Need to copy file names to Titles for Apple Photos sorting

[Gary Small]

As I’m sure everyone knows, Apple Photos disabled sorting by file names and requires the use of “titles” which unless I am very misinformed is an obnoxious PITA that could only come from the minds of the Apple (juvenile) geniuses.

Does anyone have a process to copy file names into the xmp Title field as a batch? I did see an Automator script online that probably USED to work, but does not work (for me) in macOS Tahoe. I will investigate (via forum post) if this can be done in Photo Mechanic…but GEEZ…what was Apple thinking?

thanks

gary

[Kit Laughlin]

Joining this thread to see where it goes! I have never used Photos, so this is news to me.

[Gary Small]

So it turns out that I CAN do this with the photos OUTSIDE of the Apple Photos library using Photo Supreme, Graphic Converter (already tested both) and “probably” Photo Mechanic. So THAT would mean exporting out all the photos from the library, doing the process, then re-importing into AP -OR- simply delete the library, do the thing externally, then re-export the (mainly raw) files out (again) to compressed HEIC or JpegXL and then re-import into a blank library…either way a huge PITA.

I’d much prefer to do it inside the library, but it may not be possible. It appears that Nitro also follows the same requirement in a Photo Library window, where it clearly does NOT in a folder view.

So definitely hoping for some enlightenment.

thanks

gary

[Kevin Yank]

I use the open source OSXPhotos to do this as a batch process on the photos in Apple Photos (no export, re-import required). Here’s my blog post on the subject.

[Nik Bhatt]

Nitro doesn’t offer a file name sort because the Photo Library does not provide that as a sort order. Nitro *could* sort in whatever way it wants, but I found that offering non-standard sorts causes severe performance issues with larger libraries.

[Author]

Posts