FolioSort 5.0.0 — your whole photo library, on your own drives (macOS + Windows)

macOS and Windows. FolioSort.dmg is FolioSort 5.0.0 for the Mac; FolioSort-5.0.0-windows.zip is FolioSort 5.0.0 for Windows (install steps at the end).

FolioSort 5 is a free update for everyone who bought Pro or Elite.

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FolioSort 5 — your whole photo library, on your own drives

Until now FolioSort was something you ran: point it at a messy folder, get a tidy one back. FolioSort 5 is somewhere you stay. A Library shows every photo on every drive you own, even the drive in the drawer. AI Cull picks the keepers with you, not for you. Tag & Fix repairs the dates, places and keywords your files got wrong. Protect keeps a backup that proves it is a copy. What did not change: your files stay where you put them, and nothing is copied into a catalog.

New

• The Library: every photo on every drive, in one timeline. An index, not an import. Each RAW+JPEG pair is one photo. Unplug a drive and its photos stay, greyed, with the drive's name and "not connected"; plug it back in and they return in place.
• A Home for your photos: "On this day", recent events named by where and when, and a short list of what needs fixing. Plus Map, People (Elite), Events, Places, a zoomable timeline and a proper viewer (zoom, full screen, details, video, rotate with Undo).
• Search from the top of the Home — "dog on the beach", "receipt". Free and Pro search the first 500 photos; Elite searches the whole library.
• Your library in numbers — six facts about your own files, and a share card made on your computer.
• AI Cull — the cull is yours; the AI only suggests. K keeps, R rejects, 1–5 stars, 6–9 colour labels. Near-identical shots are stacked and one frame of each stack is ringed. Nothing is marked until you press a key. "Write for Lightroom" puts your decisions into the files as standard XMP ratings (Capture One, Bridge and Photo Mechanic read them too); RAW files get a sidecar and are never modified. Free and Pro open the first 20 photos of every folder; Elite opens all.
• Best Shot — the best of every near-identical shot, in Clean Up beside Duplicates. You confirm. The first 20 cleanups are free; Elite has no limit.
• AI Tags — keywords proposed by the same on-device AI as AI Search, written into your files as standard keywords. Writing only adds.
• Edit metadata, Places, Dates — review everything on a map or in a table before it is written, and undo every write as one batch. Free writes 100 photos per run; Pro writes all.
• Backup Copy and Archive Health — every file is read back from the backup and compared before it counts; nothing is ever deleted from the backup. Elite checks the archive every month.
• Live Photos stay together in Organize and Rename (HEIC + MOV, or Takeout HEIC/JPG + MP4).
• Labs (Beta) — six small tools, each saying what it writes to disk.
• A new sidebar: Library at the top, Tag & Fix and Protect, Labs at the bottom.
• Ask Your AI — connect Claude Desktop to your library over MCP.

Improved

• AI Search is ready when you are. The AI engine used to compile the first time you indexed — a minute or more with the count stuck at 0. FolioSort now prepares it in the background shortly after it opens, and if you index before it is ready the card says so ("Getting ready — preparing the AI engine, once, on this Mac"). It comes back once after a macOS update.
• Very big folders no longer freeze the window — finishing a 50,000-photo scan takes seconds instead of a minute or more.
• Network drives: moving within one share is a rename on the server, far faster on a NAS.
• Organize: "No subfolders" files everything straight into the destination; the free 100 are your most recent months, and a free run of a folder already organized says so instead of running; Keep Both is the default for same-name files; copies inside the scanned folder are flagged, and Pro can leave them out.
• Duplicates and Best Shot remember the last scan — nothing comes back marked for the Trash.
• Duplicates keeps the copy in your organized folder, not the messy original it was copied from.
• Undo brings back the last batch, not everything removed in the session.
• Google Photos (Takeout): a folder with no .json files now says it is not a Takeout, instead of listing every photo as an orphan.

Fixed

• A card fresh from the camera has a Trash; a network drive without one says so before asking "Move to Trash?".
• AI Search keeps a photo whose text could not be read, and asks for a restart when Apple's on-device AI engine stops answering.
• Takeout dates and altitude are written correctly.
• Cancel in a Workflows review step ends the whole run.
• Undo no longer deletes an .xmp another app has written into.
• Activating from the upgrade sheet or the email's foliosort://activate link opens no second window, and the licence is validated once at launch instead of twice.

Going back to 4.9.9

You can reinstall 4.9.9 from the website at any time. The Library may need its folders added again after going back.

Install

Download FolioSort.dmg, open it and drag FolioSort to Applications. Signed and notarized by Apple. macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon and Intel.

Windows

FolioSort 5 for Windows carries the same Library, AI Cull, Best Shot, AI Tags, Edit metadata, Live Photos and Ask Your AI, plus:

• A new Organize screen — Source › Destination › Organize across the top, one bar at the bottom that says what is missing or about to happen. "Classic view", beside Undo, brings back the old screen.
• A Windows 11 look — new type and colours, a narrower sidebar with each feature in its own colour.
• A paying user is no longer shown Free while the licence is checked at launch, and the email's activation link goes to the FolioSort already open.

Install on Windows: download FolioSort-5.0.0-windows.zip, right-click it → Properties → tick Unblock → OK, extract it anywhere and open Install First.html. Your licence, settings and Library carry over. Windows 10 (version 2004 or later) or Windows 11, 64-bit.