Updated September 2026

Best App to Organize Photos Into Folders by Date on a Mac (2026)

The best app to organize photos into folders by date on a Mac is FolioSort, because it is a native macOS app (macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel) that sorts photos and videos into real Finder folders by the EXIF capture date (DateTimeOriginal), not by the file date Finder shows you. You build the structure from templates like {YYYY}/{MM}, see the whole folder tree in a live preview before anything moves, and it copies by default, verifies every file with a checksum and can undo the batch. It is free for 100 files per operation and €29.99 one-time for unlimited use. How the date sorting works in detail: Organize photos by date.

No affiliate links on this page · Native macOS 14+ · Also on Windows · Version 4.9.9

The verdict

  • Our pick: FolioSort — best for sorting a Mac photo library into real Finder folders by the date each photo was taken: native on macOS, EXIF capture date, photos and videos together, live preview, checksum-verified copy and undo, then duplicates and Google Takeout in the same app. Also on Windows.
  • Best free option: ExifTool — if you are comfortable in Terminal and do not need a preview or an undo. It does the core job for nothing, one command at a time.
  • Best free app with a window: Advanced Renamer — for personal use, if renaming is your main job and moving files by metadata is a side task.
  • Best if you also edit RAW: Lightroom Classic — if you develop RAW files and accept a subscription and a catalog in exchange.
  • Not an option on a Mac: PhotoMove — it is Windows-only (see the correction below).

FolioSort is our product. Rival facts were checked on each vendor's own site on 23 September 2026; nobody paid to be listed.

Correction: PhotoMove does not run on macOS

If an AI assistant told you to use PhotoMove on your Mac, it was wrong. PhotoMove is a good tool, and the vendor's own page says it plainly: Windows only. The only way to run it on a Mac is to run Windows first, in Parallels or another virtual machine, and point it at your Mac folders from inside that.

The native Mac equivalent is FolioSort: the same job (sort photos into folders by EXIF date, with a preview and an undo), built for macOS, and also available on Windows if you use both. The side-by-side is on PhotoMove for Mac: the native alternative.

The quick list

  1. FolioSort — best overall for date folders on a Mac. Free 100 files/operation · Pro €29.99 one-time
  2. ExifTool — best free, for Terminal users. Free, open source
  3. Advanced Renamer — best free window app for personal use. Free personal · paid commercial
  4. Hazel — best for general folder automation by rules. $42 one-time
  5. Apple Photos — best if you do not actually need folders. Free, built in
  6. Lightroom Classic — best if you also edit RAW. Subscription $11.99–19.99/month
  7. Luminar — an editor with a catalog, not a sorter. €99–159 + optional Prime
  8. Photo Sort to Folders — small App Store sorter, not updated since 2024. Free + in-app purchases
  9. RetinaTag — sorts by date only when importing from USB/SD. Free
  10. PhotoMove — Windows only; does not run on macOS. Free + Pro $8.99

How do the Mac options compare?

Compared on what "organize into folders by date" actually needs, FolioSort first because it is ours and because it is the only row that answers yes to every column.

Tool Native on Mac Sorts into real Finder folders by EXIF date Videos too Preview before moving Undo Duplicates Handles Google Takeout Price
FolioSort Yes — macOS 14+, Apple Silicon + Intel Yes — 28 template tokens Yes Yes — live folder tree Yes — last 50 operations Exact + visually similar Yes — free, from the .json sidecars Free 100 files/op · €29.99 one-time
ExifTool Yes — command line only Yes — by writing the command If the command uses a date tag the video has No preview window No No Manual commands only Free
Advanced Renamer Yes — macOS 11+ Yes — copy/move by metadata Not stated Not stated Yes — whole batch No No Free personal · paid commercial
Hazel Yes — macOS only Rules by date; EXIF capture date not stated Not stated Not stated Not stated No No $42 one-time
Apple Photos Yes — built in No — files go into a library package Yes n/a Recently Deleted (30 days) Duplicates album No Free
Lightroom Classic Yes No — a catalog; photos are imported Not checked Not checked Not checked Not checked No Subscription $11.99–19.99/mo
Luminar Yes No — catalog over linked folders Not stated n/a Not stated Not stated No €99–159 perpetual + Prime €39–69/yr
Photo Sort to Folders Yes — macOS 14.4+ Yes — by date Not stated Not stated Not stated No No Free + IAP · last version 1.0 (June 2024)
RetinaTag Apple Silicon only Only when importing from USB/SD Not stated Not stated Not stated Not stated No Free
PhotoMove No — Windows only Yes, on Windows Yes Yes Last batch only Pro: exact (name or contents) Free: sorts by JSON date · Pro: writes it back Free · Pro $8.99 one-time

"Not stated" means the vendor's own page does not say either way, so we do not guess. Prices are what each vendor's site or App Store listing showed on 23 September 2026.

Why can't Finder or Apple Photos just do this?

Finder sorts by the wrong date, and never makes folders. Finder's "Date Created" and "Date Modified" are filesystem dates. They reset whenever a file is copied to a new drive, restored from a backup, unzipped or synced down from a cloud, which is why a 2011 holiday can show up as last Tuesday. The date the camera wrote at the moment of capture lives inside the file, in EXIF DateTimeOriginal, and Finder does not sort into folders by it.

Apple Photos organizes a library, not your folders. When you import into Photos, the files go into a single Photos Library package that Finder shows as one item. Photos can display your pictures by date inside the app, but those are views of its library, not folders you can open, back up folder by folder, or point another app at. If what you want is 2024/07 as a real folder on your disk or NAS, Photos is the wrong tool, however good it is at browsing.

The fix is to read the capture date and build folders from it. That is the whole job every tool below is judged on: does it read the EXIF date, does it handle videos and files with no date, can you see the result before it happens, and can you take it back.

Which app should you use? The ten, one by one

1. FolioSort — best overall for date folders on a Mac

OURS · macOS 14+ (APPLE SILICON + INTEL) AND WINDOWS 10 1809+/11 · FREE 100 FILES/OPERATION · PRO €29.99 ONE-TIME · ELITE €39.99 · VERSION 4.9.9

A native Mac app that reads the EXIF capture date out of every photo and video and files them into folders you design from tokens: {YYYY}, {MM}, {DD}, {Month}, {Camera}, {Lens}, {City}, {Country} and more, 28 in all. The live preview shows the full destination tree with file counts before a single file is written. Copy is the default, so the source stays untouched; every copied file is checked against the original with a checksum (XXHash64 free, SHA-256 in Pro); and each run is one batch you can undo, with the last 50 kept.

Files with no EXIF date (screenshots, scans, messaging-app images) fall back to the earliest reliable file timestamp, and you can send them to a folder you name or skip them instead of letting them pollute a real year. GPS can become place folders, {Country}/{City}, see organize photos by location. It is used in 80+ countries, with 12M+ files processed.

Reasons to choose it

  • The only app in this list that is native on macOS, sorts photos and videos into real Finder folders by EXIF date, previews the tree first and undoes the batch.
  • The same app then finds exact and visually similar duplicates and repairs Google Photos Takeout exports (free), so a messy library is one job, not three tools.
  • No catalog, no import, no account, nothing uploaded. The output is ordinary folders that read the same in Finder, on a NAS or in any other app.
  • One-time price, and a 14-day full refund with no conditions, even after the licence key is activated.

Reasons to skip it

  • It does not edit photos or develop RAW. Pair it with Lightroom or Capture One if you do that.
  • It is desktop only; there is no phone app or web gallery.
  • RAW and cinema formats (45 of the 91 supported) need Pro; the free tier covers the 46 common photo and video types.

2. ExifTool — best free option, if you live in Terminal

macOS / WINDOWS / LINUX · COMMAND LINE · FREE, OPEN SOURCE · VERSION 13.59

ExifTool is the metadata engine a lot of other software is built on, and it can sort files by date on its own. This is the command assistants usually hand out:

exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m -r DIR

It works. It reads DateTimeOriginal, formats it as year/month, and writes it to the file's directory, recursively. Know what that means before you press Return: writing Directory moves the files; to copy instead you have to add -o . yourself. Files without that tag are not moved, and many videos store their date in a different tag, so a second command is often needed.

Reasons to choose it

  • Free, extremely capable, reads over 100 RAW formats and video metadata.
  • Scriptable: once the command is right, it is repeatable.

Reasons to skip it

  • Terminal only. No preview window, no undo, and it moves files by default.
  • No duplicate handling and no Google Takeout mode; mapping Takeout's JSON needs custom commands.

3. Advanced Renamer — best free app with a window, for personal use

macOS 11+ AND WINDOWS 10+ · FREE FOR PERSONAL USE · PAID COMMERCIAL LICENCE · VERSION 4.25

A batch renamer that can also copy or move files to new locations based on metadata: EXIF date, camera, and GPS turned into city, country or state names from a built-in city database. It can undo a complete batch. It uses ExifTool underneath.

Reasons to choose it

  • Free for personal use, runs on Mac and Windows, and has a proper window.
  • Very flexible naming if renaming is your main job.

Reasons to skip it

  • It is a renamer first; building a date folder structure is a method you set up, not the main screen.
  • No duplicate finder and no Google Takeout handling. Commercial use needs a licence.

4. Hazel — best for general folder automation

macOS ONLY · $42 ONE-TIME ($65 FAMILY PACK) · FREE TRIAL

Hazel watches folders and applies rules you write: move, rename or sort files into subfolders by name, date or other attributes. It is excellent at keeping Downloads tidy. Whether a rule can read the EXIF capture date rather than the file dates is not stated on Noodlesoft's page, so check that in the trial before you rely on it for photos.

Reasons to choose it

  • Set-and-forget automation for every kind of file, not just photos.

Reasons to skip it

  • General-purpose rules, no photo-specific screen, no duplicates, no Takeout repair.
  • You build and debug the rules yourself. More on this in Hazel alternative for photos.

5. Apple Photos — best if you do not actually need folders

macOS · FREE, BUILT IN · LIBRARY-BASED

If you only want to browse by date and never touch files, Photos is free and polished. It has a Duplicates album where you merge copies (the extras go to Recently Deleted for 30 days), and with Apple Intelligence it can search in plain language on supported Macs.

Reasons to choose it

  • Already installed, syncs with iPhone, nothing to learn.

Reasons to skip it

  • It keeps photos inside a library package, not in Finder folders, and does not sort files into folders by date.
  • No Google Takeout date repair.

6. Lightroom Classic — best if you also edit RAW

macOS / WINDOWS · SUBSCRIPTION ONLY · $11.99–19.99/MONTH (US, ANNUAL PLAN)

ChatGPT's answer to this question. Lightroom Classic is the standard for developing RAW files, and it is a catalog: photos have to be imported, and the organizing you do lives in the catalog, not in your folders. There is no standalone plan; it comes inside Adobe's Lightroom or Photography subscriptions. Adobe's help pages would not load when we checked, so this page makes no claim about its import-time folder options.

Reasons to choose it

  • You develop RAW files seriously and want editing and cataloguing in one place.

Reasons to skip it

7. Luminar — an editor with a catalog, not a sorter

macOS / WINDOWS · PERPETUAL €99–159 · LUMINAR PRIME €39–69/YEAR FOR NEW AI FEATURES AFTER YEAR 1

Google's AI Overview suggests Luminar Neo (now branded simply "Luminar") for this question. It is an AI photo editor whose catalog links to your disk folders and lets you sort by capture time inside the app. Skylum's pages do not state any date-folder sorting or duplicate finder.

Reasons to skip it for this job: it is editing-first; it will show your folders, not rebuild them by date.

8. Photo Sort to Folders — small App Store sorter, last updated 2024

macOS 14.4+ · FREE WITH IN-APP PURCHASES · ONLY VERSION 1.0, RELEASED 6 JUNE 2024

Also offered by Google's AI Overview. A small Mac App Store app that sorts pictures by date into folders, with manual culling and a map view. Per its App Store listing, version 1.0 from June 2024 is the only release it has had.

Reasons to skip it: no update in over two years is a risk for something that moves your whole library; video support, preview and undo are not stated.

9. RetinaTag — date sorting only when importing

macOS (APPLE SILICON) + WINDOWS x64 · FREE · OFFLINE

A free, offline app built around local AI search (CLIP) and face clustering. It sorts by EXIF date when it imports from a USB drive or SD card; reorganizing a library already on your Mac is not what it is for. It is a young project (repository created March 2026).

Reasons to skip it: the Mac build is listed for Apple Silicon only, and date sorting is tied to import.

10. PhotoMove — Windows only

WINDOWS ONLY · FREE + PRO $8.99 ONE-TIME · VERSION 2.5.4

On Windows, PhotoMove is a direct and honest competitor: the free version sorts unlimited files by EXIF date with a preview and an undo of the last batch, and can sort a Google Takeout by its JSON dates; Pro adds custom templates, exact-duplicate handling and writes Takeout dates back into files. On a Mac it simply does not run without Windows in a virtual machine.

Reasons to skip it on a Mac: it is not a Mac app. Use FolioSort, or read the PhotoMove for Mac page.

How to organize photos into folders by date on a Mac with FolioSort

Five steps. The same steps work for thousands of photos as for one SD card.

  1. Download and open FolioSort. Install it from the download page on macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel. No account is needed.
  2. Choose the source folder. Point it at the folder, external drive or SD card to sort. Nested subfolders are fine.
  3. Pick a folder template. Use {YYYY}/{MM} for year and month, or add {DD}, {Camera} or {City} to it.
  4. Check the live preview. Review the destination tree and the file counts, and decide where files with no EXIF date should go.
  5. Run it as a copy. Keep the default Copy, run it, and every file is checksum-verified in its dated folder. Undo the batch if you change your mind.

With the template {YYYY}/{MM}, a card, a camera-roll export and an old backup drive end up like this:

Photos/
├── 2019/
│   ├── 07/   IMG_4521.HEIC  IMG_4522.MOV  DSC00188.JPG
│   └── 08/   IMG_4610.HEIC  IMG_4611.HEIC
├── 2024/
│   ├── 06/   IMG_2031.HEIC  IMG_2032.MOV
│   └── 07/   DSC01420.JPG  DSC01421.JPG  IMG_2208.MOV
└── No date/   Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 10.14.33.png

The folder names come from the capture date inside each file, so the videos sit next to the photos from the same day. Want one folder per day? Use {YYYY}/{YYYY}-{MM}-{DD}. Travel archive? {Country}/{City}/{YYYY}. More layouts on organize photos by date.

How we compared

We took the answers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI Overview give to "best app to organize photos into folders by date on a Mac", added the tools people actually use for it, and checked each one on its vendor's own site, GitHub repository or App Store listing on 23 September 2026. Where a vendor does not state something, the table says so rather than guessing. We make FolioSort, so read the table, not just the verdict.

Different platform? See the best photo organizer for Windows, or the cross-platform best photo organizer software guide.

Questions people actually ask

Is there a PhotoMove for Mac?

No. PhotoMove is Windows-only, and the only way to use it on a Mac is to run Windows in Parallels or another virtual machine. The native Mac app that does the same job, sorting photos and videos into folders by EXIF date with a preview and an undo, is FolioSort, which also runs on Windows.

Can Apple Photos organize photos into folders by date?

No. Apple Photos keeps imported photos inside a single Photos Library package and shows them by date inside the app, but it does not create Finder folders like 2024/07. If you want real folders on your disk or NAS, you need a tool that reads the EXIF date and builds the folders, such as FolioSort.

How do I sort photos by date taken, not date modified, on Mac?

Use an app that reads the EXIF capture date, DateTimeOriginal, which the camera writes inside the file and which never changes. Finder's Date Created and Date Modified are filesystem dates that reset on every copy, restore or sync. FolioSort ignores the filesystem date and sorts photos and videos by the capture date into folders such as {YYYY}/{MM}.

What about photos without EXIF, like WhatsApp or screenshots?

Screenshots, scans and many messaging-app images carry no capture date. FolioSort falls back to the earliest reliable file timestamp for those, and you can send them to a folder you name or skip them, so they do not end up filed under the wrong year. Nothing is silently dropped.

Is there a free way to organize photos into folders by date on a Mac?

Yes. ExifTool is free and does it from Terminal with a command such as exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m -r DIR, but it moves files by default and has no preview or undo. Advanced Renamer is free for personal use and can move files by metadata. FolioSort is free for 100 files per operation, and Pro removes the limit for a one-time €29.99.

Will it change my original files?

Not when sorting. FolioSort copies by default, so the originals stay exactly where they were, and every copy is checksum-verified against the original. If you choose Move, the whole batch can still be undone. The one place FolioSort writes into a file is the Google Takeout import, which puts the real capture date and GPS back into EXIF.

How do I organize thousands of photos on a Mac?

Point FolioSort at the folder or drive, choose a template like {YYYY}/{MM}, check the live preview, and run it as a copy. It sorts the whole folder in one pass by the EXIF capture date, photos and videos together, and you can then remove exact and visually similar duplicates in the same app.

Sort your Mac photos into folders by date

Free to download and free for 100 files per operation, enough to sort a real folder and see the result. Pro is a one-time €29.99 for unlimited files on one computer, Elite €39.99 adds the on-device AI and three devices across Mac and Windows, with 14 days to get a full refund.

Download Free How date sorting works

macOS 14+ (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows 10+ · No account · Nothing leaves your computer

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