Organizing 15 years of messy photos & videos — the tool I ended up building

[tiago.trindade]

Yesterday I made a Testrun with “Merge”. Even with vers. 3.2 it took some some time (mac to NAS), but it’s ok because of the intuitive 5-step process and mainly automated background operation.
I gave it some big mix folder to work with for testing if it’s rockstable. Identified >200.000 files and merged 38.000 without any problems. I couldn’t go into a deep analytics of the results yet but a “Finished” field would be nice. At the moment it’s just “Cancel” and you can see the matching number of the files that shows it’s finished.

Hello @DenonMate,

Where do you feel that a "Finished" field could be nice?

Because at the end of the Merge it shows a "Finish" screen:

 

[tiago.trindade]

This would be nice (and mostly UI standard?). [Win-11 v3.2.0]

a) Remember partial/maximized window setting; currently goes back to maximized window each session?
b) floating window mode does not remember the last X*Y window size?

Nice feedback - will implement that into the new version

 

[tiago.trindade]

Win-11 v3.3.0

Unless I'm mistaken, in "move" mode, once the new folder tree is made and files moved/renamed the original (now empty) folders are not deleted. This might, or might not be, expected?

View attachment 540399

It was intentional not to deleted the older folders for security reasons - because those folderes could have some files types the app did not detect. Something to mature about it if needs to change

 

[tiago.trindade]

Yesterday I made a Testrun with “Merge”. Even with vers. 3.2 it took some some time (mac to NAS), but it’s ok because of the intuitive 5-step process and mainly automated background operation.
I gave it some big mix folder to work with for testing if it’s rockstable. Identified >200.000 files and merged 38.000 without any problems. I couldn’t go into a deep analytics of the results yet but a “Finished” field would be nice. At the moment it’s just “Cancel” and you can see the matching number of the files that shows it’s finished.

200.000 files are a lot of files glad to hear it did it without any problems

 

[tiago.trindade]

The second wish is fine. I know the first one is a hard task. i appreciate it if you make use of all capabilities apple macOS already offers for an intuitive and highly automated sorting the pics.
For example it would be great, if the app had the option to identify and exclude desktop screeshots from the merge process and maybe other features. Or in an other working run only includes desktop screenshots.

That makes sense! I will try to address it next week

 

[DenonMate]

Hello @DenonMate,

Where do you feel that a "Finished" field could be nice?

Because at the end of the Merge it shows a "Finish" screen:

View attachment 540498

Nice, when the merge was finished monday morning over night it showed just the cancel button an the counted files. mmmh. will test it again. good that the complete message is already there.

 

[SigbergAudio]

Hi @Sigberg Audio,

There's no separate "free version" to download — the app you installed is the free tier. You don't need to buy anything to start using it (the purchase prompt is optional and only shows up when you go beyond what the free tier covers).

Here's how to use it:

1. On first launch you can just close/skip the welcome dialog (and skip the wizard with the "Skip Wizard" button if you prefer to work in the main screen).
2. On the Organize/Rename/etc tab, pick a source folder and a destination folder, choose a pattern (e.g. YYYY/MM), and hit organize. That's it — no license required.

You can do all this without a licence:

• Organizing, renaming and moving unlimited times, up to 100 files per batch
• Full undo and the activity log
• Google Photos Takeout import and export to a single folder is always free , with no file limit

If the wizard genuinely blocked you from finishing without a purchase, that would be a bug and not intended — could you let me know exactly which step stopped you (a screenshot would be perfect)? I'll fix it right away. Either way, thanks for the feedback

Even today a member of the forum organized a dozen thousand photos and videos from Google Photos.

Was I stopped by the fact that the folder I tested had over 100 files than? There was no information (that I saw at least) to imply what limitations were present or why I was required to purchase.

Steps is quite easy: I click "source folder", and select a folder with more than 100 files (unaware of the limitation), and immediately the pop up to purchase arrives. If I click maybe later, I'm back to square one. So the impression as a user is that I cannot test it withouth purchasing.

 

[SigbergAudio]

@tiago.trindade I tested now with a folder with less than 100 files, same thing happened.

 

[tiago.trindade]

@tiago.trindade I tested now with a folder with less than 100 files, same thing happened.

Hello @Sigberg Audio, thank you for the feedback!

Strange behaviour - we are not being able to replicate it (yet) . Were you using Organize feature or the Merge feature?

EDIT: we already found it - fixing it now!

 

[tiago.trindade]

Was I stopped by the fact that the folder I tested had over 100 files than? There was no information (that I saw at least) to imply what limitations were present or why I was required to purchase.

Steps is quite easy: I click "source folder", and select a folder with more than 100 files (unaware of the limitation), and immediately the pop up to purchase arrives. If I click maybe later, I'm back to square one. So the impression as a user is that I cannot test it withouth purchasing.

That's a good feedback! The app should warn about the pro and free in each field during usage (otherwise the behaviour feels like nothing is working withou a licence - which is not the case - several people export thousands of Google Photos videos/photos or organize photos in small batches without a license).

In the next days we will address that too!

 

[ShadowBoxer]

Suggestion:

The open dialog box during file processing should be a fixed size. The dynamic upsizing/downsizing of the dialog dimensions while processing at the sub-second timeframe creates an unpleasant visual effect, imo. (Wiin-11 v 3.4.0)

 

[tiago.trindade]

That's a good feedback! The app should warn about the pro and free in each field during usage (otherwise the behaviour feels like nothing is working withou a licence - which is not the case - several people export thousands of Google Photos videos/photos or organize photos in small batches without a license).

In the next days we will address that too!

@Sigberg Audio, I think this is corrected on the new 3.5.0

Suggestion:

The open dialog box during file processing should be a fixed size. The dynamic upsizing/downsizing of the dialog dimensions while processing at the sub-second timeframe creates an unpleasant visual effect, imo. (Wiin-11 v 3.4.0)

As well as this improvement suggested by @ShadowBoxer

 

[tiago.trindade]

That makes sense! I will try to address it next week

The new 3.5.0 Foliosort now includes AI Search (all locally) that address both the suggestions from @DenonMate, and let user search for a person within thousands of photos, or even find (and delete) screenshots from their libraries

Thank you all for the feedback! Please let me know how we can improve it even more

 

[DenonMate]

Great. Thank you. Will test it tomorrow.

 

[DenonMate]

Screenhot search is running. while waiting for the result:
the person search closes immediately after starting it. tested five times. even put the ref foto on desktop to avoid the same path for ref and search as a possible cause of the crash (mac mini m4 pro with tahoe 2.5.0)
Nevertheless, it says 1-3 references fotos but there is just an option to change a ref foto after loading one. there is no option to add nr. 2 and 3
Any plans to add an LLM api option in the settings for using other bigger local models?

 

[DenonMate]

The screenshot search is a real good one.
>58000 fotos searched 2.800 found. this feature is stable. 25min for searching and analyzing 58.000 pics on NAS is really fast.
sensitivity >50 all were screenshots (based on a quickcheck). the sensitivity is only for showing the results right? when putting the slider to 10% a few more showed up immediately without a new search.
my suggestions:
- default should be “copy to folder (like the merge option)
- then “move to folder”
- the “move to trash”

thanks for the option to extract / separate the screenshots from the fotos, that landed on the phones over the years and were backuped at the nas within the fotos.

edit: second run without sensitivity all were screenshots.

 

[tiago.trindade]

Screenhot search is running. while waiting for the result:
the person search closes immediately after starting it. tested five times. even put the ref foto on desktop to avoid the same path for ref and search as a possible cause of the crash (mac mini m4 pro with tahoe 2.5.0)
Nevertheless, it says 1-3 references fotos but there is just an option to change a ref foto after loading one. there is no option to add nr. 2 and 3
Any plans to add an LLM api option in the settings for using other bigger local models?

Hi @DenonMate ,

It might have been a cache problem. Nevertheless, we now release the 3.6.0 version with a lot of optimizations and fixes in the core engine.

Regarding the reference photos: currently, with the new 3.6.0 version you should be able to add multiple reference photos, up to three individually, and remove each one if needed. Let me know if it improved the experience.

As for the LLM API option: FolioSort's core philosophy is to use highly optimized, specialized on-device models to ensure maximum speed and 100% privacy without relying on external API calls. While there are no plans to support external LLM APIs right now, I'll put it here to evaluate in the next weeks

 

[tiago.trindade]

The screenshot search is a real good one.
>58000 fotos searched 2.800 found. this feature is stable. 25min for searching and analyzing 58.000 pics on NAS is really fast.
sensitivity >50 all were screenshots (based on a quickcheck). the sensitivity is only for showing the results right? when putting the slider to 10% a few more showed up immediately without a new search.
my suggestions:
- default should be “copy to folder (like the merge option)
- then “move to folder”
- the “move to trash”

thanks for the option to extract / separate the screenshots from the fotos, that landed on the phones over the years and were backuped at the nas within the fotos.

edit: second run without sensitivity all were screenshots.

Hi again,

Sorry for the delay - busy week

Awesome, I'm thrilled to hear the Screenshot Search is working so well for you!

Processing 58,000 photos over a NAS in 25 minutes is exactly the kind of performance I was aiming for - and it really shows the power of running these optimized models locally on Apple Silicon!

You are correct about the sensitivity slider: the app analyzes all the images during the initial scan and assigns a probability score to each one. The slider simply filters which results are displayed on your screen in real-time based on those pre-calculated scores, which is why it updates instantly without needing a new search

Your suggestion regarding the default actions, "Copy to folder" or "Move to folder" as the defaults instead of "Move to Trash" is definitely a safer approach, especially for users dealing with massive archives. I'll tweak the default ordering in an upcoming update to help prevent any accidental deletions.

Thanks again for the great feedback and for putting the new features through their paces on such a large library!

 

[vicenzo_del_paris]

Really nice software.
Bought the license to be able to handle more than 100 files per operation.
Got it to analyze/sort/move about 6000 files in less than 30 secondes.
Will try more advanced features on my nas to sort all my pictures since 1999 (several hundred thousand of images and videos).

 

[ShadowBoxer]

The app is shaping up very nicely. No operational issues encountered thus far, afaik. (Win-11 v3.6.0)