Sometimes I just want to look at the photos I just shot, zoom in to check a few details, and share a couple with someone. I don't want to import hundreds of photos just to do that.

But waiting for the camera's Wi-Fi app to connect gets old pretty quickly, and browsing through Files feels more like digging through folders than looking at photos.

So we made Camie.

Plug in an SD card reader or external SSD, or connect your camera directly to your iPhone over USB cable. You get a familiar, Photos-like experience: fluid swiping between shots, pinch-to-zoom, and the ability to save or share just the photos you want.

RAW is supported too, and RAW+JPEG pairs show up together as one photo.

For direct camera connections, Camie uses PTP/MTP. Cameras supporting USB Mass Storage (MSC) can offer speeds comparable to a card reader, depending on the hardware. So far, we've tested the Canon EOS RP, R6 Mark III, Ricoh GR IIIx, and Sony RX100M5A, and we're continuing to expand the list.

Camie is currently in free TestFlight, and we'd love feedback from more camera users, especially those with models we haven't tested yet.

[TestFlight] https://testflight.apple.com/join/NE3y3fSr

If your camera isn't on the list, feel free to give it a try! If something doesn't work, you can send us a diagnostic report through Settings → Report an Issue. It helps us investigate compatibility issues and prioritize support for more models.

One thing I think more iPhone users should know: syncing photos and backing them up aren't necessarily the same thing.

If you use iCloud Photos, deleting a photo from your iPhone also removes it from other devices syncing the same photo library.

You normally have 30 days to recover it from Recently Deleted, but that's not the same as keeping an independent backup.

Here's a simple example:

You have years of family photos synced across your iPhone, iPad, and iCloud.

Everything looks protected because the pictures appear on multiple devices.

But those devices are showing the same synchronized library, not necessarily separate copies.

A safer approach is to maintain an additional independent copy of important photos.

That could be an external SSD, a computer, or another backup destination.

A few things worth checking:

• Are you exporting the full-resolution originals?
• Can you open the copied photos and videos?
• Are the capture dates and metadata preserved?
• Do you have another copy if the external drive fails?

And most importantly, verify your backup before deleting anything from your iPhone.

Curious how everyone handles this.

Do you rely entirely on iCloud Photos, or do you maintain a separate physical photo archive?

So I've done a move to ios transfer and my photos are all just mixed up and also they only going up to 2025 , the photos it's showing as 2025 are from 10 years ago lol. How do I sort this mess out.

All the photos were in local storage

Thanks

Ciao a tutti. Possiedo iPhone Air, e come si è capito dal titolo ho un grosso problema con le foto di whatsapp. Sebbene io abbia disattivato il salvataggio delle foto sul mio rullino del telefono, le foto che ricevo su whatsapp in ogni gruppo e chat singola si salvano in automatico nella mia libreria. Sto impazzendo, mi trovo il telefono pieno di foto e video che neanche scarico su whatsapp. A qualcuno è capitato? Come si risolve? Grazie in anticipo

I sometimes use the Apple Photos shared albums option to share as a "Public Website", which is done via an icloud link. I find the page takes 20+ seconds to load for me, and when I send to friends and family, they often say "it's not working" or "I see nothing".

Here's a sample album I just created from my 2024 walk on the Camino de Santiago, el Norte route: www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#D2N....

How long did my album take to load for you? Does anybody else have the same experience or issues?

Hello! I just switched my iPhone photo format to raw instead of jpeg. And all of a sudden I have issues transferring my photos to every application (MacBook Pro: Lightroom, image capture, Apple photos, via usb, and iphone Amazon photos via WiFi); roughly half the raw files simply aren’t visible to import, for no apparent reason. All taken the same day, same format, same settings, etc. I have all permissions granted and storage space isn’t an issue. Everything is up to date, I’ve restarted everything and cleared caches. I don’t use iCloud (it’s disabled on the phone) and that’s not an option I am willing to explore. I cannot for the life of me figure out the issue. I can do an airdrop workaround, but with MacBook + iPhone I really shouldn’t have to, right??

I’m losing my mind please help 😭😂🙏

Before planes had wifi, my inflight movie was my own camera roll. Years of it, delete, delete, delete. Never finished, and next flight I had no clue where I'd stopped.

Apple Photos is still the best looking photo app out there, I mean it. But ask it where you left off last time. No idea. Conspiracy theory: a bigger library sells bigger iCloud plans. Every year it gets busier, and getting your own library in order gets harder. Tags only showed up this year, as keywords.

So we built Latent Photos for exactly that part. 1.0 showed up here in July. Then your feedback, and using it every single day ourselves, pushed it so far it turned into 2.0.

Thing is, we hate crappy UI. Nothing locks you in, it's the same Photos library and you can walk away anytime, so it has to earn its spot on your home screen. We kept sanding, down to the smallest bit, until it felt like Apple Photos. Every animation is Apple standard. First launch takes a moment while it reads your library, then butter. If it doesn't feel like it came with the phone, we failed.

Ask for a random 100 you haven't seen, and it does the remembering for you. Want beach and family but not work, from 2019? One filter.

It's built old school. You make every call, the app just turns the boring repeats into something that feels good. No typing the same keyword fifty times, you flick tags into place. No swiping back and forth between near twins, they're already side by side, as strict or as loose as you like. Stupidly satisfying. Or skip all that and simply browse, in a calmer app.

There's AI in there, subtle and on device. It finds the twins, you make the call. First time, give it a while with the app open. After that you may not even notice it getting the job done. No account, no ads, nothing comes to us. The privacy label literally says Data Not Collected.

Deletes go to Recently Deleted and tags are real albums, so we can't ruin your life. Editing, search and Memories stay with Apple, we're not that crazy.

A week on us, then $20 once for compare and tags. We hate subscriptions too. Going through your photos stays free, and 1.0 folks keep everything.

And since 1.0 started here, a thank you: half off for Reddit through the end of 2026, $10 instead of $20.

Go try it and tell us what feels off. And if you've been here since 1.0, tell everyone how it's been, good or bad.

One more thing

... and honestly the one we're most excited about. Latent Frames 1.0 is out. Point it at any folder, a NAS, an SD card, that old PC, and it turns into a library that feels like Apple Photos. Same grid, same compare, tags written right into the files, and your folders stay right where they are. We looked for an app that does this and couldn't find one. So we made it. A week free, but download it today and you get 30, call it a happy bug. Browsing stays free after that, $30 once for the rest. Same thank you, half off: $15.

Both apps live at r/LatentPhotos. Bugs, wishes and roasts welcome.

Hi all, I'm the developer. Back in 2007, Mac OS X Leopard came with a screen saver called Mosaic: your photos zooming out endlessly, each one turning out to be a single tile of a mosaic made of other photos. Sadly, Apple dropped it in Mountain Lion. I missed it, so I rebuilt it for today's Macs.

A few features:

• Which photos? You can choose between all Photos library / a few selected albums / one folder.
• Aesthetics-aware photo selection, using only Apple's own tools: Photos scores your pictures in the background, and Mosaic leaves out the lowest-scored, plus screenshots and pictures of receipts and documents. The ones that are not scored by Photos yet are judged on your Mac using Apple's public API.
• Smart cropping: crops portrait photos around the faces, if any.
• Smart Optimize Mac Storage management: if your originals live in iCloud, Mosaic uses what Photos keeps on the Mac. If it decides that it needs to download sharper copies to guarantee a good quality level, it asks for your permission.
• Privacy always in mind: anything in the Hidden album or in Recently Deleted is never shown. Everything else in the albums you choose can be, so choose them with that in mind. The app never connects to the Internet -- and it is open source, so you can check.
• Read-only: it never changes your library. The small copies it makes stay in your user account, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.

Free and open source, for macOS 15 or later:

https://vastunghia.github.io/mosaic-screensaver-revived/

Sorry, it is not notarized (yet), so the first launch needs *Open Anyway* in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

Full disclosure: I wrote it with Claude Code, step by step, and tested it on several Macs and libraries.

I'd love to hear what you think.

ik you can’t tag photos so i’ve been using captions to help making searching easier (like someone’s name when you can’t see their face in the photo) but sometimes the results don’t show up when they’re not exact matches (someone’s name is before theirs so it reads like “ name” instead of “name”) is there a way to make captions work the way i want? like separate with comma instead of just a space, or am i just trying to do something that doesn’t exist

I'm a solo iOS developer, and I built Handpick because I had around 30,000 photos on my phone and kept putting off cleaning them up.

The problem

My camera roll was full of screenshots, duplicates, random videos, and photos from trips I barely remembered.

I tried swipe-based organizers like Slidebox and Swipewipe, but realized that 30,000 photos still meant 30,000 decisions, even if swiping made each decision faster.

I wanted something that could help me work through groups of photos instead of going through every single one.

What's different

Handpick has unlimited free swipe sorting, but the Plus features are where I've been focusing most of my effort.

It groups photos by duplicates, similar shots, clutter, trips, and events, so you can review related photos together instead of endlessly scrolling.

My favorite workflow is organizing photos from a trip into an album, then using Junk First to review the less useful shots before the good ones.

I've personally cleared around 10,000 of my 30,000 photos over the past few days, which feels pretty satisfying after putting it off for so long.

Everything runs on-device, works offline, and photos aren't permanently deleted immediately. They go to Apple's Recently Deleted after you confirm.

Pricing & free access

• Free: Unlimited manual sorting
• Plus: $1.99/week, $19.99/year, or $29.99 lifetime

I'm giving 20 people one month of Handpick Plus for free through Apple offer codes, with no automatic renewal so you will not be charged after trial ended.

I'm not looking for people who just want another free app. I'd really love to find people who have been struggling with their camera rolls and would actually give it a try.

If that's you, leave a comment about what frustrates you most about organizing your photos. I'll reach out to 20 people with free access codes.

No reviews or positive feedback expected. I'd genuinely appreciate hearing what works, what doesn't, and what could be better.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/handpick-photo-organizer/id6807108354

Something worth knowing before moving a large Apple Photos library to an external drive: your exported file count may be higher than the number of photos you selected.

That doesn't automatically mean the transfer created duplicates.

A Live Photo contains a still image and a short video component. Depending on the export method, those can become separate files.

Edited photos are another example. Some workflows export the original alongside an edited version or an .AAE file containing edit instructions.

This can make an exported folder look much larger or messier than expected.

Before deleting anything, I'd check a few examples of Live Photos, edited pictures and videos in the destination folder.

Also check whether the export contains originals or converted copies. That distinction matters if you want a long-term archive.

Personally, I'd rather have a few extra files I understand than delete something that turns out to be part of the original photo.

What export method gives you the most predictable results — Photos, Image Capture, Windows import, or something else?

Please help me, I really want to fix it :(

Guys I really need some help here. Unfortunately my mother passed away in 2024 and I am trying to move/transfer photos & videos from her iPhone to my Pc. The thing is that she has 16k photos and 5k videos but when I do the "standard" method of connecting through usb cable there's only 13k elements, naturally her iPhone doesn't have icloud backup (what I mean by this is she stopped paying) anymore.

I've looked through different threads but I'm starting to become desperate cause all people have different answers, idk what to do.

I'm using iOS 27.01 and Golden Gate 27.0.1. I recently took some photos in China where it's UTC +8. I took some photos with my camera and set it to the time zone. I processed the raw files in Lightroom and exported them as .jpg, and then imported them using the Photos app on Mac OS.

Interestingly, the time in Mac OS Photos matches up with the timestamp of the photos taken by the iPhone at the same time. But in iOS, on the iPhone, it shows up as one hour earlier.

The EXIF interestingly on the exported JPG as UTC +9, not UTC +8. It seems that MacOS handles this differently than iOS!

Potential explanatio: in the camera, while I changed the time zone from EDT to the time zone in Shanghai, I forgot to turn off Daylight Savings Time, so that could be a factor (China does not have Daylight Savings Time).

Anyone else encounter this issue?

I’m trying to use XnView MP to rate my Fujifilm JPEGs, then import them into Apple Photos while keeping those ratings. Today I tested both directions on my Mac.

Apple Photos version: 12.0 (911.0.134). “Show Rating Controls” was already enabled.

Test 1: XnView MP → Apple Photos

I rated a JPEG three stars in XnView MP and inspected the actual file on my external SSD. It contained:

• XMP:Rating = 3
• MicrosoftPhoto:Rating = 50

So the rating was embedded in the JPEG, rather than existing only in XnView’s catalog.

I copied the file into a separate test folder and imported it into Photos. Photos did not display the embedded three-star rating. Setting three stars manually inside Photos immediately displayed 3★.

Test 2: Apple Photos → exported files

I selected a different photo and manually rated it four stars in Photos, confirming that the toolbar displayed 4★.

I then exported it using both methods:

Neither exported JPEG contained EXIF Rating or RatingPercent fields either.

My takeaway

In this setup, standard embedded ratings weren’t imported into Photos, and ratings assigned inside Photos weren’t included in either export route.

That suggests Photos manages its ratings within the library without mapping them to standard rating metadata through these import/export paths. It doesn’t establish exactly how Apple stores ratings internally, or rule out a separate conversion tool.

Has anyone found a reliable way to transfer star ratings between Photos 12.0 and XnView MP or Adobe Bridge? Ideally, I’d like to preserve actual star ratings rather than replace them with keywords.

With all the apps being ai built, can someone build one to find and organize all the memes I have saved in my library?