Help · Library
The Library shows the folders you add as one timeline, a map, people, events and places. It reads your folders; it does not import them. This page goes through each view, what the greyed photos mean, and the few things here that do write to a file.
Nothing. The Library reads your folders. The header of the screen says it: FolioSort shows your folders; it doesn't import them. Nothing here changes a file. No photo is copied or moved, and the index it keeps sits in FolioSort's app data, not in your folders.
The one exception is Rotate, which writes only the orientation of a photo and shows Rotated N photos · Undo. The actions in the selection bar open other screens, and each of those shows you what it will write before it writes anything.
The first time, the Library adds your Pictures and Desktop folders. Add a folder… adds any other folder, an external drive or a network share. On the Mac the Photos library package is skipped.
The search boxElite · 500-photo taster free
Describe what is in the photo. The confident results come first and the rest sit behind a link. Below Elite the search reads the first 500 photos; Elite reads the whole library. The search runs on your computer — see AI Search.
On this dayFree
Photos taken on this day in past years. When there are none, the row falls back to this week in past years, then a year ago, then your latest event.
Recent eventsFree
Your latest events, named by place and dates, such as Faro · 28 Jul – 3 Aug 2019. The place comes from names FolioSort already looked up in Places; the Library itself never sends a coordinate anywhere.
Your library at a glanceFree
A short list of what needs attention. Each row opens the photos, or the screen that fixes them:
Library in numbersFree
Six facts about your library — the space it takes, the share that is RAW, the camera you used most, your busiest day, hour and weekday. Each one opens its photos. The sheet adds Year by year, Places and Kinds, and can save a 1080 × 1350 card to your computer. Nothing is uploaded to make it.
Years · Months · DaysFree
How far in you are looking. The newest month is first and photos without a date are at the end; Days adds a header for each day. Zoom from the keyboard, by pinching on a Mac trackpad, or with Ctrl and the mouse wheel on Windows.
A RAW and a JPEG with the same name in the same folder are one tile with a RAW badge, and the video half of a Live Photo sits behind its still.
Folder colours and drive chipsFree
Each folder you added has its own colour. The chips at the top hide or show the photos of one drive. The column at the edge shows how many photos each month holds, coloured by drive: click or drag it to jump. The small map follows the month on screen.
FiltersFree
Narrow the timeline by kind, by camera, by Has location, by No date, or by file name.
Greyed photos — a drive not connected
When a drive is unplugged, its photos stay where they were in the timeline, shown greyed from the thumbnails FolioSort already had, labelled with the folder or drive and not connected. The header says shown greyed, nothing removed. The drive is not touched while it is away, and when it comes back the photos return in place with no rebuild. After that, FolioSort re-reads only the files whose size or modified date changed.
MapFree
Pins grouped into clusters, with a line such as N with a location · N without. Clicking a pin narrows the timeline to the photos taken there. The map itself is Apple Maps on the Mac and OpenStreetMap on Windows.
PeopleElite
The people you named in Find a Person, each with every photo they are in; Show unnamed groups adds the groups you merged but did not name. Below Elite, People looks at your 100 most recent photos and shows the faces blurred, with the real count.
EventsFree
Photos taken together: three or more, with no gap of six hours between them.
Places · Find their places…Free
Towns and countries with how many photos each holds. Photos that have GPS but no place name yet are offered to Find their places…, which opens Places.
Open a photoFree
Double-click a tile or press Space. The arrow keys move to the next photo, the zoom steps through Fit, 50 %, 100 % and 200 %, and F is full screen. Videos play. The info panel shows the date, folder, camera, exposure, size and location.
RotateFree
Writes the orientation and nothing else. JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF, DNG and WebP get it inside the file,
camera RAW files get it in a .xmp sidecar, and a video gets its rotation set without being
re-encoded. The bar shows Rotated N photos · Undo.
Select all · Shift-click
Shift-click selects a run of photos, and Select all takes everything shown. With photos selected, the bar offers what to do with them. Each one opens its own screen with those photos already chosen, and that screen keeps its own plan limits:
Which plan
Browsing is free and unlimited on every plan. Elite adds People and search across the whole library. The screens the Library opens keep their own limits — on the free plan most of them work on 100 files at a time. See the plans.
FAQ
No. FolioSort shows your folders; it doesn't import them. The Library keeps an index of what it read — path, size, dates, camera, GPS, kind and video length — in FolioSort's own app data, never inside your folders. Delete the index and it is rebuilt from the folders.
They are on a drive that is not connected. The Library keeps their place in the timeline, shown greyed from the thumbnails it already had and labelled with the folder or drive and "not connected". Nothing was removed. Plug the drive back in and they come back in place, with no rebuild.
No. Browsing, searching, the map and the numbers only read. The one thing in the Library that writes is Rotate, which changes only the orientation and can be undone. The actions that open other screens — Edit metadata, Fix dates, Add places, Write AI tags — write nothing until you confirm there.
Browsing is free and unlimited on every plan: Home, Timeline, Map, Events, Places and the viewer. Searching by what is in the photos reads the first 500 photos below Elite and the whole library on Elite. People is an Elite view; below Elite it shows the 100 most recent photos with the faces blurred. See the pricing page for the plans.