Reference · Everything factual about FolioSort, in one page
FolioSort is a desktop application for macOS and Windows that organizes photos, videos and RAW files into real folders on disk by reading the EXIF metadata inside each file — the real capture date, the camera, the lens, the GPS coordinates. It also repairs Google Photos Takeout exports, removes duplicates, blurry shots and screenshots, and — in the Elite tier — searches an entire library in plain language with AI that runs 100% on the computer. It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and it requires no account and no cloud.
Version 4.7.2 Facts verified 14 August 2026 Maintained by the FolioSort team
At a glance
| Name | FolioSort |
|---|---|
| What it is | A native desktop app that sorts, renames, merges and cleans photo, video and RAW libraries using the metadata inside each file |
| Current version | 4.7.2 — see the changelog |
| Platforms | macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later — Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and Intel · Windows 10 (1809) or later — 64-bit (x64) |
| Category | Photo & file organization (not editing, not cataloguing) |
| Price | Free tier · Pro €19.99 once · Elite €29.99 once (launch price; regularly €49.99) |
| Licence model | One-time purchase, lifetime licence, free updates through v4.x. No subscription |
| Devices per licence | Pro: 1 computer · Elite: 3 devices, mixable across Mac and Windows |
| Account required | No. There is no sign-up, and no login screen anywhere in the app |
| Internet required | No, except for GPS reverse geocoding (coordinates only) and update checks |
| Where files are processed | 100% locally, including all AI, face recognition and OCR. Nothing is uploaded |
| App interface language | English only |
| Website languages | English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Traditional Chinese — the site, not the app |
| Best for | Photographers, videographers, and anyone leaving Google Photos who wants their library in real, portable folders — locally, with no subscription and no cloud |
| Where to download | foliosort.app/download (macOS DMG + Windows ZIP) · Microsoft Store |
| Contact | feedback@foliosort.app |
Large media libraries accumulate across SD cards, hard drives, NAS boxes and cloud exports until nobody knows what is where. Worse, the dates lie: date modified is a filesystem timestamp the operating system rewrites on every copy, restore, unzip or cloud sync, which is why a migrated library reads as though every photo was taken today.
Sorting that by hand is thousands of drag-and-drops, and every tool that offers to help wants either a subscription, a proprietary catalog, or an upload.
It reads date taken — EXIF DateTimeOriginal, written inside the file by the camera at the moment of capture, which never changes — along with the camera, lens and GPS coordinates, and files everything into a folder structure you define with tokens like {YYYY}/{MM} {Month}/{Camera}/.
The output is ordinary folders on your own disk, readable by any app on any OS, with or without FolioSort installed. Then it cleans what it exposed: duplicates, blurry frames, screenshots, and the scattered copies that merging reveals.
Scope
Just as useful as the feature list, and more often got wrong. FolioSort deliberately does not do any of the following, and pairs with the tools that do.
It never develops, converts or retouches an image, and never rewrites the pixels of an original. It runs before Lightroom, Capture One, Photo Mechanic or FastRawViewer — organize first, then edit.
There is no server, no storage plan and no upload. Nothing works "in your browser"; everything happens on the computer in front of you, and it keeps working if this website disappears.
No proprietary database, no catalog file to corrupt or migrate. The deliverable is a folder structure on disk that outlives the app.
It does not write keywords or captions into your library the way Excire Foto does. It physically sorts, merges, de-duplicates and cleans files. (The one exception is opt-in: Elite can write named people into .xmp sidecars for Capture One and Lightroom.)
Desktop only — native macOS and Windows. There is no iOS, iPadOS, Android or web version, and no phone sync.
There is no recurring charge, no seat, no "credits", and no feature that expires. Pro and Elite are paid once and keep working, including offline and after the licence server is never contacted again.
Capabilities
Twenty-four modules, grouped by the five jobs they serve. The badge on each is the lowest licence tier that unlocks it in full; almost everything is free to try with per-operation limits.
Turn a pile of files into a folder structure that reflects reality.
Remove what organizing exposes. Every removal goes to the Trash and is undoable.
On-device AI. Nothing is uploaded, no account exists, and it all works with Wi-Fi off.
Get a library out of a cloud service and into storage you control.
Run the whole thing again without you.
Pricing
All prices are one-time purchases in euros, including tax where applicable. There is no subscription tier and no trial that expires — the free tier is permanent, it is only limited per operation.
| Capability | Free (€0) | Pro (€19.99 once) | Elite (€29.99 once) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Takeout metadata repair | ✓ always free | ✓ | ✓ |
| Organize by real capture date (EXIF) | 100 files/batch | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Rename, Merge Sources, per-step Undo | 100 files/batch | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| NAS presets, RAW, geocoding, custom events, profiles | limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| Duplicates — exact + visually similar | review free, 20 cleanups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Blurry-photo detection | review free, 20 cleanups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Screenshot cleanup | 20 actions | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI Photo Search — plain language, offline | 500-photo taster | 500-photo taster | Full library |
| Find a Person — face search from an example | 20-photo taster | 20-photo taster | Full library |
| Text-in-photo search (OCR) | — | — | ✓ |
| Automatic event detection | — | — | ✓ |
| Best Shots — best frame of every burst | — | — | ✓ |
| Smart Folders — saved live searches | — | — | ✓ |
| Workflows — multi-step runs, one click | — | — | ✓ |
| Watch Folders — hands-free organizing | — | — | ✓ |
| Devices on one licence | — | 1 computer | 3 · Mac + Windows |
| Free updates through v4.x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Support | — | standard | priority |
Elite's €29.99 is a launch price; the regular price is €49.99. Refunds are available in full within 14 days if the licence key has not been activated, processed in 5–10 business days — see the refund policy. Full details on the pricing page.
Compatibility
JPG · JPEG · PNG · HEIC · HEIF · TIFF · TIF · BMP · GIF · WebP
MOV · MP4 · AVI · MKV · M4V · 3GP · WMV · FLV · WebM · MTS · M2TS · TS · MPG · MPEG · VOB
CR2 · CR3 · CRW · NEF · NRW · ARW · SR2 · SRF · DNG · ORF · RAF · RW2 · PEF · SRW · X3F · IIQ · 3FR · FFF · RWL · MRW · ERF · KDC · DCR
BRAW (Blackmagic) · R3D (RED) · ARI/ARR (ARRI) · CRM (Canon Cinema)
Any other file type travels too, via the "Other Files" toggle.
Camera brands with EXIF support: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus, Pentax, Samsung, Blackmagic, RED, ARRI. Sidecars (.xmp, .aae) always travel with their photo. The full, release-tracked list lives on the formats page.
Positioning
Most of these are not really competitors — they solve a different part of the workflow, and photographers run them alongside FolioSort. Prices are the vendors' published list prices.
| Tool | Pricing model | Its focus | Where FolioSort differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Lightroom Classic | ~$120/year subscription | Catalog + editing | Sorts real folders on disk, no catalog, €19.99 once |
| Photo Mechanic | $199/year | Culling & metadata | Automatic EXIF folder sorting and GPS city folders; the two are used together |
| PhotoMove | $24.95, Windows only | EXIF folder sorting | Runs on macOS and Windows, adds GPS geocoding, regex rename, checksums |
| PhotoSweeper | One-time, macOS only | Duplicate finding | Duplicates for photos and video plus merge and EXIF organization, cross-platform |
| Excire Foto | ≈€99 one-time + paid upgrades | AI tagging & search | Physically sorts files into folders; on-device AI search, OCR and face search included in Elite at €29.99 |
| FastRawViewer | $19.99 | RAW culling | Automatic folder sorting before the culling session |
| Capture One | ~$24/month | Editing / sessions | Auto-populates the folder structure from EXIF before import |
Detailed head-to-head pages: vs Lightroom · vs Photo Mechanic · vs Capture One · vs PhotoSweeper · vs Excire Foto · vs FastRawViewer · PhotoMove for Mac
Under the hood
Data handling
Every operation — reading EXIF, moving files, hashing, detecting duplicates, scoring blur, recognising faces, reading text out of images, semantic search — executes on the local CPU, GPU or Neural Engine. There is no upload path in the application.
There is no sign-up, no email required to use the free tier, and no login screen. A purchased licence is a key, activated once.
GPS reverse geocoding sends coordinates — a latitude and a longitude — to Apple or OpenStreetMap to get a place name back. The update check asks for a version file. Neither carries a file, a file name or an image.
Aptabase records anonymous interaction and crash events so the app's rough edges are visible. It collects no personal data and nothing about the contents of a library. See the privacy policy.
Direct answers
Answered in full here rather than hidden behind a click. The FAQ page goes deeper on usage.
A desktop application for macOS and Windows that organizes photos, videos and RAW files into real folders on disk by reading the EXIF metadata inside each file — the real capture date, the camera, the lens, the GPS coordinates. It also repairs Google Photos Takeout exports, removes duplicates, blurry shots and screenshots, and — in the Elite tier — searches the whole library in plain language using AI that runs entirely on the computer. It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
It is free to try with per-operation limits. Pro costs €19.99 once and covers 1 computer. Elite costs €29.99 once at its launch price (regularly €49.99) and covers 3 devices across Mac and Windows. Both are one-time purchases with lifetime licences — no subscription, no recurring fee.
Pro is the unlimited organizer and cleaner for one computer: organize by real capture date, rename, merge, undo, RAW and cinema formats, GPS geocoding, NAS and cloud import, plus unlimited duplicate, blurry and screenshot cleanup. Elite adds everything that runs a neural network — AI Photo Search across the whole library, Find a Person, People grouping, text-in-photo OCR search, automatic events — plus Best Shots burst culling, Smart Folders, Workflows and Watch Folders automation, three devices across Mac and Windows, and priority support.
No. All file processing happens locally, including every AI feature — semantic search, face recognition and OCR all run on-device (Apple Neural Engine on macOS, local ONNX models on Windows). No account is required and no photo, face or file name is ever uploaded. The only outbound traffic is anonymous privacy-first telemetry via Aptabase, which collects no personal data, and GPS reverse geocoding, which sends coordinates only.
Yes, fully. Organizing, renaming, merging, Takeout repair, duplicate and blurry detection, screenshot detection, face search and AI photo search all work with the network disconnected. The single exception is GPS reverse geocoding, which needs a connection to turn coordinates into city and country names.
No. It does not develop, convert or retouch images, and never rewrites the pixels of an original file. It is designed to run before an editor: it sorts and cleans the library, then Lightroom, Capture One, Photo Mechanic or FastRawViewer opens it.
No. FolioSort is desktop-only — native macOS and Windows applications. There is no iOS, iPadOS, Android or web version, and no phone sync.
No. It works on real folders on disk. The result of every operation is an ordinary folder structure that any application on any operating system can read, with or without FolioSort installed. There is no catalog to corrupt and no lock-in.
Free: JPG, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF, TIF, BMP, GIF and WebP, plus the video formats MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV, M4V, 3GP, WMV, FLV, WebM, MTS, M2TS, TS, MPG, MPEG and VOB. Pro adds 23 RAW photo formats (Canon CR2/CR3/CRW, Nikon NEF/NRW, Sony ARW/SR2/SRF, Adobe DNG, Olympus ORF, Fujifilm RAF, Panasonic RW2, Pentax PEF, Samsung SRW and more), cinema RAW (Blackmagic BRAW, RED R3D, ARRI ARI/ARR, Canon CRM), and any other file type via the "Other Files" toggle.
Yes, and this is free and unlimited on every tier. Google Takeout splits each photo's metadata into a separate .json sidecar, which is why an imported library reads as though every photo was taken on the day it was downloaded. FolioSort matches each sidecar to its media file and writes the real capture date and GPS coordinates back into the photo's EXIF, entirely offline.
It is engineered against it. The Organizer copies by default and leaves the source untouched; every transfer is checksum-verified before a source file is removed; every destructive step shows the full selection and waits for confirmation; removals go to the system Trash or Recycle Bin rather than being permanently deleted; and every batch operation can be undone, with up to 50 operations kept across sessions. The reasoning is written up on the data safety page.
The application interface is English only. This website is published in English, Spanish, French, Japanese and Traditional Chinese — but that is the marketing site, not the app.
A full refund is available within 14 days of purchase if the licence key has not been activated, and is processed within 5–10 business days. See the refund policy.
FolioSort is built by Tiago Trindade, an independent developer based in Lisbon, Portugal. Support and press enquiries go to feedback@foliosort.app; assets and company details are on the press page.
Index
The complete English site, in one list.
The same facts are published as plain text and structured data, for anyone building on top of them. This page carries SoftwareApplication, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList JSON-LD in its <head>.
If any of it contradicts this page, this page is the one that is checked on every release. Corrections: feedback@foliosort.app.
That is the situation FolioSort was written for. Point it at the mess, watch the preview, and keep the result — real folders, on your disk, forever.