Photo Intake

On the Pick screen, click the + button (or drag a folder onto the window) to add one or more source folders. Each folder has an individual toggle to include or exclude subfolders. You can add as many folders as you like — from different drives, SD cards, or network shares — and they are all scanned in one pass.

Photo Intake handles RAW files (CR3, CR2, ARW, NEF, ORF, RW2, DNG, and other common raw formats), JPEG, HEIC/HEIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, WebP, and video files (MOV, MP4, and common video containers). Non-media files such as sidecar XML or .DS_Store are never touched and a count of skipped files is shown after the transfer completes.

Photos are sorted by capture date and clustered into events whenever the gap between consecutive shots exceeds a configurable time threshold (default: 6 hours). An optional GPS-distance threshold can force a split even within a shorter time period if your location changed significantly. You can adjust both thresholds in the gear icon on the Plan screen. You can also define manual events by date range that take priority over auto-detection, and dissolve any auto-event into per-day groups.

Yes. On the Plan screen, every event name is an editable text field. Click on it and type a new name — the folder tree preview updates instantly. If reverse geocoding is enabled, city names are appended automatically but can still be edited.

Six built-in templates: Year / Event / Camera, Year / Event (camera as filename prefix), Event / Camera, Camera / Year / Event, Year / Camera, and Year / Month / Camera. The Custom template lets you drag and drop any combination of levels (Year, Month, Day, Event, Camera, Make, File Type) into any order.

No split keeps all stills in the same folder (videos still get their own subfolder). RAW only separates RAW files into a RAW/ folder while all other stills share a Photos/ folder (named JPG/ or HEIC/ when the group is uniform). All types gives RAW, JPEG, HEIC, other stills (PNG/TIFF), and video each their own subfolder.

Yes — a Canon R8 and a Canon RP both produce files named IMG_0001.ARW. If your chosen template includes a Camera level, each camera gets its own folder and there is no collision. If your structure groups both cameras into the same folder (e.g. Year-only), Photo Intake warns you and offers to prefix filenames with the camera model automatically.

Photo Intake never silently overwrites files. If a destination file already exists, a numeric suffix is appended (IMG_0001_1.jpg, IMG_0001_2.jpg, …) and the renamed count is reported in the completion summary.

Copy duplicates files to the destination leaving originals on the source. Move transfers files and removes them from the source after a successful copy — useful for freeing up SD card space. A warning is shown before you apply in Move mode.

Yes. The right panel on the Plan screen shows a live folder tree preview that reflects your current template, split mode, and event names. Every folder and file count is shown before a single file is touched.

A preset saves the current combination of folder template, custom levels, split mode, transfer mode, reverse geocode setting, and filename-prefix preference under a name you choose. Apply any saved preset in one click on the Plan screen. Useful when you regularly import from the same set of cameras with the same workflow.

No. Reverse geocoding uses Apple's on-device CLGeocoder, which draws on locally cached map data. Results may be unavailable for very remote locations or if the device has never downloaded map data for that region.

They are never copied or moved. The completion screen shows a count of non-media files that were found in the source but left untouched, so you are always aware they exist.

Yes — a Cancel button is available at any time during the transfer. Files already processed remain in the destination. If you were using Copy mode you can safely re-run the same plan; collision avoidance ensures already-copied files are renamed rather than overwritten. In Move mode, already-moved files are no longer in the source, so a fresh scan will only pick up what remains.

Photo Intake stores security-scoped bookmarks. If a bookmarked folder can no longer be resolved (e.g. it was deleted or the drive was reformatted), the app removes the stale bookmark automatically and shows the folder as unavailable. No crash or persistent error occurs.