whatever folder is open. Rename or remove them with Manage Quick Filters….
• Improved: Help (⌘?) has been rewritten. Alongside the shortcuts, a Guide tab covers each task in a paragraph, and How It Works explains where your ratings and keywords are actually stored.
• Fixed: a folder renamed or added in Finder now shows in the sidebar when you switch back to Photo Archive; it used to need a restart.
• Fixed: when a recent folder couldn't be opened, the reason was hidden behind the welcome screen. It is now shown, with a way to open the folder again.

More sidecars are read, and camera names read properly

• New: sidecars named with the full file name, such as photo.cr2.xmp, are now read alongside the Lightroom-style photo.xmp. That naming is the default in darktable, digiKam and exiftool, and an option in PhotoScribe. Ratings, keywords and rights saved there now show up, and your edits are saved back into that same sidecar, so a second one never appears beside it. If a photo has both kinds, photo.xmp is the one read and edited. Moving, copying and deleting take every sidecar with the photo. Metadata written inside photo files is still not read; that hasn't changed.
• Improved: camera names are tidied in the filter, the Inspector and the loupe. OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-M1 reads as Olympus E-M1, and NIKON CORPORATION NIKON Z 7_2 as Nikon Z 7_2. Model names stay exactly as the camera wrote them, and Olympus and OM System remain separate, as the cameras themselves say. Nothing is written to your photos; this is display only. Long camera and lens names now stay on one line, with the count in its own column.
• Fixed: some cameras appeared twice in the Camera filter, because the maker name was written slightly differently in different files, so ticking one entry quietly left out the photos under the other. Each camera is now a single entry.

Lightroom edits are visible, and scanning stays out of the way

• New: Photo Archive now recognises photos developed in Lightroom or Camera Raw. The Edited filter has a Camera Raw entry alongside Photo Developer, Sandwich and Refract; developed photos carry a CRS badge in the grid and a Camera Raw row under Processed By. If you keep a large library where most photos are imported and only some are worked on, this separates the two.
• It is called Camera Raw rather than Lightroom because it detects Adobe's develop settings, which Photo Developer writes as well. Photos edited in Photo Developer are listed under Photo Developer, not Camera Raw, so the two stay separate. One consequence worth knowing: a photo you developed in Lightroom and later edited in Photo Developer is listed under Photo Developer only, and won't appear in the Camera Raw filter.
• The distinction it draws is developed, not touched. Lightroom writes a sidecar for a photo the moment you import it, and those are not marked. Neither are photos whose only develop values sit in a saved snapshot, since a snapshot is history rather than the current state. And as always, it reads the .xmp sidecar next to the photo — develop settings that live only inside a Lightroom catalogue, never saved out, are not visible to it.
• Fixed: the window could stop responding while a folder was being scanned, most noticeably on large folders and on external drives. Scanning now stays clear of the interface. The scan itself is no faster; it simply no longer holds up the window while it works. This one was found by measuring rather than reported, and nothing you did caused it.

The Inspector works on everything you've selected

• Fixed: with several photos selected, editing in the Inspector applied to only one of them. Add a keyword with twelve photos selected and one photo got it. Keywords, ratings, flags and rights now apply to the whole selection. (The batch sheets — ⌘⇧K and ⌘⇧R — always worked; nothing told you the Inspector didn't.)
• New: the Inspector shows you what you've selected. How many photos, the date range, the file types, whether they share a rating or a flag — and when they don't, the split is spelled out rather than shown as a blank.
• New: keywords that are on only part of the selection are marked with a count — Marianne 2/12 — and look different from the ones every photo carries. Hovering says how many photos removing it will affect, so you can see it before you click. Removing takes it off exactly those photos; the rest are untouched.
• New: rights fields that differ across the selection read "Multiple values" instead of looking empty, so you can't overwrite twelve different copyright lines thinking you were filling in a blank.
• Fixed: right-clicking a photo and setting a rating or flag now applies to your whole selection, the way the keyboard shortcuts always have. Right-clicking a photo outside the selection now selects it first — previously the rating went somewhere you couldn't see.
• Title and Caption still apply to one photo at a time, and the Inspector now says so. They describe an individual image, so they aren't written across a selection.

How sidecars are written, rebuilt

The part of Photo Archive that reads and writes .xmp sidecars was replaced with the one now shared across the photo apps. That's why several unrelated-looking fixes arrive together.

• Fixed: a keyword containing a slash or a vertical bar was cut short when saved. AC/DC was written as DC, 24/7 as 7 — every save, with nothing to tell you. Keywords are now written whole.
• Fixed: a photo credited to more than one person kept only part of the list. Every name is now preserved.
• Fixed: descriptions and rights written in a language other than the default were dropped on save.
• Fixed: contact details stored alongside the creator field could be lost when Photo Archive saved the file.
• Fixed: a rights or description line containing only spaces grew longer every time the photo was saved.

The save that took two minutes

• Fixed: saving a rating or keyword to certain photos could hang the app for a minute or more. One real sidecar took 107 seconds; it now takes a thirtieth of a second, and the time no longer depends on the file. The photos affected were ones whose sidecar carried a large block of padding — something several other applications write, so nothing you did caused it.

The controls do what they say

• Fixed: Undo (⌘Z) now covers every field Photo Archive writes, including edits made to many photos at once. Some batch edits previously couldn't be taken back.
• Fixed: Stamp Rights reported that it had stamped photos in cases where it hadn't.
• Fixed: Settings → Default sort order and Thumbnail size are now applied when the app launches. Before, they were ignored until you changed the equivalent control in the toolbar. The toolbar still overrides them for the current session.
• Improved: rating or keywording around a thousand photos at once no longer stalls the window. What used to take over a second per edit is now immediate.
• Improved: thumbnails are decoded at the size the grid actually displays them, which makes scrolling a large folder lighter on memory.

Your edits either save, or you're told

• Your metadata is better protected in unusual situations. If a photo's .xmp sidecar exists but can't be read — one written by another tool in an unexpected text encoding, say — Photo Archive now refuses to touch it rather than risk replacing it. Ratings and keywords written by Lightroom or another app stay intact.
• New: if a rating, keyword, or other edit can't be written to disk, a message tells you right away — instead of the failure landing quietly in a log you'd never see.
• New: write access is verified the moment you open a folder from Recent Folders. macOS can occasionally degrade a remembered folder permission so that reading works but saving doesn't; Photo Archive now catches this immediately and offers a one-click Restore Write Access — before you rate a hundred photos, not after. Genuinely read-only locations, like a locked network share, simply show a notice, and browsing works as always.
• Improved: lower memory use in long sessions — switching folders now releases the previous folder's image caches. Thumbnails already built are kept on disk, so returning to a folder is as fast as ever.

A crash fix, and a truer, smoother full-screen

• Fixed: opening a folder that contained certain photos with unusual or incomplete metadata — for example, images re-saved by some web tools — could crash the app. These files now load normally.
• Moving between photos in the loupe is now instant — stepping to the next photo no longer flashes to black.
• 100% now means 100%: press Z (or double-click) and the photo zooms to its true actual size. On high-resolution displays, "100%" previously stopped short of full magnification.
• New: keep your zoom level as you move between photos. Turn on Settings → Display → "Keep zoom level when navigating photos" to inspect a whole series at one magnification — handy for checking focus across a burst. Each photo is shown at its own actual size, portrait or landscape. Off by default.
• New: pan a zoomed photo with a two-finger swipe on the trackpad — before, only mouse-dragging panned. And a zoomed photo can no longer be pushed off-screen; panning now stops at the edges of the image.
• Improved: Move and Copy now start at the last folder you moved or copied into this session, instead of always the folder you opened — fewer clicks when sorting into subfolders.
• Improved: the current folder is more clearly highlighted in the sidebar, especially in Dark Mode. The filmstrip gained a View › Toggle Filmstrip menu item and tucks away while you're zoomed in, so a two-finger swipe pans the photo rather than the strip.

Cull in full-screen, steadier on big files

• New: cull without leaving the loupe. Delete a photo in the full-screen view and you move straight to the next one, instead of dropping back to the grid. Delete the last photo and it steps back to the previous; delete the only one and you return to the grid.
• New: skip the delete prompt. Turn on Settings → Behavior → "Skip delete confirmation" for fast culling — ⌘⌫ deletes immediately and advances. Deletes still go to the Trash, and ⌘Z undoes. (A large multi-selection still asks first, even with the setting on.)
• Fixed: deleting in full-screen after moving between photos could remove the wrong one. It now always acts on the photo you're actually viewing.
• Improved: folders that contain very large images — multi-hundred-megabyte TIFFs, big panoramas — no longer let several decode at once and spike memory. Large files are processed one at a time, so the rest of the folder stays responsive.

A crash fix, and a more flexible loupe

• Fixed: opening a video in the full-screen loupe could crash the app on recent macOS. It no longer does — playback now uses the system's native video player.
• Fixed: on an external display running at native (non-Retina) resolution, the loupe — including 100% zoom — now renders at full resolution instead of half.
• New: Loupe fit: Fill window (Settings → Display, off by default). Turn it on and low-resolution photos and clips scale up to fill the loupe instead of sitting small at native size — handy for screen-grabs and low-res footage. Z (or double-click) toggles between filling the window and actual size.
• New: press Tab to hide or show the sidebar while you review — quick room to work at 100%. (⇧Tab still toggles both side panels; ⌘I the inspector.)
• Fixed: delete a photo while it's open full-screen and you now return cleanly to the grid, instead of being left on a blank frame.

Organize in place — and bring in your video

• Organize right in your folders. Move, copy, and delete photos — and create, rename, and reorganize folders — without ever leaving the app. The whole shot travels together: a RAW, its JPEG, and its XMP sidecar move as one, never orphaned. Name clashes ask Keep Both / Replace / Skip; deletes go to the Trash and ask first; everything is undoable, several steps deep.
• Video, alongside your photos. Browse MOV, MP4, and M4V clips in the same grid — poster thumbnails, duration, sort, filter, ratings, picks, and keywords, exactly like stills. Open a clip in the loupe and press Space to play or pause; ⇧← / ⇧→ skip back and forward 10 seconds, with native controls and no hand-off to another app.
• Still no database, still no lock-in — your metadata lives in XMP sidecars next to your files, photos and footage alike.

Smoother in large folders

• Scrolling and scanning through thousands of photos — including libraries on external and USB drives — no longer stalls, and thumbnails keep loading as you move.
• Revisiting a folder you've already browsed shows its thumbnails immediately from cache, and the right-click menu opens instantly even mid-scroll.

Instant keyword autocomplete

• Keyword autocomplete is now instant on folders with hundreds of keywords — suggestions keep up as you type.
• Send Feedback is now in the Help menu: it opens a pre-filled email with your app version and macOS details attached, so reporting something takes one click.

Metadata that travels with your exports

• Exported JPEGs now carry full XMP — ratings, keywords, copyright, and rights URLs arrive intact in Lightroom, Apple Photos, and other apps.
• A new Metadata picker in the export sheet decides what travels with each file: All (everything), Rights Only (copyright and camera EXIF kept, GPS and keywords stripped — for client delivery), or None (nothing — for anonymous web sharing).

Loupe zoom, technical filters, and multi-select hand-off

• Press Z (or double-click) in the loupe to toggle between fit-to-screen and 100% — no trackpad needed.
• New technical filter row: narrow the grid by camera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
• "Open With" now sends your whole selection to an external editor, not just one photo.
• Added support for Olympus high-resolution .ori files.
• Fixed: grid badges now update immediately after a rating or pick change; the loupe returns to the grid cleanly when you switch folders; removed a duplicate "View" menu; improved XMP keyword writing for broader compatibility with other apps.

Folder-based browsing

• Open any folder and start working — no import, no catalog, no database. Browse RAW, JPEG, TIFF, HEIC, and PNG, with RAW+JPEG pairs grouped automatically.
• Rate (1–5), flag (pick / unflag / reject), and keyword photos with the keyboard, all multi-select aware. Everything writes to Adobe-compatible XMP sidecars and reads back on open.
• A full-screen loupe with zoom, pan, filmstrip, and info overlay; a multi-dimension filter bar; an inspector for EXIF, keywords, and rights.
• JPEG export with quality presets and filename patterns.
• One-time purchase. No subscription, no account, no cloud.