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Photo Export

Ideas

Photo Export is intentionally focused. Below are ideas we’re considering that would improve reliability, usability, and media support without turning the app into something larger than it needs to be. None of these are committed to a timeline.

Recently shipped

Section titled “Recently shipped”
  • Separate videos into a subfolder — opt-in via Settings → Advanced → Organization → Separate videos into a subfolder. When on, standalone videos land in a videos/ subfolder inside their placement (e.g. 2026/03/IMG_0001.JPG next to 2026/03/videos/IMG_0002.MOV) so a backup browser doesn’t have to scroll past every video to find the photos. The paired video of a Live Photo stays next to its still — splitting the pair across folders would break on-disk Live Photo recognition. Default off. Applies to new exports only; videos already on disk stay where they are.
  • Live Photos — opt-in via Settings → Advanced → Export Live Photos as paired image + video. When on, the paired video is written next to the still (e.g. IMG_0001.HEIC + IMG_0001.MOV) using whatever extension casing PhotoKit reports for that resource — typically .MOV on Apple hardware. Edited Live Photos write the rendered pair; with Include originals also on, _orig companions land alongside. Default off because Live Photo paired videos are typically 1–3 MB each and would roughly double disk usage for Live-Photo-heavy libraries. iCloud Shared Album Live Photos remain still-only — Apple doesn’t expose their paired video.
  • Auto Export — automatically back up new photos as they appear in Apple Photos, with per-scope (Timeline / Favorites / Albums) selection, retry-with-backoff for transient failures, and an Export Issues view for what didn’t go through. See the Auto Export guide.
  • Retry failed exports — every failure in the Export Issues view has a per-row Retry button; auto-retryable categories also re-attempt on their own with exponential backoff.

Usability

Section titled “Usability”
  • Media filtering — filter the library view by photos, videos, or both
  • Manual refresh and change observation in the library view — Auto Export already reacts to PhotoKit changes; this is about the library view’s grid reflecting them while you’re browsing
  • Search and filter — find assets by name or date within the browser
  • Accessibility and polish — broader VoiceOver coverage beyond the Auto Export status pill, and onboarding refinements
  • Ignore action in Export Issues — suppress a known-unrecoverable failure (alongside the existing Retry action) so the list stays focused on what’s actionable
  • Completion / failure notifications — opt-in macOS notifications when an Auto Export run finishes or fails, plus a Dock badge for unresolved issues

Reliability and performance

Section titled “Reliability and performance”
  • Concurrent export queue — export multiple assets in parallel for faster throughput
  • Preflight destination checks — verify permissions, mount status, and available space before starting
  • Stronger crash-resume — more resilient recovery for long-running export sessions
  • Persistent month-level caching — speed up sidebar loading for larger libraries

Media support

Section titled “Media support”
  • iCloud originals — detect remote-only assets and let users choose to download or skip
  • Metadata sidecars — optionally export metadata alongside media files

Bigger ideas

Section titled “Bigger ideas”
  • Flexible naming schemes — configurable folder structures beyond year/month
  • SQLite-backed records — replace JSONL storage if it becomes a bottleneck at scale
  • Multiple destinations — export to more than one location with independent tracking
  • Localization — support languages beyond English

Have an idea? Open an issue on GitHub.